We strongly encourage personal giving to support our church and its activities. Christ gave all that he could – himself. And this prompts our response to give back to his work – in our time, talents and finances.

In a ‘normal’ year (when we haven’t got big building projects) it costs us around £1500 a week to do all the things that we want to do in the community, keep the buildings open and pay for the provision of ministry. We’re completely reliant on support via regular giving, donations, fund raising and hiring out rooms to do this.

How to give

The Bible encourages us to give at least a ‘tithe’ of our income, that’s 10%, to God’s work. The Church of England invites us to give 5% in regular financial support to our local church with the remainder going to other causes.

You can give financially to St John with St Mark’s by any of the following methods:

• easyfundraising – Thanks to an arrangement with Manchester Diocese, you can now directly donate to our church using the easyfundraising donate page. There’s also a ‘Give a donation’ button on the side of our webpage. Easyfundraising also gives us a small donation from the retailer (once you’ve signed up) when you do your online shopping via the easyfundraising site. And it doesn’t cost you any extra! Take a look at this post for more information. Most of the well-known retailers are in this scheme as part of their own charitable giving.
• Standing Order – payments from your bank directly into the church bank account. Normally these would be monthly. Most of our regular giving comes to us this way and is really helpful to us if there are times when you can’t physically get to church. If you want to help in this way, our Bank Account Name is: St John with St Mark Parochial Church Council; Sort Code: 201608 and Account Number: 20774774.
• Weekly Envelopes – this is via a dated set of small gift envelopes to put cash or a cheque into the church collection each week. 
• One-off payments – can be made by cheque or BACS, bank details as above.

Other ways to give

• Payroll giving – made by your employer directly from your pay.  This has the advantage of excluding the amount that you give to us from your taxable income. In addition, some employers will match your payment! Check with your employer if they run this scheme.
• Ecclesiastical – this insurance company are celebrating their 130 year anniversary. If you take out a new home insurance policy with them, then they will donate £130 to us. Just quote ‘Trust 130’ when you take out your policy.
• Leaving a legacy – this can be a fixed amount or a proportion of your overall estate (after expenses and any other fixed amounts have been paid).  For guidance, please take a look at this site and take advice from a professional about your will to ensure that it is correctly worded.

Gifts of money are held for general church use unless agreed otherwise.  If you wish to give a larger amount of money for a specific purpose this will need to be approved by the Church Council and your gift will then be restricted to that particular use.

Checking the books

All cash given during church services is counted by two persons and recorded. 

Our accounts are independently examined each year. Approved accounts are then presented to the Annual Parochial Church Meeting with a copy going to Manchester Diocese.

Gift Aid Schemes

The Inland Revenue (HMRC) supports charities like ours by refunding tax to the charity where a person gives to a charity from their taxed income.  The Church can claim this money if the donor signs a Gift Aid Declaration. This says that their gift (and all other claimed gifts) is from income from which they pay sufficient tax.

This gift has to be given in a traceable manner. This can be either directly into our bank account or using a numbered gift envelope, so that we can provide an audit trail. A one-off gift will be specifically acknowledged with a receipt.

In addition, small cash donations (from April 2019 this is £30 or less) which are given in church also attract a similar payment from HMRC without the need for a declaration form. There is currently a limit of £8,000 in small cash donations per annum eligible for this scheme. So, this gives us up to a possible £2,000 refund a year.

Want to know more?

Please see the Treasurer, Ian Banks, for details or get in touch via the Contact page if you want to know more about any of the above.

[‘Do something great’ photo courtesy of Clark Tibbs on Unsplash]