Helping Your Members Afford General Assembly
September 15, 2007
Sending lay leaders and congregational staff to General Assembly (GA) can be one of the best things we do to ensure the vitality of our congregations. But GA is expensive. Registration is close to $300. A hotel room can be $500 or more. Add meals and airfare and you’ve spent $1,200 to $2,000.The cost of putting on the convention can’t be altered much, says Jan Sneegas, director of the Unitarian Universalist Association's (UUA's) GA and Conference Services Office. “GA as it is currently configured requires big modern convention centers, which are expensive to rent. We work to make GA a break-even event.”
Attendees wanting to save money can choose less expensive hotels, stay in a college dorm and eat in the cafeteria (a block of dorm rooms is usually reserved), or arrange a home-stay with local Unitarian Universalists (UUs). A downside: these facilities tend to be farther from the convention center. As GA approaches, look for a page on the GA website called "GA on a Budget," listing inexpensive lodging and restaurants.
Walt and Caron Wells, of All Souls UU Church in Kansas City, MO (541 members) are GA regulars. They stay in one of the big convention hotels to minimize walking, but try to find a shopping center food court for meals, avoiding the more expensive food in the convention center and hotels.
They spent about $1,150 in Portland this year, plus air fare. “Every time we look at the total we think about whether we want to do it again,” says Walt. All Souls does make some occasional small grants to attend GA.
The Planning Committee provides some scholarship money in the GA budget. A matching grant from the applicant’s congregation is required. There has been money left over for the past two years, says Sneegas. Some GA expenses may be tax deductible especially for those who actively represent their congregations.
The UUA currently pays part of the costs of bringing congregational presidents to General Assembly. Beyond that it is up to congregations themselves to help delegates, says Sneegas.
Some are trying. First Unitarian in Portland (1,100) has a $5,000 fund to help pay costs of GA and district events. At one small northeast congregation a retired minister pays the way every year for the current minister. The Central Unitarian Church of Paramus, NJ (187) pays GA registration fees. “It’s there primarily to keep an awareness of the Association,” says past president Lisa Horton. The UU Congregation of Castine, ME (49), covers the first $1,250 of costs for each delegate (two attended this year). “We think it’s important that folks get the GA feeling about this faith of ours,” says President Kent Price.
At Portland, former board member Arnie Pickar was among those who lobbied for a GA fund. “We recognized there wasn’t a lot of knowledge in the congregation about the Association. Now we have an awareness of denominational issues we didn’t have before.” The fund pays two-thirds of the GA registration cost.
The Gulf Coast UU Church in Gulfport, MS, may get the prize however. The loss of about half its members after Hurricane Katrina and the flooding of the site for its proposed building forced it to recreate itself. This spring, with twenty-eight members and a new, drier building site, it took about $10,000 from its building fund and used it to pay most of the costs for four lay leaders to attend GA this year.
Says Vice President Shelly Taylor, one of the four, “We decided the best use of our money was to invest it in the up-and-coming leadership of the church. And it was wonderful. GA completely renewed my spirits and it was very educational and we made lots of contacts. Being there is going to make a difference for our church.”
Taylor says she hopes the congregation can maintain the practice of paying GA costs. “It’s a lot of money, but it’s worth it.”
For more information contact interconnections @ uua.org.
Last updated on Friday, April 18, 2008.
