The Staff & Giving Analyzer helps church leaders understand how financial and staffing decisions work together. It provides meaningful insights into your church’s resources, structure, and compensation patterns—all powered by ChurchSalary’s proprietary Cornerstone Model, a unique framework that shows how key financial and staffing metrics interact.
What is the Cornerstone Model?
At the heart of the Analyzer are four cornerstone metrics that define the size and structure of your church:
Total Operating Budget
Attendance
Payroll Budget
Staff Size (FTE – full-time equivalent)
The relationship of these four cornerstone metrics are represented as a set of four to five ratios that highlight key ministry decisions and financial priorities.
Per Person Budget – How much your church spends every year per attendee.
Payroll Percentage – The portion of your total budget dedicated to pay for staff salaries and benefits.
Average Employment Cost – The average cost of salary + benefits per full-time equivalent staff member.
Staffing Ratio – The number of attendees cared for by each full-time staff member.
Per Person Payroll Budget – The amount spent per attendee on staffing.
Note: The Staff & Giving Analyzer is available for Expanded members and above.
You can launch the Analyzer directly from your Dashboard simply by clicking “Analyze now” in the Church Metrics section.
To access the Staff & Giving Analyzer from the main page, log into ChurchSalary, click on Launch Dashboard and click on Analyze Now.
How You Can Use the Analyzer
The Staff & Giving Analyzer offers two modes—(1) Tutorial and (2) Analyzer—designed to help users both learn and apply the model effectively.
Learn & Explore (Tutorial Mode)
The first time you open the Analyzer app, you will be guided through a Tutorial designed to help you gain an intuitive understanding of the Cornerstone Model.
Explore one section or side of the model at a time—moving the slider on the left-hand side—to see how adjustments to one cornerstone metric (like Payroll Budget) impact the adjacent metric and the ratio in between them. It is a hands-on, visual way to understand complex financial relationships.
Using Learn & Explore (Tutorial Mode)
Click Learn & Explore to enter the Tutorial mode to explore the four cornerstone metrics: total operating budget, attendance, payroll budget and staff size, click Start Tutorial to begin.
Drag & drop the selected metric to see how it affects the other metrics such as Cost per person, click Analyze My Church.
From this screen, you can drag and drop your metrics and recalculate.
Using Evaluate & Analyze Mode
Evaluate & Analyze (Analyzer Mode)
Once you’re familiar with the basics, the main Analyzer mode allows you to compare your church’s numbers to national trends and explore “what-if” scenarios for strategic planning.
Interactive Graph and Control Panel
Drag the graph’s data points or enter exact values in the Control Panel to instantly see the ripple effects across all ratios. You can “lock” any ratio (like Payroll Percentage) to maintain that ratio while adjusting the adjacent cornerstone metrics.
Step-by-Step Calculator
Located beneath the graph, this feature breaks down how each financial decision influences your staffing structure as a series of three to four decisions. Make precise changes to each of these decisions in a step-by-step fashion to game out changes to the size and structure of your organization and see the precise impact.
ChurchSalary’s model predicts the FTE staff size (and staffing ratio) of your church based on your cornerstone metrics. This is nothing more than a series of decisions that leaders and the congregation get to make. Each decision influences and constrains the size of your staff relative to your church's size (attendance).
Decisions 1 & 2 = Per Person Budget & Giving (leaders decide how much to spend based income sources such as tithes and offerings. Congregants give based on spiritual maturity as well as local demographics such as family size and household income levels).
Decision 3 = Payroll Percentage (leaders decide how much they want to set aside for staff expenses)
Decision 4 = Average Employment Cost (compensation philosophy of church leadership + local cost of living + salary structure + ratio of PT/FT staff)
You can edit Attendance, Total Budget, Payroll Budget and FTE Staff Size directly with the Step-by-Step Calculator on this screen. Click Analyze to run the numbers.
Clicking Reset will reload the form with cornerstone metrics from your selected church/campus.
