Barry Finkelstein  0:04  
Welcome, we are so glad you are joining us for what promises to be a lively, informative and inspiring conversation about helping our UU congregations thrive in these challenging times and into the future. I'm Barry Finkelstein, one of the consultants with Stewardship for Us. speaking to you from Alexandria, Virginia, where I am a member of the Mount Vernon Unitarian Church. I'll be joined by my stewardship for us colleague Liz Coit at a panel of three UU leaders who will share recent stories of how their congregations created vibrant, sustainable financial futures. Now, if you have a chalice handy or wish to pause the video and get one, please join me in lighting it and saying our chalice lighting words written by Katie Gelfand. we light our chalice as a symbol of gratitude as we celebrate the abundance of our lives together. In this sanctuary, we harvest bushels of strength for one another and offer our crop with the hands of compassion and generosity. In the authentic and gentle manner of our connections. We cultivate a simple sweetness to brighten our spirits. May we be grateful for the ways we nourish and uplift each other for it as the sharing of this hallowed time together that sustains us. But we have introductions. Liz and I have a combined 16 years of professional stewardship consulting experience, and have worked with well over 100 UU congregations. Our recent work has focused on helping congregations achieve financial sustainability. We're very pleased to welcome our three panelists, the Reverend Daniel Kanter, senior minister of First Unitarian Church of Dallas, Texas, Stacy Kottman, a lay leader at Georgia Mountains UU Church in Dahlonega, Georgia, and Reverend Samantha Wilson, interim minister at Mountain Vista UU Church in Tucson, Arizona.

We acknowledge that our congregations reside upon the traditional territories of numerous indigenous communities, including the Piscataway, Powhatan, Cherokee, Doeg, now known as Taux, Cherokee East, Yuchi, Nacotchtank,Wichita, Tawakoni, Jumanos, Kickapoo, Hohokam, Sobaipuri, Tohono O'odham and O'odham Jewed. Acknowledgement is only a beginning as we work for justice, freedom and self determination for all peoples and to build Beloved Community. For the next few minutes. Liz and I will speak about strategic financial and resource planning, and how we came to do the work that we do with our congregations and also about sustainability, based on our work with many new congregations. Well then hear from our three panelists, followed by some conversation and questions and answers and a closing. Now my interest in strategic financial planning for Unitarian Universalist congregations goes back at least a decade, I had been working as a stewardship consultant for several years and observed a few things. One, our congregations do really well at capital campaigns. We've known how to do them for a long time, and Unitarian Universalist seem willing, really eager to step up, dig deep, and make significant contributions to capital projects when they're broadly supported, and when they're clearly important to mission. Capital campaigns involve numerous members and usually almost the entire congregation, and people of all means are able to contribute. Now many of our congregations also do pretty well at creating and growing and using endowments. Although it takes some work, we're able to mount effective planned giving campaigns and inspire people to include their congregation, and sometimes other UU organizations in their estate plans. We also know how to conduct the best annual stewardship campaigns. Although to be honest, as I'm sure many of you have experienced, these tend to be more challenging. So to step back, we traditionally have done very well at long term financial management, capital programs and endowments, and short term operational funding. Even if the campaigns are challenging, we do manage typically to balance the budgets, where we often struggle is in the middle with intermediate midrange financial planning and thinking. It's hard to find money for reserves, and many of our congregations are caught short by a need for a new roof or a new HVAC system. We also have little financial elasticity to cover unforeseen emergencies, like the pandemic that has stressed so many of us these past two plus years. So with this backdrop, I started to imagine what it would be like if our congregations thought about finances, and really about all resources, not just money, but personnel, physical assets, buildings, all of the things that we have, all of the resources that we have. What if we thought about all that in a comprehensive and strategic way? Could we go beyond the short term annual planning and the long term intermittent investment In capital and endowment, this interest of mine grew steadily over the years, and then it exploded into the forefront as the pandemic came on the scene. Now the slide you're looking at is our answer to this challenge. It asks us to create a financial plan or model that goes out at least five perhaps as long as 10 years, and addresses all of the resource types available to us, shown on the left on the Ferris wheel type picture on the diagram, and address those also all the ways that we apply these resources to our mission needs. Shown on the right. Now I call this approach comprehensive. That is, it covers everything, everything that you can imagine in terms of resources and needs for resources. And it's also strategic in terms of time horizon, which means long range but also mid range. Now I've worked with quite a few congregations using this model, including two you'll hear from, hear about from our panelists. I've updated and refined the model over the years, the most recent enhancement being inclusion of a new type of fund, invented by one of my stewardship for US colleagues, Kay Crider that we're calling a sustainability fund, you see it on the left hand side of the slide in the 10 o'clock position on the Ferris Wheel. You'll hear more about this from Reverend Samantha. But in a nutshell, this is a way to invite people to contribute something like capital investment contributions, to create flexible funds that fill gaps, create reserves, and invest in midterm mission growth initiatives. I think you'll find this kind of fund has great appeal if positioned and communicated well. And it fits well with the kinds of contributions many of your members are looking to make.

