Just as members of each congregation share of their resources with their local church, so too each congregation is invited to share with their synod and the churchwide organization.

Fiscal Year

As mandated by the constitution of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, both the synod and the churchwide bodies have fiscal years running February 1 through January 31. This was done for the purpose of capturing the receipts of the calendar year from the congregations. Thus the monies that you receive in December and pass on proportionately in January are actually booked in the synod/churchwide offices in the month of January. The fiscal year stays open through January 31 to allow for this lag in recording income for the calendar year.

Statements

Every April 30, July 31, October 31 and January 31, which is the end of each quarter of the fiscal year (which tries to capture the quarters of the calendar year), statements are sent out to each congregation. These statements are not a request from the synod office for more funds, but rather are an opportunity for the congregation to double check the accuracy of the handling of the monies that had been remitted to the synod. On occasion an input error occurs and maybe a gift gets credited to the wrong congregation or the wrong designated code. Your are asked to review these statements and contact the appropriate synod office if there is a discrepancy of any sort.

Where to send

All benevolence checks should be made out in the name of your synod and sent to your synod’s address. Please remember that it does help the cash flow of the synod to receive funds on a timely basis.

Undesignated Gifts

The undesignated gifts that you send to your synod office are actually made up of two components: 1) that part which stays with your synod and goes toward the support of its synodical ministries, and 2) that part which gets forwarded to the churchwide office and supports the more global endeavors. The percentage that gets forwarded on to the churchwide office ranges anywhere from 40% to 55% and is determined annually by a consultation between each synod and churchwide. (Please feel free to contact your synod office if you would like more details about the synod’s budget and their proportionate sharing with churchwide.)

Designated Gifts

Designated gifts are of course those gifts that are intended for very specific purposes rather than for support of the synod and churchwide bodies.

Any designated gifts such as those to local nursing homes, food banks and the like should not be sent to the synod office but rather handled by the congregation directly.

The synod office can take any designated gifts for special projects going on in each individual synod. The other type of designated gifts that the synod office can process are those that need to be forwarded to the churchwide office. These would include gifts for such things as World Hunger and Lutheran World Relief as well as any missionary sponsorship or any type of project that churchwide has communicated to you that it is collecting funds for.

Each recipient of a designated gift also receives a listing with the check them who the money was actually from and the amount from each giver.

Using the Remittance Form

Please use the remittance form that is provided you from your synod office to send in your benevolence. The form makes it easier for the office to process and provides the office with a hard copy trail after the check has been deposited.