How Much Media Budget?
The concept of Media budgets is relatively new (aside from broadcast
oriented churches), and the amounts jump dramatically from church to
church. So how much should you set aside for your Annual church
Media budget? The best way to answer that is to look at what drives
the budget.
Budgets for churches are driven by three main components:
1) Vision from church leadership (value - how important is Media)
2) Content and frequency (application – what is required of Media)
3) Personnel – the ability & quantity of Media personnel (expertise
– who can provide Media)
These three factors have more importance on the budget total than do
attendance, membership, Denomination, operating budgets or location.
There need to be at least 5 budget line items for Media:
1) Hardware upgrades/new hardware
2) Software upgrades/new software
3) Preventative and ongoing maintenance
4) Personnel training (conferences and tradeshows) and education
5) Peopleware – outsourcing of contract labor for projects and
special events
New Construction Budget
Another useful bit of data that can help give context to the question of
‘how much’ are the budgets for A/V/L (Audio, Video, Lighting)
technical systems in new construction projects.
It’s not uncommon to see 8% of the total budget allotted to provide a
rudimentary A/V/L system. 12-15% of the total new construction
budget will provide a solid intermediate system and 20-22% of the
total budget will build a technically-savvy venue.
So for a $1 million dollar new building campaign, anywhere from
$80,000 (rudimentary) to $220,000 (technically savvy) can be
budgeted for the technical systems alone.
Annual Operating Budget
Even though Media budgets vary greatly from church to church, it’s
safe to apply 5-10% of the A/V/L system cost (if budgeted correctly
using the above three averages) as a yearly operations and
maintenance amount.
So if you spent $150,000 on your A/V/L system, then anywhere from
$7,500-15,000 a year can easily be spent making sure your systems
remain in perfect operational order and that you're getting the
software and hardware updates, as well as replacement parts, that are
necessary to keep your technology from becoming obsolete or failing
due to inadequate preventive maintenance.
Once a church hires part or full-time personnel, the costs change yet
again, not only for the salary, but also for the increased content and
education expenses associated with any employee. This is especially
true when dealing with high-technology personnel, where the
technology changes so rapidly that a learning curve is always in effect.
A “rule of thumb”?
Even though there’s not hard scientific data on the “average church
Media budget”, I will point out one bit of scientific data from a report
that I co-authored. This first report points to an initial budget for
projection systems. Three more reports are underway (audio, lighting
and systems integration), though none will ask about yearly Media
operating budgets.
The main bit of data shows that of the churches that participated in
the survey (n=650), 45% of them spent more than $11 on their
projection system. This data is striking when the average size of the
church in the survey was revealed: Under 300 in attendance.
While it points to a decent initial projection budget, it doesn’t give us
any hard data about operating budgets. Again, though, I have tertiary
data that can help define the question.
There size or age of the church also isn't always a good indicator. An
example of this is a church upstart that uses my consulting services
and has a very aggressive Media Ministry. Since their first church
meeting in a family’s home three years ago, they’ve used Media as a
support tool. They’re still in temporary facilities, but have invested in a
full time Media minister, creative director and a complete non-linear
editing system, video switcher and projection system!
So what’s the budget number?
At the end of this article I’ve still not given you an absolute answer for
‘how much Media budget’ is necessary. That’s because the Vision of
the church leadership will drive this amount based on the perceived
and felt needs of creating and implementing dynamic content and
quality technical performance. The best advice is to get with your
Pastor and learn how Media fits into the overall vision of the church
and then develop a budget that helps to accomplish that vision
through the application of technology.
Anthony Coppedge provides consulting to Churches for developing a media ministry and
choosing the right equipment, Manufacturers for developing new products and marketing
strategies to reach the church market and Dealers for sales training and systems integration
development for working with churches.
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