Churches across the diocese have been able to take advantage of a new online learning platform to help them with their giving and generosity.
Cornerstone is a platform from the Church of England’s Giving Team designed to support churches in all aspects of giving and generosity by using clear, step-by-step practical actions to grow giving and develop a deeper understanding of generosity.
The platform has three main functions, called Insights, Pathways and Grants.
The Insights page pulls together financial data from the annual returns, as well as mission data, to identify what is going well already and what are areas to focus on.
Insights help to determine which Pathways to work through, which are different tasks that a group can do that either stand alone or work as part of a wider campaign to improve finances in the church.
There are over 40 pathways on the platform, ranging from 'Getting Started with Contactless' to 'Thanking Your Givers' and 'Preaching and Teaching on Generosity'.
Each pathway is broken down into bitesize chunks that should take no longer than 30 minutes each, and can be assigned to different people to work on.
Cornerstone also has a grants database with over 650 grants curated for churches.
The list can be filtered down, and shortlisted, and is designed to make it easy to work through individually or as part of a group as you can keep track of your fundraising progress.
Some 15 churches in the Harrogate deanery took part in our pilot for the Cornerstone platform in the autumn of 2024.
Following the workshop in October, the group from St Andrew's, Starbeck have worked through many pathways and have engaged the PCC in embedding generosity in the church.
Mick Leach, Churchwarden, said they took part in the pilot as they wanted to become a more generous church and shared that as a result of joining Cornerstone, “the PCC carried out a Generous Church Review, one of our house groups used the Living Generously video resource, we will be holding two Generosity services and will then relaunch the Parish Giving Scheme.”
The Revd Phil Carman, Vicar at St Andrew’s, said: “One of the main learning points for us has been about how we communicate our impact and not just our need.
“We have started to better share with the church and the community the impact that the church is having, the good things that the church is doing and the difference it makes.
“This then encourages generosity towards need.”
Churches in the diocese can book a one-to-one session with a member of the Stewardship Team to set up a Cornerstone account and learn more about how the platform can be used to support your church.
These meetings can be held in person at Church House, or on Zoom.
Click here to find out more about Cornerstone.