Creating a Narrative Budget: The Story Behind the Numbers

Dive Deeper:

Along with the course content, students will download a Narrative Budget Workbook in versions that will open in either Microsoft Excel or Google Sheets. With the workbook, participants will enter their local church’s budget (and a few other bits of information), and the workbook will organize those line items into broad ministry areas – a key tool in presenting a narrative budget!

Through eight self-paced sessions, participants will learn generosity theory as well as the practical nuts and bolts of constructing a narrative budget, including:

• What moves people to give?
• Different roles for line-item & narrative budgets
• Naming your buckets (ministry areas)
• Fitting apportionments/mission shares into ministry areas
• Choosing a format for sharing your narrative budget
• Tips for designing an attractive and effective narrative budget

Here’s what previous participants had to say about the course:

• “Thank you for the opportunity to learn to create a Narrative Budget and visually present the positive impact of generous giving. I will be sharing what I’ve learned with our church leaders and exploring ways that we might incorporate the narrative budget into our master plan.”
• “I must say the course you created made making a narrative budget much easier for me than when I tried (and failed) to do one several years ago. I really appreciate the organization of the course, and the workbook simplified the process that I tried to do manually. This was an excellent course, and I would recommend it highly to others.”
• “…you created a great course!!! It was easy to follow with detailed instructions. The technical resources were very helpful, and probably prevent some from quitting. Offering personal material reviews placed the course over the top. I look forward to other courses.”

The basic version of this course will now be offered for a small registration fee of just $10. The version that awards 0.5 CEUs at completion will be available for just $25.

Update: Registration for the 2023 course offering of “Creating a Narrative Budget: The Story Behind the Numbers” closed on December 15, 2023. Those who registered prior to the closing will have until January 31, 2024, to complete the course. We expect to offer the course again in 2024, sometime in the third quarter of the year.