Weekly Per Capita Giving: The $35 Benchmark
Total giving tells you how much money came in. Per capita giving tells you whether your giving culture is healthy. These are not the same question, and only one of them is useful for making ministry decisions.
The Formula
Weekly Per Capita Giving
Total weekly giving / Average weekly attendance
Why this beats total giving: per capita giving normalizes for church size. A church of 200 people giving $7,000 a week and a church of 500 people giving $7,000 a week are in very different financial situations. Per capita giving surfaces that difference.
The $35 Benchmark (And What Surrounds It)
Below $20
Low giving culture or high proportion of new/non-giving attenders. Worth investigating which before drawing conclusions.
$20-$35
Typical. Healthy enough, but meaningful room to grow through generosity teaching and a culture of giving.
$35-$55
Strong giving culture. Your congregation has a high level of financial ownership in the mission of the church.
Above $55
Either a high-income congregation, a long-established church with deeply committed givers, or both.
4 Factors That Affect Your Number
Average household income in your area
A suburban church in a high-income zip code will naturally have a higher per capita than a rural church serving a lower-income community. Context matters.
Church age and tenure
Newer churches have more first-time givers and lower average giving. Established churches with long-tenured members tend to see higher per capita giving.
Proportion of new vs. long-term attenders
A church growing quickly through evangelism will often see per capita giving dip temporarily as new attenders (who are not yet givers) join. This is a sign of health, not decline.
Generosity teaching and culture
The single largest variable in most churches. Congregations that hear regular, clear teaching on generosity give more. This is well-documented and consistent across church sizes.
How to Track It Week Over Week
Calculate per capita giving weekly and run it against a 13-week rolling average. The weekly number will fluctuate with seasonal patterns (summer dips, Q4 surges). The rolling average tells you the underlying trend.
Read this alongside Giving Units vs. Total Giving and Seasonal Giving Patterns for a complete picture of your financial health.
Track This With Holy Insights
Per capita giving calculated weekly, with trend lines built in.
Holy Insights tracks your total giving, average attendance, and per capita giving together so you can see the relationship between them over time, not just as isolated numbers.
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