Giving to the Church

If you have enjoyed your visit to Emmanuel Church, please help us with a donation. You may not be a Christian and you may not believe in the work of the Christian church, but your gift can also be used to see this church continue in the future as a focal part of the townscape of West Hampstead. You can leave a donation in the wall safe in the entrance porch of the church - and it will be very gratefully received. Thank you.

Do we need to tell you that the costs of maintaining Emmanuel Church are high, and that our congregation has a struggle each year to do the work needed to keep the building in good repair? Perhaps we didn’t need to tell England must endeavour to be fully self-funding. In effect that means that we have to pay for our own parish priest, as well as for the upkeep of this building and its running costs, as well as contributing to the wider mission of the church.

Emmanuel Church can apply for grants from the usual grant-making organisations - but for this we have to compete with 16,000 other parish churches in England! And many of them are fine medieval buildings, listed Grade 1 by English Heritage. Emmanuel Church was only listed Grade 2 (not even Grade 2*) in 1999. Thankfull,y we are not in debt but we do have to watch expenditure carefully.

By careful budgeting, we are just able to pay our way, but we often wish that we had more money to realise more of our dreams. Emmanuel Church is not architecturally magnificent, but we are fond of it, and having inherited it from former generations of worshippers who struggled hard to raise money to build it, we will do our best to keep it in good repair and hand it on to future generations as a sign and symbol of our faith.

Please help to make your giving work harder for us

If you are a UK taxpayer and you fill out the details on the yellow envelope, then the Church can reclaim tax on your giving. For every £1 you give, we can reclaim 28p tax, making your giving £1.28 to us. We are not a wealthy church and we struggle to make ends meet so every little helps. Thank you for your generosity

If you would like more information on tax efficient giving, you can go to www.givingcampaign.org.uk

Please note - the yellow envelopes MUST be filled in with ink, not pencil, and we do need all your contact details and signature for the Chancellor to accept it.

Other ways to give

If you don't want to fill in yellow envelopes every week, you can ask the treasurer (or one of the church wardens) for an allocation of blue envelopes. This means that you sign one form with your details for the year, and are given blue envelopes with a specific number on them. Then you can just put your giving into an envelope even before you leave home, and drop it into the plate without having to fumble around for a pen!

Even easier still is to give by standing order - you fill in one form which covers the bank request and the tax back, and then forget all about it whilst the money comes directly out of your account on the day you specify. This is better for the church finances too as it means we can budget more reliably on a known source of income.

For further information, click here to contact our Treasurer, Jude Chin or ring 020 7419 9434.