Irv Marr wanted to see continued growth take place at Sand Point Community UMC. When setting up the endowment he wrote a letter to the Memorial & Endowment committee stating, “To be blunt and to the point, I would like to issue a ‘wake up’ call to create some new life in the church.” In face of competition for young families’ attention by nearby churches and little league teams, Irv wrtoe: “As they say on TV, ‘Let’s kick it up a notch’… Instead of waiting for them to come to us, we go after them.”

Since 2005, the Northwest United Methodist Foundation has been managing this endowment that was set up to benefit ministry to children and youth. Irv stated, “The funds generated from this endowment are intended to enhance the ministry of the Church, but not become a substitute for the financial responsibility of our members. It is our wish that the earning from this fund be used freely but effectively for youth work.”

This month, members of our staff have traveled to all three of the Annual Conferences in our Episcopal Area. Most recently, this journey took us to Eugene, just a few miles from a place where we can see our sustainable investment dollars are at work. Through our partnership with Wespath, some of the funds you hold in the Foundation’s diversified portfolios are invested through the Positive Social Purpose Lending Program. This program promotes affordable housing and community development for disadvantaged areas while seeking to deliver market-rate returns to investors. In Eugene, this program helped to finance the Apple Orchard Village Apartments. It’s a handicap accessible low-income apartment complex.

Which sustainable investment project is closest to your neighborhood? To view a map of some of the affordable housing built by this program, including across our episcopal area, click here. When you invest with us, your church’s endowment enriches your local ministry AND makes the wider world a better place.

We all know that planned giving is important for your church’s finances. Aside from regular, gentle reminders, the best way for your church to receive a planned gift is to ask for it. Over the past few months, we’ve shared how to identify top prospects and how to prepare to make an ask. (If you missed either of those articles, take a quick look and come back.) Now it’s time for our final article in this series, which shares our roadmap for the meeting in which you directly ask for a planned gift.

If you’ve ever felt nervous about asking for planned gifts for your church, you’re not alone. But it can make such a big difference to your ministry that it’s worth pushing through the discomfort and doing it anyway. Following a tried-and-true system can make it easier. Once you’ve identified good prospects for planned giving, here are seven things you can do to set yourself up for successful asks.

If your church appreciates the importance of planned giving and is giving its members regular, gentle reminders, you’re already ahead of the curve. But there’s one more thing you can do to greatly increase your church’s chances of receiving a bequest. You can identify those individuals in your church who may be most receptive to planned giving concepts and initiate a one-on-one conversation. This varsity-level technique is incredibly powerful. But what makes a person a good candidate for planned giving?  Excellent research has determined that in most cases…

Once you’ve decided to be more intentional about planned giving at your church, where should you start? The best way to help your church receive more major gifts and bequests is to give your congregation consistent, gentle reminders. You should aim to remind your members at least once per quarter. Here are eight easy ways to do that:

1. Add a footer to your letterhead that says “Please remember the church in your will.”

A planned gift is any gift above and beyond a person’s usual pledge that requires careful thought and planning ahead of time. Most planned gifts come in the form of bequests (gifts made through a person’s will after death) or beneficiary designations. If you’re hesitant to talk about this type of giving at your church, you’re not alone… but you might be missing out on some ministry-changing generosity! Here are five reasons to start talking about planned giving at your church…

Love it or hate it (or just scratch your head at it), the new tax law has changed the way that a lot of us are filing our taxes this spring. The standard deduction has increased dramatically, which means that many people who itemized deductions in the past will no longer have the incentive to do so. If they don’t itemize, they won’t get a charitable deduction for any gifts that they made from a checking or savings account in 2018.

People shouldn’t have to pay taxes on money they give to charity…

Does your church have a savings account at a local bank? If so, is it earning an acceptable rate of return? And while it’s providing security for your church against emergencies, is it being put to work supporting the United Methodist Church two towns over?

Through our Stable Value Portfolio, your church’s money could be doing both. For example: in 2012, a United Methodist Church outside of Tacoma deposited $160,000. Nearly two-thirds of it was used by our staff to continue buying laddered Jumbo CDs, which allow the fund to earn a return substantially higher than typical money market or saving accounts.

But what’s unique about this fund is that, a few weeks later, the Foundation used most of the rest of that deposit a to make a secured loan. It was to a church that was just an hour’s drive away across the sound…

If you’re a clergyperson with a pension, or if your church has long-term investments with the Northwest United Methodist Foundation, chances are that your investments are being managed by Wespath. That’s the investment arm of the United Methodist Church.

This is one of the perks of being part of a global denomination. Just like UMCOR allows us to do more in the mission field than any of our churches could do alone, Wespath allows us to pool our money and have a bigger positive impact in the markets. Here are three ways Wespath helps us use our money for good…

“If we were in town and we weren’t sick in bed, we were in church on Sunday morning,” says Betsey Ullom as she remembers her parents, Bill and Maggie Webber. “Between the two of them they were probably on every church committee.” In addition to an active social life, a high-power career, and a multitude of other volunteer roles and interests, the Webbers were an institution at Tigard United Methodist Church.

“My dad liked to invest in things that were permanent,” says Betsey. So when he began to plan for a major gift to the church, “he wanted the money to be used in perpetuity, to be there forever.”

Imagine your church applies for a modest loan to repair some equipment that you use to distribute food in your community. Instead of a loan, you get a check in the mail, with no strings attached. 

That’s what happened to Riverton Park UMC in Tukwila, WA. This small congregation is in a poor neighborhood near the SEA-TAC airport. In 2001, it was a founding partner of the Tukwila Pantry. In 2017, they distributed more than 1 million pounds of food to over 10,000 local families! A lot of this food is unsold produce, meat, and dairy from nearby grocery stores that the pantry picks up with a “grocery rescue” truck six days a week. This truck needed major repairs on its engine. So the leadership team wrote to the Northwest United Methodist Foundation to ask for a loan…