Good People,
On the next two Sundays after church, we are going to have meetings about our long-term and immediate financial sustainability. The meetings are important and related, and I want to give you some overall context for them both.
UUCV has been in a Very-Good-News and a Not-So-Hot-News financial situation for several years. The short version is that there are two measures of financial health for institutions. We are Amazing at one of them, and Struggling with the other. The pandemic did us no favors with the struggling part.
The Amazing
This congregation has the strongest reserves of any of the churches I have served or belonged to. It has been a long-term practice of the Finance Committee and Board that we keep the equivalent of three month’s expenses in a reserve account, as is recommended by financial planners. We currently have enough to cover 8-month’s expenses. And that does not include our Legacy Funds or the other dedicated funds we hold. This situation has been created by the legacy generosity of several church members and the careful stewardship and management of the funds by several iterations of Finance Committees and Boards.
In short, we have a lot of money in the bank(s), and can weather a financial hit or two without great disruption.
The Struggles
For a decade or more, the church has operated on deficit budgets. We have found an interesting variety of ways make it through those deficit years without dipping into reserves. Indeed, the Board, Finance Committee, and Generosity Team had nearly gotten us back on sustainable footing in fiscal year 2018-2019. The pandemic hit our budgets hard, though we made up those deficit budgets with grants and PPP loans/grants.
In short, we continue to have a deficit problem.
What Next?
As we surface on the other side of the pandemic, we need to pick up the work of regaining our footing and funding sustainable budgets over time. So, the Generosity Team recommended that the Board hire UUA stewardship consultant Kay Crider to help us strategize a 3- to 4- to maybe a even 5-year plan to regain sustainable footing in both measures of institutional financial health – that we have both money in the bank in reserves and legacy funds for new initiatives and we are able to regularly pass balanced budgets that fund our mission, programs, and staff.
Kay has been consulting with the Generosity Team and Board all fall. For these last couple of weeks, she has been meeting with a variety of church groups to get to know our community, our mission, our dreams, our gifts, our challenges.
She also has a survey for us to fill out HERE.
Two Meetings
- Kay will be sharing her ‘findings’ with everyone after church this Sunday, Jan. 16 at 11:30 on our worship Zoom link.
- The following Sunday, Jan. 23 at 11:30, also on our Zoom link, the Finance Committee with hold our annual Mid-Year Budget Review.
These two meetings are overlapping though different in focus. On Jan. 16th, we’ll be looking at our long-term goal and a process to get there. On the 23rd, we will be focusing on the details of this year’s budget.
The hymn Woyaya has a line that says, “We will get there. Heaven knows how we will get there, but we know we will.” Between both of these after church meetings, we will have a much clearer picture of “how we will get there…”
I encourage you all to attend both.
With hope and faith,
Rev. Dana
