Online tool shows church’s £2.7 million community contribution

A Lothian congregation has been "blown away" by calculations showing it contributes almost £2.7 million of community benefit to the parish it serves.

Dalmeny and Queensferry Parish Church (DQPC), located west of Edinburgh, discovered the impressive figure thanks to the House of Good: Local calculator from the National Churches Trust.

The free online tour uses a set of nine questions to help churches calculate the social, economic and wellbeing benefits they bring to their area.

As other churches elsewhere in Britain have discovered, being able to quantify these benefits in financial terms is encouraging the DQPC congregation to do even more in their community.

In practical terms, having this information will also help the church apply for future funding to allow the congregation to do even more in an area which has seen a major expansion in housing over the last decade.

The recently united church has long been active in the community and hosts various special interest groups helping show Christ's love in action in practical ways.

It has just been granted a prestigious Gold Award from Eco-Congregation Scotland in recognition of its efforts towards caring for creation and the environment.

Elder and trustee Pamela McLauchlan said that the church team had been looking for some kind of objective way of measuring the congregation's impact on the community when they stumbled across the House of Good: Local calculator.

"After finding a training session on the calculator, we became really excited that this would fill the gap we had in our information and evidence base so we could then demonstrate objectively the social economic and wellbeing impact that our church has on the local community," she explained.

"We were blown away with the results – £2.658 million of benefit.

"How could we, as a small semi-rural church, be providing all that benefit to the community?

"Well, it's because we have a big team of volunteers and a small group of paid staff and because we reach out to the community and provide services and activities that we feel are needed."

Thanks to the calculator's findings, DQPC has been able to show its congregation and our community how they benefit from the church's activities.

"We also intend to use this information when applying for future grants as it is a good way of demonstrating the impact we currently have on the community and how we use our buildings to the full as a base to provide a lot of the services and activities," Ms McLauchlan added.

The church has already been able to secure funding from a number of sources, including the Edinburgh-based TOR Christian Foundation, the Hubbub community fridge food hub fund and the National Lottery Community Fund.

By demonstrating the impact of work already being carried out by the church, the hope is that potential funders will see the value of supporting DQPC in the future.

Easy to use

The free calculator, which uses financial figures from the HM Treasury's Green Book, has proven to be very user friendly for the church team.

"Basically, before using it, you simply collect your local data on the number of volunteers who participate in various activities such as music groups, choirs, children and youth groups, café and food work," Ms McLauchlan explained.

"Add in your usual worshiping congregations at all services – we have four each week – after that, include your normal expenditure.

"Then you just need to sit down for about 30 mins and complete the questionnaire, and it generates a lovely graph for you plus a two-page narrative that you can use in any way that benefits your church."

Learn more about The House of Good: Local calculator at the National Churches Trust website.