Earlier last month, we reported that the charity commissions shared findings that showed 42% of trustees experienced poor service from their banks in the last year.
We asked you to take part in a short survey to see if you had similar experiences. The Charity Commissions article can be read in full here. https://www.gov.uk/government/news/new-data-suggests-nearly-half-of-charities-experience-issues-when-banking
Churches play a vital role in serving their communities, relying upon banking services to support them. However, we found that 86% of those who responded to our survey experienced poor banking service in the last year. This can impact many parts of Church life and can make the life of church treasures and trustees more complicated, leaving many of you feeling frustrated. We had 111 responses, of which 96 people reported having had poor experiences.
We conducted our survey to find out the answer to a few simple questions:
We hope to find out firstly if our members had better, similar or worse experiences than that expressed by the Charity Commission’s finding. We secondly hope to find out if any bank is better than others in terms of customer experience.
Our survey showed a range of experiences within the Church. This mirrors some of the challenges highlighted in the Charity Commission’s wider study. Some notable findings are:
All of this has a massive impact on running a church. It adds extra struggles that need not be there and takes up valuable time. This not only affects the work the church can do but can also prevent church volunteers from becoming trustees and treasurers.
It’s clear to see that there is a pressing need for charities and banking providers to work closely together. Banks need a better understanding of how charities and churches function and the way banks can support them. How we do this is not clear. The starting point is the open letter written by the Charity Commission, which hopes to highlight the struggles facing charities. The next step for us might be to raise the issue policy with our MP. Another action could be to talk to our denomination or organisation so we can have one strong collective voice asking for more to be done.
These findings show the many challenges faced by churches in their banking interactions. They highlight the impact poor service and a lack of understanding can have on the charity sector and how it can deeply impact the work we do. Trustees and treasures need to be able to focus on their mission of bringing God’s kingdom without unnecessary obstacles. So let’s raise, where appropriate, the problems we are having with our Banks, our MPs and our denominations or organisations.
