Centre Street Church
STAR RATINGCi's Star Rating is calculated based on the following independent metrics: |
✔+
FINANCIAL TRANSPARENCY
Audited financial statements for current and previous years available on the charity’s website.
B-
RESULTS REPORTING
Grade based on the charity's public reporting of the work it does and the results it achieves.
n/r
DEMONSTRATED IMPACT
The demonstrated impact per dollar Ci calculates from available program information.
NEED FOR FUNDING
Charity's cash and investments (funding reserves) relative to how much it spends on programs in most recent year.
99%
CENTS TO THE CAUSE
For a dollar donated, after overhead costs of fundraising and admin/management (excluding surplus) 99 cents are available for programs.
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OVERVIEW
About Centre Street Church:
Centre Street Church is a 3-star charity. It reports almost no overhead costs and has excellent transparency. The charity has a B- grade in results reporting, which is below average.
Founded in 1958, Centre Street Church (CSC) works to foster a community that helps people become followers of Christ. As part of this purpose, Centre Street Church also conducts charitable activities both in Canada and abroad. The charity states that it works towards its mission by pursuing God, pursuing relationships, pursuing mission, and pursuing generosity.
The charity’s Pursuing God program runs weekend services, conducts baptisms and decisions for Christ, and runs prayer sessions. In F2021, the charity conducted over 825 prayer sessions with online hosts and ran one in-person prayer session a month. 4,617 people participated in live streaming services in F2021.
CSC’s Pursuing Relationships program brings together community groups to foster supportive relationships. In F2021, 273 groups met per month, with 3,682 attendees. The online Children’s Ministries program engaged over 430 children with over 200 participants in weekly Zoom chats. The Special Needs group provides ministry to adults with disabilities. 215 people connected in the Special Needs Ministry in F2021.
Centre Street Church’s Pursuing Mission program works to serve people in need and introduce others to Jesus. The charity has 130 partner churches in 11 countries, and 29 agencies locally, nationally, and internationally. In F2021, Centre Street Church provided 65k prepared meals and food hampers to 1,700 households being supported by the charity. The Church also wrote over 3,000 notes of encouragement for people in need.
CSC’s Pursuing Generosity program accepts donations from members of the Church who give resources to help support the Church’s mission. With these donations, Centre Street Church was able to finish building its Bearspaw Campus in F2021.
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Results and Impact
Centre Street Church reports that in F2021, 32 people were baptized and 304 people made decisions for Christ. The charity also prepared and distributed 65k meals and hampers.
While Charity Intelligence highlights these key results, they may not be a complete representation of Centre Street Church’s results and impact.
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Finances
Centre Street Church received donations of $15.8m and $1.4m in government funding in F2021. Administrative costs are 1% of revenues (excluding investment income) and the charity does not report fundraising costs. Centre Street Church spends 1% on overhead. That means that for every dollar donated, 99 cents go towards the charity’s programs. This is not within Ci’s reasonable range for overhead spending, which recommends 65 to 95 cents going to the cause for each dollar.
CSC has $20.9m in funding reserves that can cover 2.1 years of program costs.
This charity report is an update that was sent for review to Centre Street Church. Changes and edits may be forthcoming.
Updated on June 3, 2022 by Emma Saganowich.
Financial Review
Fiscal year ending June
|
2021 | 2020 | 2019 |
|---|---|---|---|
| Administrative costs as % of revenues | 0.6% | 0.7% | 0.9% |
| Fundraising costs as % of donations | 0.0% | 0.0% | 0.0% |
| Total overhead spending | 0.6% | 0.7% | 0.9% |
| Program cost coverage (%) | 212.0% | 253.1% | 203.1% |
Summary Financial StatementsAll figures in $000s |
2021 | 2020 | 2019 |
|---|---|---|---|
| Donations | 15,827 | 17,779 | 17,995 |
| Government funding | 1,425 | 587 | 0 |
| Fees for service | 15 | 430 | 598 |
| Investment income | 196 | 644 | 540 |
| Total revenues | 17,463 | 19,441 | 19,133 |
| Program costs | 9,870 | 11,232 | 13,349 |
| Donor-designated donations | 1,184 | 1,819 | 912 |
| Administrative costs | 110 | 140 | 162 |
| Total spending | 11,163 | 13,191 | 14,422 |
| Cash flow from operations | 6,300 | 6,250 | 4,711 |
| Capital spending | 15,247 | 8,820 | 1,815 |
| Funding reserves | 20,920 | 28,432 | 27,105 |
Note: Ci analysis did not include gain on sale of property, affecting revenue by ($18k) in F2021, ($11k) in F2020, and ($15k) in F2019. Ci used government funding figures from the charity’s T3010 CRA filing and adjusted the amounts out of donations. Ci used the charity’s T3010 filing with the CRA to determine program and administrative costs.
