In today’s age and era it is rarely that one thing serves only one role. Instead, most things whether it be businesses, organisations and even products often have multi-purposes. Such is true for procurement and churches.
On a regular basis, one would rarely associate procurement with churches or even churches with any process that usually takes place in the business industry. However, church serves as more than just a place to be closer to god, it also stands as an organisation that sometimes helps the homeless, single parents and more spiritual activities.
In order to do so, a church would need an effective procurement management process. Here is how churches can use procurement to help with their day-to-day.
Save cost on the necessities
Most churches are funded by donations. This means that churches don’t always have an abundance of funds and even when they do, they usually give back to the community by giving out free food or provide shelters.
In order to help with their day-to-day, churches will need to save cost on the necessities such as food, prayer tools and even services such as cleaning. Having a good procurement process will help churches source out the best resources at the lowest cost possible so that they can run their daily activities like performing mass without a hitch. On top of that, the more money they save on the basic cost to run the church, the more they can give back to the community.
Protects church funds from being misused
It is important to ensure that church funds are being used responsibly and with the benefit of the people in mind. Misused church funds will not only result in public rage but will also tarnish any religious institutions. You might not realise this, but while churches also go through paper works to track their spendings, it can be difficult to manage.
Having a procurement team can easily help churches solve this problem. A procurement team will not only be able to track each spendings the church is making but they can also account for where the money from the church funding flows to. With the help of procurement technology, church staff and volunteers can simply focus their energy on running the church and providing help to the people without worrying about money being misused or misplaced.
With procurement, funds and spending will always be accounted for and Churches can run their day-to-day without worrying about paper works.
Helps the church provide more services to the public
A good procurement team can help the church find more resources that can help them serve the public. Churches no longer need to worry about limited funding or being limited in the help they can offer, they can now focus on contributing to the public. For example, they can choose to provide weekend classes, out of school education programs for poor children, provide food and shelter for the homeless and so many more.
With a good procurement team, church staff and volunteer will only have to worry about delivering the service rather than finding the resources to provide to the mass public. Procurement can also help negotiate a great deal for example in providing teaching materials or fresh supplies to the church’s kitchen.
Easier access for staff and volunteers to make purchases
Most of the time staff and volunteers make purchases on behalf of the church and have a hard time making reimbursement due to inefficient paperwork approval processes. Reimbursement processes are usually can be complicated and messy and most of the time, volunteers might even but themselves at financial risk from having to pay upfront on behalf of the churches. While having readily available petty cash is convenient for small purchases, it is almost impossible to track and it is not convenient for making larger purchases. You might say, having a shared card is an option but without the right tracking system in place, it may be hard to assume accountability for each staff who has access to the card.
Having a great procurement team can solve the issue. Procurement team are often familiar with the industry standard and can help staff and volunteers make purchases on the churches’ behalf. In cases where larger purchases are needed, staff and volunteers can simply hand out the task to the procurement team.
In other cases, staff can use Cloud-based tools that connect with mobile apps to simplify expense management on the church’s schedule where users can request funds transfers for last-minute purchases via text message and church leaders or procurement team can then approve them instantly.
With smart payment tools, church staff and volunteers can serve the community without stretching their personal finances and the church will not have to worry about tracking every single purchases made.
ThunderQuote is the most comprehensive business services portal in Singapore, Australia and ASEAN , where hundreds of thousands of dollars of procurement contracts are sourced every month by major companies like Singapore Press Holdings, National Trade Union Congress and more.