Now, why do financial planning, there's so many reasons to do this, and not a single reason not to. If I had to pick three things on this slide to highlight they would be first. It's a way to educate and inspire your members about money, and about how money works in church. And also and really importantly about the possibilities and the promise of future mission work that their gifts of various types can support. And finding a way to talk to members about money in church is a valuable thing all by itself. Second, the plan that follows this approach can be transformative. It encourages people to think about money in a more expansive and less stressful way. Instead of focusing on meeting next year's budget, or funding a specific capital project with a target goal, all of which are important. This approach opens up a vista of other possibilities. To use a cliche, it invites thinking outside the box. And it's thinking that's not pressure to achieve immediate dollar goals. Now, third, this approach has practical implications, as you'll hear from our panelists, and that it is based on actual data, and multiple what if projections, this eliminates surprises, often draws attention to hidden strengths in the congregation. And it provides time to address challenges that otherwise would spring up seemingly without warning. So how should you get started? We've talked about the what of financial planning, what is it and the why. Now let's think about how to actually do it. So first, the how itself, what are the mechanisms for doing this? Now the good news is that this kind of financial planning is really pretty easy. You have all the baseline data that you need to get started. And then comes the fun part, figuring out the incredible range of what if possibilities, you will entertain and engaging the congregation in this exciting future oriented thinking. We at Stewardship for Us have a simple spreadsheet tool, and a process with which we can support you to get you going. Now who should be involved is super important. You want a small, broad based leadership team willing to work intensively for a few months to get this done. And not just money people not just us money people. You want people with vision people who are fully committed to your mission, people who are trusted by the congregation. Definitely go outside of the usual suspects when you're putting together this team. Now, as you'll hear, it's a relatively short term intensive assignment, which should make recruiting a little bit easier, although you will want to create a process to monitor and modify the plan over time. Now the last question is when? And this is really easy. The basic answer is now. While the idea is fresh in your minds, and after you've heard the inspiring stories of our panelists, I urge you to get started right away. Delaying will only delay realizing the benefits. And now you'll hear from my colleague Liz.

