Day 1: Turning out the Lights
I believe it was Willie Nelson who said it best, “Turn out the lights, the party’s over.” So, I’ll let him kick off our “30 Days of Training to Reduce Operational Expenditures.” I know, I could have thought of a better name for this series of e-mails, but for the next 30 work days, I am going to be sending you a tip that can save the church money. By utilizing these tips, we are not simply being better stewards, we are enabling more money to go to ministry rather than administration.So, for today’s tip, let’s talk about lights.
The fluorescent lights in an average office at First Baptist Belton cost $2.26 per day to run, if we use them for only 8 hours. That’s $106.22 per year.
If we don’t turn the lights off at lunch, they cost $2.54 per day to run or $119.50 per year.
If we don’t turn them off after work either and allow facilities to turn them off, we’re looking at $3.10 per day or $146.06 per year.
Considering that we have 29 offices at FBC Belton, our total cost for running lights in offices, 8 hours a day, is $65.42 per day or $3,080.49 per year.
If all of our offices were using the higher side of the estimation above, our annual cost for lighting our offices would be $4,235.67 or $1,155.18 more each year than if we were only to use what we need.
By the way, this does not take into account the lights in hallways and classrooms – it’s just our offices. So, if you see lights on in an unoccupied room, go ahead and turn them off – it could mean that another child comes to know Christ as Savior.
The simple step of turning lights off when they’re not in use can save us a tremendous amount of cash – cash that we can then put toward missions or other important ministries.
(This is copied from an internal staff e-mail and is part of a series of posts)
April 24th, 2008 at 7:03 pm
Another thought on turning lights off….if you have an office with windows, use the natural light and forgo the annoying hum of fluorescent lights all together!