‘Paper gains’ in investments save General Synod from deficit in 2024

The Anglican Church of Canada’s national office would have ended up with a $237,000 deficit—despite $600,000 in pared-back spending and an unusually high contribution from one diocese—if not for the unusually strong performance of its investment fund, which lifted it to a $3.19 million excess of revenues over expenses in 2024. But this investment performance consisted of “unrealized” or on-paper-only gain, and concerns about the office of General Synod’s financial sustainability persist. 

Expenses for the year at the national office were higher than expected, Amal Attia, treasurer of General Synod, told Council of General Synod (CoGS) in a presentation March 8. This, she told the Anglican Journal in an interview afterwards, was due in part to the cost of legal fees related to cases in which the national church is tangentially named, as well as leftover expenses from previous years such as a charge from the venue for General Synod 2023. But one diocese, which Attia declined to name, used real estate sales to catch up on proportional giving which it had been behind on since 2021. This meant an extra $453,000, which, combined with $600,000 in cost-cutting at the national office, brought the deficit before transfers down to a comparatively minor $237,000—an amount the office will cover using funds from its consolidated trust fund (CTF).  

The CTF—a body of investments which the church does not normally use for operational expenses, but which it is able to draw on in emergencies—had a remarkably strong year, Attia said. It grew by 24 per cent, she said, compared to its average rate of around 6.5 per cent, and financial statements show that General Synod’s surplus was due primarily to that growth, which amounted to $3.4 million. 

This money was not withdrawn from the investment fund, says Attia, and is thus what she refers to as a “paper gain.” She also cautioned that it is important not to count on that kind of growth repeating, as the markets are highly unpredictable. The substantial damage to the stock market caused by Donald Trump’s looming tariff threats, for example, stands to hurt the church’s investments in 2025, she said.  

The CTF now stands at about $42.8 million, but Attia told CoGS, only about $24 million of that is available for the church to use at its discretion, with the rest being money General Synod is managing on behalf of dioceses and parishes (about $9 million) and in restricted funds which have been donated to the church to be used for specific purposes, often drawn up in the wills of the people who left that money to the church (about $11 million). 

Currently, General Synod staff and volunteers are embarking on a project to put the restricted money in the CTF to better use, said Canon (lay) Clare Burns, chancellor of General Synod. These restricted funds have been donated to the church over the course of the last century or so, some as far back as the 1910s, she said. The money came from donors who wanted to create support through the church for purposes ranging from setting up Sunday schools to paying for the emergency medical expenses of priests in need. As a result, the legally binding rules governing what that money can be used for are found in a body of wills and other documents ranging in age across 100 years or more. These must be read and interpreted to determine how the funds can—and cannot—be used. Currently, the church is looking for volunteers, especially law students, who are willing to help go through the documents and make a list of what money is available for what purposes. 

Normally the church avoids touching the bulk of even the unrestricted CTF funds, as that money is tied up in investments as a way of ensuring there are resources remaining for future generations in the church. But after Attia’s March 8 presentation—plus a “fireside chat” about church finances at CoGS involving Attia, Burns, Canon Patricia Dorland, chair of General Synod’s financial management committee and Archdeacon Alan Perry, general secretary of General Synod—CoGS voted to approve a motion to supplement General Synod’s budget by withdrawing up to four per cent per year from the CTF as a way of holding the church’s finances stable while it deliberates on programming cuts and other methods of adapting to the ongoing shrinkage of revenues. 

One spending cut, discussed by CoGS at its last meeting in November 2024, is a gradual reduction in the annual grant General Synod gives to the Council of the North, supporting ministry in Northern dioceses. After Attia’s presentation, Andrew Stephens-Rennie, of the ecclesiastical province of British Columbia and Yukon, asked whether it would be possible to draw more from the CTF in order to continue the council’s funding at the same level. Perry responded that would be a short-term fix, but the church must look for solutions that will be sustainable for years to come. He also said the Council of the North grant previously accounted for 16 per cent of General Synod’s annual budget, but because cuts in recent years had been made faster to other national office staff and programming, it accounts for about 30 per cent of the budget today. The goal now, he said, is to find a level proportionate to the reduction in size and spending across the rest of the national church’s work. 

Likewise, Attia said the church had arrived at the four per cent number as a conservative estimate of what it could take without using up all the fund’s annual growth. 

“I’m a firm believer in rainy days. And the rainy day is not here yet, so let’s not push it closer,” she said to the Anglican Journal in an interview later that day. 

Later in the weekend, Canon (lay) Ian Alexander spoke to CoGS about the work of reorganizing the church’s governance and institutions into a more sustainable form as recommended by the report of a primatial commission released March 7. The church cannot achieve stability by continuing to make incremental cuts to its expenses when it no longer has excess capacity to cut, he said. Instead, the project would require spending time, money and resources on developing new ways of organizing the church’s work.  

“The goal is a sustainable long-term future. Part of getting there is investing in the work that needs to be done to create that new future,” Alexander said in a subsequent interview.