Welcome and thank you to all of you who have agreed to join or continue on your congregation's board. It's important work and it takes time and we do appreciate your commitment to your congregation and Unitarian Universalism.
We want our board members to come into their roles fully prepared, and to help with that we have created several events and resources to help.
For those who need assistance in planning and running a board retreat to start out your year on the right foot, please consider attending our online workshop on this topic on Tuesday, August 2 from 6:30-8:30 pm. We encourage anyone who may be running a board retreat or who wants to know more about this process to attend - board officers, staff, and board members.
For those who have not served on a church board in the past, or need a refresher course, we offer our annual Helpful Board Habits Series. This series will have pre-work on the UU Institute site coupled with in person meetings that includes small group breakouts to discuss what was learned that month. The series meets on Tuesday nights from 6:30-8 pm - August 16, September 20 and October 11. Serving on a church board is not like serving on any other type of board, nonprofit or for profit, and we address some of those differences and challenges.
Additional board and leadership trainings are available on the UUA website at LeaderLab. The LeaderLab training is free. You can also find all sorts of blogs, videos and other resources at LeaderLab using the search page or looking at the training by role section.
UU Institute has two courses, Centered Leadership Part 1 001 and Centered Leadership Part 2 101 that can help any new or experienced leader learn more about their role in the congregation. These trainings have a small charge for them.
Congregations also need to make sure that you are updating the UUA with any leadership changes you have - this includes officers, board members, staff and committee chairs. We get our information from the UUA and it takes about a month for that update to trickle down to our database. If you make sure to update as soon as the switch happens, the new leaders will start getting our notifications instead of your outgoing leaders sooner. This update happens at myuua.org and instructions for updating your Leadership Information can be found at the UUA website.
As always, if you have questions about your leadership changes, board retreats, leadership development resources or any other congregational question please reach out to your primary contact. We’re here to help. Congrats to your incoming board members and many thanks to those who have been serving in this most challenging time.