Interesting article. I wrote about this too in

https://medium.com/backyard-theology/behind-the-curtain-of-church-finances-ef0499d83608

One aspect of your article I found particularly interesting was about the number of givers in a church.

The large church I attended, and served on in an oversight committee role, had roughly 2000 weekly attendees. Of that, after all the giving was done it was a very very small percentage of the givers giving the most donations. In other words, the church really depended on about 10 donors for the large "capital campaign" like efforts. Of those there were less than 5 that gave very large sums (>100,000 for example), then only about 2 or 3 that gave possibly up to $500,000, and 1 or possibly 2 giving $1M. That $1M donor and the few other large-sum donors essentially dictated the success of the building campaigns to "grow" the church. And, with that large donation, they too gained influence.