Leadership · 11 min read
The church giving audit: an annual checklist for leaders
Once a year, it's worth stepping back to ask: how healthy is our church's giving, and are we caring well for the people behind it? This checklist walks church leaders through a practical giving audit you can finish in an afternoon.
What is a church giving audit?
A church giving audit is a yearly review of giving health: how many people give, how many you kept, how payment problems are handled, and how your team follows up with care. It isn't a financial audit of your books. It's a stewardship and pastoral check-up.
Before you start
- Export two full years of gifts (household, date, amount, fund, method).
- Export all recurring schedules with status, frequency and card expiration.
- Gather last year's audit notes, if you have them.
- Decide who is in the room: pastor, finance lead, giving platform admin.
1. Overall giving health
- Number of giving households this year vs last year.
- Donor retention rate (households who gave both years ÷ last year's households).
- Giving (dollar) retention from existing givers.
- New and first-time givers, and how many gave a second time.
- Share of giving from recurring vs one-time gifts.
Need the formulas? See our donor churn guide and donor retention guide.
2. Recurring giving
- How many recurring schedules are active today vs a year ago.
- How many schedules failed, paused or were cancelled this year.
- How many of those were restarted.
- Cards on recurring gifts expiring in the next 90 days.
- Is recurring giving easy to set up from your website and app?
3. Payment methods
- Mix of card, bank (ACH), text, kiosk and cash/check giving.
- Do you offer bank giving? It doesn't expire and often costs less.
- Does your processor offer automatic card updates for reissued cards?
- Is there a short, simple link for givers to update payment details?
- Review processing fees and whether givers can cover them.
More on this in expired cards and failed gifts.
4. Lapsed givers
- List of households who gave last year but not this year.
- Recurring givers with missed or silently failed gifts.
- Occasional givers well past their usual rhythm.
- Households with a clear downward trend.
- How long, on average, before anyone noticed a lapse.
5. Follow-up and care
- Is one named person responsible for reviewing lapses every week?
- Do you sort lapses into technical issues, human changes and known context?
- Are pastoral notes (grief, job loss, illness) considered before any outreach?
- Do you log who was contacted, when and by whom?
- How much lapsed giving was recovered this year?
- Are first-time givers thanked personally within a few days?
Use our lapsed giver playbook for a weekly rhythm and scripts.
6. Stewardship communication
- How often do you share stories of what giving makes possible?
- Do givers receive a clear, timely annual giving statement?
- Is your giving page clear on mobile, with recurring as an option?
- Is your tone grateful and generous, never guilt-based?
7. Privacy and access
- Who can see individual giving amounts? Keep it to a small finance team.
- Remove access for former staff and volunteers.
- Are giving exports stored securely and deleted when no longer needed?
- Do pastors see what they need for care without seeing amounts?
Turn your audit into a plan
- Pick the three findings with the most impact, often recurring failures, lapse follow-up and first-time giver thank-yous.
- Assign each to one owner with a date.
- Set a quarterly check-in to review progress.
- Save this year's numbers so next year's audit has a baseline.
Want a quick estimate first? Try the giving risk calculator.
How Giving Steward helps with your giving audit
Much of this checklist is the ongoing work Giving Steward does every day:
- Brings in givers, gifts and schedules from Planning Center, B1 Church, or a CSV from any platform.
- Flags expiring and failed cards, schedules on hold, silent failures, lapses and downgrades.
- Keeps pastoral notes in one place so outreach respects what your team knows.
- Assigns care tasks, logs calls and coffees, and reminds people when tasks are overdue.
- Tracks recovered giving, ready for next year's audit.
It's $25 a month or $250 a year, and you can start free without a card.
See how much giving your church might have quietly at risk.
Frequently asked questions
What is a church giving audit?
A church giving audit is a yearly review of the health of your church's giving: who gives and how, how many givers you kept, how payment problems are handled, and how your team follows up and cares for people. It is different from a financial audit of your books.
When should a church do a giving audit?
Many churches do it in late summer or early fall, before year-end giving and budget planning. Any consistent time each year works, as long as you compare the same periods.
Who should be involved in a church giving audit?
Usually the executive or senior pastor, a finance or business administrator, and whoever manages your giving platform. Keep individual giving details within the finance team.
Is a giving audit the same as a financial audit?
No. A financial audit checks that your accounting is accurate and controls are sound, usually by an outside accountant. A giving audit looks at giver health, retention and care processes.
How long does a church giving audit take?
For most churches, a few focused hours to gather reports plus a one- to two-hour meeting to review them and agree on next steps.
Keep reading: browse all resources.