Liz Coit  9:39  
Greetings, I'm Liz Coit one of Stewardship for Us as five consultants serving UU congregations across the country to advance a culture of generosity and commitment. I'm speaking to you from Arlington, Virginia and attend All Souls Unitarian Church in Washington DC. I grew up in the Boston area and Land of the Massachusett, Nipmuc and Wampanoag tribes. Barry reviewed some key ingredients to strategic financial planning. And I'm going to continue the conversation by looking at financial sustainability for the future. Right now many of us are feeling the headwinds blowing our way as we look at the challenges ahead. Are we financially healthy? Are we just hanging on? Are we really solvent for the moment? But are we vulnerable to changes in the demographics in our churches and the economic foundations of our communities? How can we prepare for what's ahead and how far outside of the box are we willing to look and go to ensure a spiritual home, a sacred home, a safe home, in our congregations for the future of our children and our children's children. I'd like to start with some financial sustainability basics. These are all key indicators in this slide. Obviously a balanced annual budget that really is balanced a year in, year out at least three to five years. A reserve fund that can carry when other sources of revenue are disrupted. Aboard designated reserve fund is always helpful. And of course, the endowment, a form of endowment. And accompanying these sustainability funds are policies, gift use policies, and gift acceptance policies. Diverse revenue streams are important to all of us as is easily accessible, e-giving tools. Capital our special campaigns are likely to be needed every five to 10 years, a look at our debt, minimal or no debt. Future generations as we know even some of our children and grandchildren may not be able to handle debt. And certainly they're not inclined to take on debt. So we need to clear debt as much as we can before we pass on ourselves. Membership retention and membership growth are also key factors. Now let's look at saving for a rainy day. This slide highlights examples from differently sized congregations, all of which have some form of sustainability funds quite distinct from annual operating budget funds. Uses for endowments are of course repayable, repaying bridge loans, that we take out, construction projects, automatic transfers to annual operating budgets, that also should be accompanied with a cap often 4% is used. For designated reserve funds are tapped for unanticipated emergencies, that happens. Honestly, it does seem that while there are many congregations that have set up these sorts of funds, many more are in catch up mode in order to start them. As you'll hear from our panel, special fundraising efforts and designated and undesignated bequests and other sources of funding are primary sources for building up endowments and reserve funds. I'd like to invite you now to switch gears with me and look at two classic financial tools that help to ensure financial sustainability. One is financial stress testing. Do you remember the banking crisis back in the 90s. Starting in 1996, banks were required to conduct financial stress tests as a risk management tool to gauge whether liabilities were outstripping assets and paralyzing cash flow. Basic stress testing methods can help assess risks and enable better revenue forecasting is something that we all need to pay attention to. Stress testing takes good data, and that requires good software packages for both accounting and pledging slash giving recording. It also needs to take into account what are the cultural factors surrounding our decision making? How does a congregation discuss, discern and determine what happens now and in the future? Is it willing to undertake a long term planning process? A Finance Committee may want to conduct financial stress testing, say every three years or so to see what has changed and what needs to change. The second one is opportunity cost analysis. Finance Committees may be doing this already without naming it as such. But what's really important here is that there is a clear collective understanding of what the congregation is not able to do or acquire because financial choices are made by habit or short term priority setting. I invite congregations to take some time to consider what drives a congregation to prioritize one expense or investment over another just because perhaps it's a personal favorite. It's an acceptable ongoing expense. But what may be less apparent is that there are different investments needed to ensure that a congregation can become what it must become three to five to 10 years from now and beyond. I'll leave you with some financial sustainability, home truths, things that I like to keep in my back pocket and should be kept in mind as much as possible in our congregations. A strategic financial plan is prepared in conjunction with and supports an overall congregational strategic plan. The optimum scenario, of course, is that there is always reliable and repeatable revenue sources that cover the full costs of our congregational expenses, and aligns our mission and vision with our sources of funding. We look at building up reserves separate from endowments, and that we want those available to us for any disruption in ongoing income, as well as unexpected contingencies. And don't confuse building money with buying money. We need to make sure we know the difference between what constitutes capital expenses and what constitutes annual operating budget expenses. And finally, I think this is a new one, but it's definitely relevant to us. Think through whether an exit or major transformational strategy should be in our ongoing congregational planning processes. I hope this review has been helpful to you. And I'll now turn the conversation over to Reverend Daniel Kanter, Reverend Samantha Wilson and Stacy Kottman. Each will tell you a bit about themselves and their stories. And then we'll come back after their presentations for an open discussion with them, with Barry and with me. Thank you.

