Parish Giving Officers

Giving > Parish Giving Officers

Parish Giving Officers

Looking at parishes across the country, we have identified that it is good practice to appoint someone to be Parish Giving Officer, who will encourage the congregation in their giving, and act as a champion for some of the wider stewardship issues.

The Parish Giving Officer model can be effective at Benefice or Team level as well as at parish level. What is important is that trust can be established and developed between the Parish Giving Officer and the congregation, and between them and the clergy. They will also need to establish a good working rapport with the treasurer and Gift Aid officer.

Their role is to encourage giving and stewardship from within their congregation, not only by encouraging the clergy and readers to teach and preach on stewardship and by providing resources, but by actively championing stewardship within the parish. It is ideal if they are a member of the PCC, as they will be able to bring a stewardship perspective to PCC discussions.

Learning from dioceses who have sponsored a Parish Giving Officer model for some time suggests that the PGO role should ideally be carried out by someone concentrating solely on this task. However, in a number of parishes, the role will need to be combined with another role. In this case, it is preferable to combine with the job of Gift Aid Officer, rather than Treasurer.

The first column in the table below summarises the key tasks that need undertaking within a parish relating to finance and giving :

TASK	3 person Team	2 Person Team
¨ Responsible for book-keeping, and preparation of financial updates to the PCC.	T	T
¨ Preparation of Annual Report and Accounts, and working with auditor / independent examiner.	T	T
¨ Ensuring the parish adopts appropriate cash management and banking arrangements.	T	T
¨ Developing a Budget, and reporting progress against it.	T	T
¨ Communicating the budget in narrative form	PGO / T	T
¨ Encouraging Teaching on Giving and Stewardship	PGO	PG
¨ Organising Annual Renewals of pledged planned giving	PGO	PG
¨ Promoting Giving within the parish through circulating leaflets, producing magazine articles, resourcing home groups etc.	PGO	PG
¨ Ensuring the church thanks its planned givers at least once a year.	PGO / GA	PG
¨ Encouraging Tax Efficient Giving	PGO / GA	PG
¨ Talking with individual church members about giving	PGO / GA	PG
¨ Administering the Gift Aid scheme and keeping records	GA	PG
¨ Making a Tax Claim,	GA	PG

The right hand two columns provide some thoughts on how the tasks could be split when there are teams of two or three volunteers. For three volunteers, the tasks labelled "T" are the responsibility of the Treasurer, the ones labelled "PGO" should be carried out by the Parish Giving Officer, and the "GA" tasks are for a Gift Aid officer. Where there are only two people, The Parish Giving Officer role and the Gift Aid Officer role have been combined into one labelled "Planned Giving" ("PG").

Getting Started with Parish Giving Officers : Job Description, Top Tips from existing Parish Giving Officers, Training Package. Powerpoint file for Training sessions.