Working in a church there is always a budget that you have to keep in the back of your head at all times especially when planning new projects. In most churches there is a general budget and from the general budget each area/ministry is broken down into, what I call, mini-budgets. These "mini-budgets" helps us stay in line with our spending. In my case, media falls under the Worship budget, so I am constantly asking, "What's my budget?"In my last post I talked about buying a new camera, well before I can really research the camera I had to ask, "What's my budget?" When putting together the main church budget this year, I was fortunate enough to have the Pastor ask how much I thought I needed this year. Of course I could come up with a ridiculous amount of money because there are so many cool toys I would want but I had to be realistic. I replied with the question, "Where do you see the media ministry going?" To really assess how much to budget I needed to know what the church sees doing this year with media.
Video Maker has a good article about making choices on video equipment. In the article it states that there are two very important questions that you need to ask before purchasing equipment. Those questions are: what are your production needs and how much can you afford to spend? Of course, you need to identify the answers to the first before deciding on the second. How do you determine what your needs are? Simple. I asked the staff as a whole what ideas they had involving media, basically asking what is their vision. We wrote down the ideas and then from there we wrote down what equipment we thought we needed to accomplish these ideas. Then, we decided on what idea or need was more important to see accomplished this year and what could wait. Prioritizing huge expenditures helps when developing a budget, it gives you a more realistic figure versus the figure needed to get everything you want on your wish list.
Of course you don't want to forget include the cost of maintenance and blank media that can be a weekly, monthly or yearly expense into the budget, as well as, any monthly or yearly subscription fees. Keeping all the little expenditures like that in mind helps deciding on what you need to budget for new big purchases and for regular purchases.
Write down all your regular expenses, projects wanting to accomplish, equipment needed and wish list items when developing a budget and hopefully you won't have to ask, "What is my budget?" as often.
