How the score works.
A church can have plenty of financial data and still have an answer problem: the information exists somewhere, but turning it into a confident answer under time pressure is a different skill entirely. This page explains how the score is built and, in full, how the peer comparison works, so none of it has to be taken on faith.
The questions behind the score.
Church leaders are asked about money every week. The hard part is rarely a lack of data. It is that the answer lives in three places and takes days to put together.
- 01“Can we afford this hire?” takes days of spreadsheet work before anyone can answer it.
- 02Boards receive numbers that nobody can trace back to where they came from.
- 03Giving lives in one system, attendance in another and the books in a third, so no single place shows what changed or why.
- 04The same person enters the same information more than once, because the systems don’t talk to each other.
The twenty questions measure how much of that friction your church feels today, across four areas: Financial Clarity, Decision Readiness, Operational Visibility and Leadership Confidence.
How the peer comparison is built.
Most church financial benchmarks in circulation, like a “healthy” staff-cost percentage or a recommended months of reserves, are repeated so often they read as settled fact, with no dataset, sample size or year attached. We would rather publish exactly where ours comes from and let it be checked.
Source
- Canada Revenue Agency, T3010 Registered Charity Information Returns
Filing year
- 2024
Filings used
- 24,340 Canadian churches
Methodology version
- 1.1.0
Peer groups
Churches are compared only against others in the same annual revenue band, since revenue is the strongest available predictor of a church’s cost structure and reserve position.
- Under $250K
- $250K – $500K
- $500K – $1M
- $1M – $2.5M
- $2.5M – $5M
- $5M+
What’s compared
Three measures, each shown as your value against the middle 50% of your peer group, with a percentile as supporting detail.
- Operating margin: (revenue − expenses) ÷ revenue, matched exactly to how the CRA return itself defines it.
- Operating reserves, in months, collected directly in the same unit the comparison uses.
- Staff costs as a share of revenue.
What we deliberately don’t show
A missing comparison costs a little value. An invented one costs the trust the whole tool runs on, so this refuses more often than it answers.
- No attendance-based comparison. The CRA return has no attendance field at all.
- No staff-headcount comparison. The relevant fields are populated on essentially none of the filings we reviewed.
- Nothing for churches outside Canada yet. See the questions below.
What is the T3010?
Every registered charity in Canada, churches included, files a T3010 Registered Charity Information Return with the CRA each year. Much of it is published on the CRA’s charity listings, which is what makes an honest public comparison possible.
Every expense on the return is reported twice: once by what it is (salaries, occupancy, supplies) and once by what it was for (charitable programs, management, fundraising). Both views must add up to the same total.
- Total revenue
- Everything the church received in the year, not only receipted gifts. Margin and staff costs are both measured against this.
- Total expenditures
- Everything the church spent in the year, before gifts to other charities.
- Total compensation
- Salaries, wages and benefits. Used for staff costs as a share of revenue.
- Cash on hand
- The cash and short-term investments reported on the return. Reserves are this figure divided by one month of expenditures.
Why your numbers might not match.
The T3010 is not a set of financial statements. A few common situations are reported differently on it than in a church’s own books, so if your comparison looks surprising, one of these may be why.
- Mortgage payments
- On the T3010 the principal part of a mortgage payment counts as an occupancy expense, even though your own statements treat it as paying down a loan. A church with a mortgage can look as if it spends more than its books show.
- Online giving fees
- Gifts are reported in full, with the processor’s fees as a separate expense. If your books record giving after fees, your revenue will look a little lower than the filing would.
- Selling a building
- Only the gain on a sale counts as revenue, not the full price. But money held afterwards raises cash, so reserves can sit well above a church’s normal level for a few years.
- Large purchases
- A new sound system expensed in the year it was bought makes that year’s spending look high. If it is capitalized instead, only its yearly depreciation appears.
- Estimates and timing
- The peer figures come from filed returns for a past year. Your figures are today’s estimates, so treat a small gap as noise rather than a finding.
Questions leaders ask.
How is the score actually calculated?
Deterministically, with no AI involved in the number. Each of the four dimensions is built from five 1–5 questions; a dimension's score is (sum of its five answers − 5) × 5, which always lands on an exact multiple of 5 from 0 to 100. The overall score is the mean of the four dimension scores, rounded once. The same twenty answers will always produce the same score. That is what makes it explainable if a leader asks how it was worked out.
Is my church's data stored, and who sees it?
Yes. Your answers and church details are saved when you finish so we can create your report, and the result is kept behind a private link so you and your board can revisit it. We use your email to send your report, and we only send you other emails from Tara.OS if you tick the box. If you do, you can unsubscribe at any time. Your data is never sold. We share it only with the trusted service providers that help us run the Health Check, such as hosting and email delivery. Our privacy policy has the details. To delete your result, email hello@tara-platform.com.
What benchmark data does the peer comparison use?
Public CRA T3010 Registered Charity Information Returns filed by Canadian churches: a real, named dataset with a stated filing year and sample size, not a general rule of thumb. The methodology section above has the exact numbers.
Why don't US churches get a peer comparison?
Because the equivalent dataset does not exist yet. US congregations are generally exempt from filing the federal return (Form 990) that would make a comparable public dataset possible, so there is no dataset of comparable size and rigor to build one from honestly. We would rather show nothing than show a guess.
How often should we take it?
Whenever it would help: before a board meeting, at a budget cycle, or any time the answer to 'how are we doing' feels harder to get to than it should. There's no penalty for retaking it, and no streak to keep.
Is this financial advice or an audit?
No. It's a directional self-assessment built from your own answers and the figures you choose to share. It's a starting point for a conversation with your leadership team, not a substitute for an accountant, an auditor, or professional financial advice.
See where your church stands.
Your score appears the moment you finish. Add your email if you’d like the full report as a PDF.