Church Money, Donations & Financial Controls

The Benevolence Application: What to Ask For

Published 2026-08-10 · Church Money, Donations & Financial Controls

Short answer: a benevolence application should capture the need, the amount, who is asking, their relationship to the church, what other help has been sought, and how the payment will be made. Then it should be reviewed by someone other than the person who took the request. Its purpose isn't to interrogate anyone. It's to show that a charitable decision was made on charitable grounds, by the church, on a record.

A family in the congregation is about to lose their power. Someone on staff has the authority to write a check, and every human instinct says write it now.

You can help quickly and still keep a record. Those two things aren't in tension, but only if the form already exists before the crisis walks in. The benevolence application church staff reach for in that moment has to be sitting in a drawer, next to a written rule about who may approve what. Nobody designs a good form at the moment they need one.

Why the church needs a record at all

Benevolence is charitable assistance to people in genuine need. It's squarely within what a church exists to do. The record isn't there to make it harder.

The record exists because a church is a tax-exempt organization spending charitable funds (IRS, Exemption requirements for 501(c)(3) organizations). The question that eventually gets asked is whether those funds went to a charitable class or to particular individuals for reasons that had nothing to do with need. A file showing a stated need, an amount, a review and an approval answers that question. A check stub doesn't.

There's a second reason, less discussed and just as real: a written standard protects the people asking. When the criteria are on paper, help doesn't depend on who someone knows, how well they tell their story, or who happened to be in the office.

What to ask for

Identity and relationship to the church. Name, contact details, and how they're connected: member, regular attender, someone referred by a member, a walk-in from the community. Churches may help beyond their membership, and the file should just be honest about which it is.

The specific need. Not "help with bills." The utility, the landlord, the repair, the prescription. Specific needs can be verified and paid directly. Vague ones can't.

The amount requested, and for what period. One month's rent is a different decision from ongoing support, and the form should force that distinction early.

What else has been tried. Family, other agencies, the utility company's own hardship program. This isn't a gate to clear. It frequently surfaces better help than the church can give.

Whether they've received assistance from the church before, and when. Repeat requests aren't disqualifying. They're a signal that the response may need to be something other than another check.

Consent to verify and to pay the provider directly. One line, signed.

The date and a signature.

What not to ask

Some questions add risk without adding information.

• Immigration status. Not relevant to whether someone's power is about to be cut off.
• Detailed medical history. You may need to know a prescription is unaffordable. You don't need the diagnosis.
• Full financial disclosure as a default. Bank statements may be proportionate for a large or ongoing commitment. For a one-off utility payment they're intrusive, and they'll stop people asking.
• Anything about giving history. Whether someone tithes must not touch whether they get help. If that connection is visible in your process, the process is wrong.

Collect the minimum that supports the decision, and keep it confidential. Benevolence files shouldn't sit in a shared drive the whole staff can browse.

How churches get this wrong

Cash. Cash leaves no trail and is the hardest thing to defend. Pay the utility, the landlord, the pharmacy, the garage. Direct payment also protects the recipient from a question about whether the money was really assistance.

One person decides alone. The person who receives the request shouldn't be the only person who approves it. A second signature is a small thing that changes the character of the file entirely.

No written criteria. Without a policy, every decision is improvised, and improvised decisions look arbitrary in aggregate even when each one was kind.

Assistance to insiders handled the same way as everyone else. Help to a board member, a staff member, or their close family needs a higher bar and a documented recusal. It's the single most exposed category in the whole area, and where an insider gets more than fair value the penalty can land on the individual and on the managers who approved it (IRS, Intermediate sanctions).

No cap and no review point. A policy that never says "at this level, or after this many months, it comes back to the board" drifts.

What to do this month

1. Write the criteria down before the next request, even briefly: who is eligible, typical limits, what the church pays for.
2. Adopt the policy and the form together at a board meeting, and minute it.
3. Name the reviewers. Who takes the request, who approves, what happens for larger amounts.
4. Set the insider rule in writing: requests involving board, staff or their families go to the board with the interested person recused. Your conflict-of-interest policy should already point the same direction.
5. Decide where files live and who may open them.

The approval side of the form

The application captures the request. The other half of the page, the part churches most often leave blank, records what the church decided and why.

A workable approval block has five fields:

1. Amount approved, which may not be the amount requested.
2. Paid to whom. The utility, the landlord, the pharmacy. Naming the payee here is what keeps the direct-payment rule real rather than aspirational.
3. Who approved it, with a second name for anything above your policy's threshold.
4. The date.
5. A one-line reason. Not an essay. "One month's arrears, verified with the utility, first request" is enough. In two years this line is the entire memory of the decision.

Add a sixth if you help the same household more than once: what else was offered besides money. A referral, a budgeting conversation, a connection to an agency. Churches that record this find their own pattern faster.

A worked example

A regular attender asks for help with a past-due electricity bill of a few hundred dollars. Staff member takes the application, notes the account number, and phones the utility to confirm the balance and that a payment will stop disconnection.

The pastor and one board member approve it under the policy's standing limit. The church pays the utility directly, on the account, and files the application with the approval block completed.

Total elapsed time, about a day. Total documentation, one sheet. If anyone asks in three years what that payment was, the file answers.

Now the harder version. The same household comes back for the fourth time in eight months. Nothing improper has happened, but the pattern says the problem isn't a one-off shortfall. This is exactly where a policy earns its keep: it should already say that repeat requests go to the board, and that the response may include a referral rather than another payment. Deciding that in the moment, about a specific family, is unkind to everyone.

Common questions

Is benevolence assistance taxable to the person receiving it?

Genuine need-based assistance from a church to an individual is generally treated as a gift rather than income to the recipient. The picture changes if the payment is really compensation for services, in which case ordinary payroll rules follow it (IRS Publication 15 (Circular E), Employer's Tax Guide), or if it goes to someone whose relationship to the church makes it look like a benefit rather than charity. That's why the file records need, not merit.

Can we help someone who works for the church?

You can, and you should be noticeably more careful. Assistance to staff, board members or their families is the highest-risk category in the whole area, because it can look like disguised compensation or a benefit flowing to an insider (IRS, Inurement / private benefit). Take it to the board, recuse the interested person, document the need on the same standard you'd apply to anyone, and be able to show that standard was the same.

Do we need receipts from the person we helped?

Not from them, if you pay the provider directly, which is the better practice anyway. Your evidence is the invoice or account you paid and the approval record. Paying cash and asking for receipts afterwards is the weakest version of this.

How long do we keep the files?

Keep them with your financial records, on the same retention schedule, and treat them as confidential. They contain sensitive information about people in your congregation and shouldn't sit in a drive the whole staff can browse.

When it stops being a benevolence question

Most requests are what they look like. A few aren't, and they're worth naming: a request tied to an active legal matter, an assistance arrangement that starts to resemble ongoing compensation for someone who works for the church, or pressure to structure a gift so a particular person benefits. Those aren't form problems. Slow down and get advice before the check, not after.

For the wider picture of keeping assistance inside the lines, start with how to help people without risking your exemption, and for the document itself, the essential sections of a benevolence policy.

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Get the policy and the form in one place. The Benevolence Fund Policy is the written policy, the application, and the approval record, built around the documentation this area actually calls for. Adopt the policy, put the form in the office, and keep the file. $49, instant download.

*Faith Docs provides self-help document templates, not legal advice. We are not a law firm. For representation, consult a licensed attorney.*