Salary Information
$350k + |
0 |
$300k - $350k |
0 |
$250k - $300k |
0 |
$200k - $250k |
0 |
$160k - $200k |
1 |
$120k - $160k |
3 |
$80k - $120k |
6 |
$40k - $80k |
0 |
< $40k |
0 |
Information from most recent CRA Charities Directorate filings for F2021
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Comments & Contact
Comments added by the Charity:
Centre Street Church is a place of worship and spiritual discipleship. We appreciate the opportunity to provide context for why we believe places of worship/churches (like ours and many others) may not be achieving high grades or meeting criteria set by Charity Intelligence.
Members of our congregation give to CSC because in Christianity, as in many other religions, giving an offering to our place of worship is a part of our biblical financial stewardship. In turn, the core part of the church’s responsibility is to provide spiritual development, a gathering place for worship, biblical teaching and opportunities to serve the community. Our core focus is to provide a faith community that facilitates deeper relationships with God across all ages and life stages from children to seniors. An estimated 8-10K people call Centre Street Church home because they have been touched personally by the discipleship opportunities we provide.
Our church values transparency and accountability, regularly holding updates to our congregation and members on our finances, giving strategies and impact (locally and globally). We have also hired an organization to help us measure our impact and financial effectiveness, locally, nationally and globally. For example, through the work of the Halo Project, it is estimated that the 834 faith-based organizations in Calgary Alberta, many which are not currently measured by Charity Intelligence, with a combined annual budget of approximately$458,787,281, have a shared impact or Halo effect of $2,188,415,330 towards Calgary and the surrounding areas. As of mid-2019, we are in the midst of an in-depth review of our specific impact in Calgary, Canada and globally.
We believe there are aspects of our mandate and faith that make it challenging to quantify or report outcomes or outputs in the same way best practices may prescribe for non-faith based non-profit organizations. Although we report many outputs in our annual reports (such as our ESL and Canadian citizenship training classes, distribution of food and community meals to marginalized communities, service to over 250 families with special needs and more) these outputs are not our central purpose as a church. Rather they are a means to a greater end. For us that greater mission is for people to discover and grow their relationship with God (Jesus). Our intention is to change hearts.
But we cannot quantify the impact of a changed heart, or a person’s kindness and how it makes a big difference to the surrounding community. Or measure the peace a person feels as they grow in their relationship with God or make amends with family and community. Additionally, we don’t use business levers to predict, compare or control those outcomes from year to year. Instead we ask the Holy Spirit to change hearts, minds and behaviours. From a completely non-faith based perspective our role in the community can be seen as taking a proactive approach that decentralizes community service by supporting the personal and spiritual growth of individuals who then positively impact their own communities.
Finally, it is important to note that the donations we receive support external efforts outside the church. In the 2018/19 year we conservatively budgeted $1.5 million dollars for distribution to local, national, and international ministries, non-profit agencies, missionaries, church planting efforts and numerous entities around the world. Some examples of organizations to which we have donated include:
Additionally, we give over $100K each year to numerous charities, for one-time events like building houses, helping workers exit the sex trade, translation projects and campaign scholarships.
To learn more about Centre Street Church, please visit our website at www.cschurch.ca.
Charity Contact
This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. Tel: 403-293-3900