Do We Spend Money Well?

by Dr Raymond Perrier · December 5, 2017

First and foremost, our duty is to make sure that we do not waste the money entrusted to us. I am afraid I have been involved in the past in some very well-resourced charities who happily use money because it’s there, without stopping to think if they are actually getting value for their spend.

One Gospel text I have always found hard to hear is the story of Mary of Bethany anointing the feet of Jesus.

I feel a strong sympathy with those who criticise her for having spent so much money (a year’s wages!) on valuable oils when that money could have been used to help the poor.

Traditionally, the criticism is deflected in three ways: first of all, it is presented as a sign that she, unlike others, has recognised Jesus as Messiah who deserves such veneration; secondly, that she is prefiguring his death — he will not be with us always whereas the poor, we are told, will be; thirdly, at least according to the fourth Gospel, the criticism is presented as coming from Judas (with a sly comment that he probably wanted the chance to skim off some of the money for himself).

The anxious reader, like me, who does not want to be associated with the man who is to betray Jesus, is left silenced.

I was pondering this text again as we at the Denis Hurley Centre come towards the end of our financial year.

The Little Expenses Count

All charities in this country, and the Denis Hurley Centre is no exception, are constantly aware of the seemingly infinite needs and the increasingly finite resources to respond to them. And so we might feel the same sort of indignation when money is “wasted” that could have been spent to help the poor.

First and foremost, our duty is to make sure that we do not waste the money entrusted to us. I am afraid I have been involved in the past in some very well-resourced charities who happily use money because it’s there, without stopping to think if they are actually getting value for their spend.

For instance, it is possible that attending an international conference is useful — but sending three people costs three times as much and definitely does not deliver three times the value.

What is worse, at this time of year, some charity managers fall into the trap of thinking: “Let’s spend the money because it’s in our budget and if we don’t spend it we won’t get it again.”

But the money given to charities is not for us — it is for the poor whom God has entrusted to our care. Every penny spent we should be willing to account for, not just to the donor but to the poor person in whose name it has been given.

Managing Money in a Parish is not Casual it’s Vital

So we should heed the warning about Judases skimming off from the “common purse”, possibly in explicit fraud but more likely in the more subtle techniques of a disproportionate salary or a nice car or the wasteful consultant paid to make the organisation look important.

Church charities are governed by Church law but that does not mean that they can opt out of secular law. So we have to account for the funds that we raise, demonstrate that we have used them wisely, and report back to our donors.

The days of “just trust Father to use it wisely” are, I am pleased to say, now gone. More and more dioceses are realising that Church projects, no matter how well-intentioned, cannot manage their money as casually and as opaquely as many parishes do.

If they want to keep getting support, especially from corporate and government donors, they need to keep good accounts and, most importantly, subject them to an external audit. Had such regulations been in place in Jesus’ time, perhaps it would have been harder for Judas to take his cut, and also harder for others to accuse him.

We hope that our charities are managing their funds well. But the key question of that Gospel passage is how do we allocate our money overall as a community? What are our priorities? It is easy to say that we are a Church on Mission, or a Community Serving Humanity, or a Church of the Poor; but does our allocation of limited funds reflect those priorities?

The Priorities in Spending Money

I ask these questions at a time of year when the Denis Hurley Centre, the Napier Centre 4 Healing, and so many other Church-based charities around the country need to find funds to cover their 2018 budgets.

Of course, works of mercy are only one part of the mission of the Church. So they have to “compete” for money with the costs of maintaining our churches, of creating shrines, of training our priests and lay leaders, of supporting infrastructure, of running Mini World Youth Day. All of these have a claim on our resources.

Money spent on one activity is money that cannot be spent elsewhere. The issue is about balancing between different projects, and balancing cost and impact. The more we spend on something, the more we have to be sure that there will be a genuine and lasting impact.

What arrests us about the Gospel story is not that Mary bought expensive oil but that it was the equivalent of a year’s wages. Couldn’t Jesus have been suitably venerated with oil worth a month’s wages, with the other 11/12ths used for the poor?

Clear Analysis and Accountability

As a Catholic community, we are not very good at asking those questions or of requiring accountability.

We spend on many activities whose impact is hard to measure, for example to build faith or Catholic identity or a sense of community. But just because we cannot measure the impact in concrete terms, we should not let ourselves get away with making no assessment about impact. We can at least spend time setting some goals for a project and then conducting a critical reflection afterwards.

Of course, we can always measure and, where appropriate, publish the costs. This would enable us to be transparent about what has been spent on each element and what contribution they have made to the overall project.

A business spending money would have a clear analysis of what they have spent. They would then compare this with measures (some hard, some soft) against which to assess the relative success of the project. Only in that way can they learn from each initiative and so spend more wisely next time (not that businesses always get it right!).

God Expects us to Steward Money Well

You may well respond that the Church is not a business and that we are accountable to God not to shareholders. That is true. But we are also accountable to those who have donated money and have trusted the Church to spend it wisely.

And we are accountable to those who depend on the money that the Church has been given. If we do not spend that money well, the poor will always be with us.