St Martin’s Sherwood’s Cornerstone Success Story
We’ve been inviting churches across the diocese to join Cornerstone, a free online tool designed to encourage generosity and giving. The Cornerstone platform supports churches in understanding their current financial position, strengthening their finances, and growing a culture of generosity within the church.
Cornerstone can support churches in three main ways:
- It provides access to a regularly updated grants database to help fund special projects. All churches receive completely free access to over 900 grants curated specifically for church needs.
- It uses your Parish Returns data to provide clear financial insights and helps identify gaps and opportunities to increase giving.
- It offers short, step-by-step pathways with templates, videos, and guides to encourage giving and generosity. For example, “Getting Started with Online/Contactless Giving” or “Teaching and Preaching on Generosity.”
It was wonderful to hear about St Martin’s Sherwood’s Cornerstone success story. After taking part in the pilot last autumn, they focused on three pathways, as highlighted by Ian Gordon, Treasurer at St Martin’s Sherwood:
- Thanking our Givers
- Finding and Engaging New Regular Givers
- Communicating our Impact
By developing and implementing an action plan, they successfully increased planned annual giving by 15%.
For more information, click to watch below the introduction to Cornerstone below:
How can you get involved?
A free webinar hosted by the Diocesan Digital Giving team, introducing Cornerstone Thursday 4th June 2pm & 6.30pm. This hour-and-a-half webinar will be hosted by Anne Coyne, Digital Giving Adviser and Kirsty Cowley, Parish Finance Enabler.