St Peter’s receives all its funding from voluntary donations, tax reclaimed on the donations that are gift aided, fees for weddings and funerals, fund raising events and The Friends of St Peters for help with building upkeep. Each year we need about £110,000 to keep the church running. At the moment we have very few reserves to use should an emergency arise. Our income is not covering our outgoings.
Our major expense each year is the Parish Share. This is the money we pay to Portsmouth Diocese as our share towards its budget. The Diocese uses the contributions from parishes to pay for clergy stipends, housing (including upkeep of houses), clergy pensions and administration of the diocese so that individual parishes receive the support they need. Our parish share is calculated using a formula that includes size of parish, average Sunday attendance and relative wealth of the people living in the parish. Our Parish share, which is £71,000 in 2021 is likely to rise to £73,000 in 2022. We will have to find an extra £2,000 a year to make ends meet.
This website gives an indication of the range of work undertaken by the volunteers at St Peter’s, without whose generous gifts in both time and money we would not be able to undertake the mission of the church here in Titchfield.