Finance report 24/25
General giving: Over 300 people gave this year, including over 200 who gave regularly. Thank you!
Special giving: £24,506 to purchase the Diadem; £2,738 & £722 respectively to Musselburgh & South Community Pastor Funds; £3,732 to other causes.
Gift Aid: As a registered Scottish charity, City on a Hill can reclaim tax paid on donations by UK taxpayers, increasing each donation by 25% at no cost to the giver. If your donations are eligible, please do complete a declaration.
Grants: £100,000 was to help purchase the Diadem, and £10,000 for South & Musselburgh Community Pastor Funds.
Other income: Mainly related to Authentic Weekend and Magnitude.
Staffing: 7 full time and 10 part time roles: Lead Pastor, Executive Pastor, 7 Community Pastors, 3 working in Kids, 1 in Youth, 1 in Worship, and 3 support staff.
Diadem: Mortgage deposit, professional fees, and running costs for July.
Gifts out: We gave £71,594 to Go Global, £3,250 to Edinburgh City Mission, £840 to Christian Heritage Edinburgh, and £1,497 to individuals.
Venue rental: Facilities for weekly Community Gatherings and other church activities. Until the end of June, this included renting the Diadem.
Ministries & Gatherings: Money spent on Kids, Youth, Authentic, Worship, Tech and other activities of the church.
Other: Overheads associated with running the church.
Community giving
and costs
City on a Hill is “one Church in many Communities”. As such we operate “one budget” whereby donations from each of our 7 Communities are pooled and all costs are paid from this single “pot”. As our Communities grow and mature, we hope they will all move towards being net financial contributors thus empowering us to take bigger steps as a church.
The level of giving in a Community can be affected by its size, demographics and how long-established it is. This chart includes donations and associated Gift Aid.
Costs directly attributable to a Community include venue rental and Pastor’s salary. Shared costs include other salaries, many ministry costs, and general overheads. It is not practical to allocate shared costs precisely but for illustrative purposes, various approximations have been made: some being shared equally, others apportioned based on Community size, whilst others take account of further differences between Communities.
These 2 charts do not include donations to the Diadem Building Project Fund or payments from this fund.
Income: Spikes in September, October, April and May are due to large catch-up Gift Aid claims (due to an influx of declarations) and large one-off donations. Excluding these anomalies, income to the general fund saw a slight upward trend.
Expenditure: Excepting large one-off or annual costs, monthly expenditure has been fairly steady.
This graph shows donations, Gift Aid and grants received during the year to all funds other than the general fund, and expenditure during the same year.
To see a complete picture of our recent major fundraising campaigns since they were launched in April 2024, see the tables below.
Other special: £1,959 for Edinburgh City Mission, £2,398 for Go Global & £773 for community outreach.
| Diadem | Aug23-Jul24 | Aug24-Jul25 | Total |
|---|---|---|---|
| Income | £112,086 | £129,148 | £241,234 |
| Expenditure | £13,635 | £184,776 | £198,411 |
£42,822 balance is shown in “Reserves” graph below
| MCP & SCP | Aug23-Jul24 | Aug24-Jul25 | Total |
|---|---|---|---|
| Income | £19,035 | £14,342 | £33,377 |
| Expenditure | £1,904 | £25,130 | £27,034 |
£6,343 balance is shown in “Reserves” graph below
Reserves are money which is being kept for particular purposes. One purpose is unforeseen emergencies.
A condition of our mortgage is that we maintain a reserve of £100,000. Meeting this threshold currently requires surplus Diadem Building Project donations being held for emergency repairs. As general reserves (which were £67,507 at the end of July) hopefully grow in the future, Diadem funds will be released for non-emergency building work.
The Community Pastor funds were used as planned to pay those salaries. The balance which remained at the end of July will pay those salaries for another few months before the general fund takes over.
Income: budgeted income in the first 2 months is inflated by anticipated Diadem Housewarming donations. General giving has been budgeted to rise 5% every 3 months, as we hopefully see the church grow and more people engage with regular giving.
Expenditure: Diadem overheads contribute to budgeted monthly costs now being over £60,000. In order to achieve a balanced budget, all budgets for Communities, ministries, etc have had to be restricted. If income increases as hoped, we will be able to award salary increases during the year, which has not been possible in the past 2 years.