Five Dangers of Church Designated Funds

If there is a topic that reaches me with frequency, it is the topic of church members designating funds. And the common theme is one of regret. The pastor or other church leader wishes the door of designated funds had never been opened.

For clarity, I am not speaking of designated funds approved by the church body as a whole. Many churches have excellent stewardship approaches that encourage members to give to a building fund or a mission fund, as two examples.

Instead, I am referring to those designated funds given to the church by a single or few members with guidelines not approved by the church as a whole. For example, one pastor shared with me about funds the church received with the strict stipulation that the church had to use them to buy stained-glass windows. The only problem is the church did not want to purchase stained-glass windows.

In another example, a pastor shared with me about a member who would only give designated funds to the youth ministry. The problem is that the youth ministry already had funds in the church budget, but these designated funds gave the youth ministry disproportionate funding compared to the other ministries. To make matters worse, the youth ministry was encouraging the donor to make the designated contribution.

So designated funds are not an intrinsic problem themselves. But they can become a dangerous precedent for several reasons. Here are five of them:

1. They circumvent the will and the plan of the church as a whole. Designated givers are basically saying…