Finance report 25/26
General giving: Over 350 people gave this year, including over 200 who gave regularly. Thank you!
Major donation: Individual gift accounted for 42% of all giving.& 47% Gift Aid.
Special giving: £14,143 to upgrade the Diadem; £3,066 for community outreaches; and £1,342 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: £18,000 to help fund the recently created South & Musselburgh Pastor roles over the next 3 years; £5,000 for Junction 42 Connect in Leith.
Other income: Includes £14,750 hall hire income and £11,115 for different ministries in the church.
Staffing: 6 full-time and 11 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 repaid in full, monthly running costs, maintenance & improvements.
Gifts out: We gave £124,599 to Go Global and £1,496 to other organisations and individuals.
Venues & van: Facilities for weekly Community Gatherings and other church activities. Also, weekly transportation of Leith & North equipment.
Ministries & Gatherings: Money spent on Kids, Youth, Worship, Tech, outreach and other activities of the church.
Other: Overheads associated with running the church (insurance, professional services, IT, etc)
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 launch more Communities as part of our 2033 Vision.
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.
Whilst these 2 charts provide a general picture of income and expenditure attributable to each Community, they are not directly comparable as the upper chart includes only giving income. In practice, Leith breaks even whilst West’s giving subsidises all other Communities.
These 2 charts do not include the “major donation” or the early redemption of the mortgage that gift made possible.
Income: months with income over £60,000 are due to large one-off donations, except for March which simply had strong general giving. Regular income to the general fund was largely consistent throughout the year.
Expenditure: fluctuations are due to ebb and flow within individual ministry budgets, number of weeks’ venue rental in the month, and large one-off costs – the most notable being £9,000 for our audit paid in March.
Our monthly salary costs increased by £5,000 from March to redress the fact that we had only been able to give one modest cost-of-living increase over the past 3 years. We also took the opportunity to review our salary brackets with the Trustees, which resulted in some salaries being increased to a more appropriate level.
A member of City on a Hill recently gave £545,000 to the general fund. £415,340 was given during the year to Jul’26 (with Gift Aid), and an additional £129,660 in Aug ’26 (with Gift Aid).
The total of £681,250 including Gift Aid has been allocated as shown.
The mortgage was paid off in March – less than a year after we purchased the Diadem! There were no early repayment charges.
£180,000 for salaries was added to reserves to fund £5,000/month overdue salary increases from March ’26 to February ‘29 – allowing time for general income to increase sufficiently to cover this additional regular cost.
The remainder, after 10% was given to Go Global, was put into unallocated general reserves.
Donations, Gift Aid and grants to all funds other than the general fund, together with corresponding expenditure.
Diadem: Income from the “Housewarming Offering” was spent; additional expenditure was from funds left over from the building purchase.
Musselburgh & South Pastors: funds carried forward from last year helped covered salaries at the start of this year. £18,000 grant will be used over the next 3 years - £500 a month.
Other: £9,812 Junction 42, £1.069 other community outreach, £1,247 Go Global, £286 Bethany “Buy-a-bed”.
Reserves are money which is being kept for particular purposes. These may be planned or emergency uses.
The dramatic changes in general reserves relate to instalments of the “major donation”, and to paying off the mortgage in March.
Diadem reserves are for maintenance & improvements.
Musselburgh & South Pastor reserves continue to support these salaries whilst the Communities grow to be able to cover the cost in full.
Other reserves are from grants and donations for community outreaches which have not been fully spent.
Income: we are budgeting for 10% increase in giving from February ’27.
Expenditure: an allowance for 5% increase in salary costs has been factored in from March ’27.
For budgeting, large costs have been spread across the year.
The £108,437 deficit resulting from these figures is being. covered from reserves including £60,000 planned use for salaries of the major donation, £20,000 Diadem for planned works, and £6,000 from year 1 of the Musselburgh & South grant.
Any questions?
Email: finance@cityonahill.org.uk