Rev Daniel Kanter  16:46  
I'm Reverend Daniel Kanter First Unitarian Church in Dallas, I can't tell you how many times in church board meetings I have heard the word sustainability. It feels like goalpost. It's always moving ahead. But on occasion with a lot of planning, and a lot of work a church can get there. In Dallas, it probably took 10 years, and a few strokes of luck and a whole lot of generosity and intentionality and focus to get to sustainability. It took policy changes. It took practical changes to how we operate. And it took a lot of fundraising. We have a $2.4 million annual budget. And in the last 20 years that I've been a minister at this church, and in a church where ministry is deeply involved in strategic work and stewardship. We have had four strategic plans, two building projects, we've raised probably over $20 million in capital funds. We've erased debts. We've started two nonprofits, we've created initiatives to support Unitarian Universalism with our Faith Forward curriculum that you might be using in your congregation. We've grown our endowment over 400%. We've started initiatives like our effort to teach OWL in our city and with our community partners in places that desperately need sexual literacy for teenagers and all so much more. Let me explain how we got there. One of the first things I did is senior minister was stop the slide. It was a practice in our finance department to balance the previous year's budget with funds coming in for the following year. So that on December 31 pledges paid for the upcoming year, we're covering shortfalls in the prior year. Once we stopped that slide, we could see our annual costs and income more clearly, we had to deal with a couple of years of deficit budgets and some use of reserves to balance things out. But we finally got a really good picture of what was happening. Next we did some long range planning, both looking at trends for income and expenses, and figuring out what we needed to do to operate within our means. Once we got a hold of that we could see that every summer we got into trouble financially, donations went down with attendance, and costs always stay the same. We changed our programming. We don't close in the summer anymore. We have ministers preaching and special events and inverted the attendance dip graph. We also asked our endowment and our members to put money into the system in July. After a number of years of doing this. We've had two years where we had not seen the strain on our finances coming during the summer so we've evened out that trend. We've also gotten people to do auto pay of their pledges, and that helps smooth that trend as well. We also used our strategic plans to create sustainability. In an early plan I was involved with we had the goal of doubling our pledge income, we got close. But we also had the great recession and we had to reboot that whole effort. More recently, we put into other five pillars of our plan, which included a building project, efforts to advance our digital presence, creating OWL community organization, developing a day school for peace and justice. And the last thing was paying down the $2.4 million mortgage debt that hung over us from the previous, the first building project we had here in 2011. The first money into this most recent campaign went to retiring that debt, that $2.4 million debt that was really a drain on our annual budget, and an additional amount went into our operating reserves. So we started the rest of our $10 million project in this last strategic plan debt free, and in solid shape for our operating budget. We also made efforts to increase our planned giving, we put together a program that you can find materials on our website at dallasuu.org, about putting the church in your will, your 401 K plan and etc. We got lucky in doing that. Three members of our church took that seriously. We went out and and raised the issue with with some of our lead donors, that putting the church in the will make a huge difference. Their estates left us a substantial amounts to carry us through this last strategic plan. They passed during the campaign and gave us a lot of leeway. So we we miss them. We also got a little lucky on that. But we did work hard to have them understand that planned giving makes a difference. We also raise money in the campaign that went into the endowment. We cut a deal with the endowment that any unrestricted gifts coming into the church would go directly into the endowment in exchange for a substantial first in foundational pledge to the annual campaign from endowment. So as I said, we raised the endowment by 400% over the last five, six years. And that endowment gift to the annual campaign went from around $30,000 a year to over 170,000 a year. And that'll continue to go up as the value of the fund goes up and the returns remain steady. We also created in our last two strategic plans income generating initiatives. My theory is that pledge based support for churches will continue to decrease. We see a trend of fewer larger annual gifts, we see more pledges, with smaller averages, and more and more unpledged giving in the church. You might be seeing this or some version of this in your own church. There is no doubt that the older participants in our church who had been our lead donors and are dying off are taking with them the idea that the church comes first. So we created our Faith Forward program, which provides curriculum for a fee now used in over 60 congregations on topics like spiritual practice and UU theology and leadership. And we're in the process of creating a day school, which meets the needs of the market research we did here in Dallas, and in our community that will provide some income to the church. Both these initiatives, very small portions of the budget, will impact the budget overall in the long term.

So sustainability now looks like the church that will come out of this last building project with a very small debt, under $100,000, to our endowment, which stands against the pledges that are out that are outstanding and still coming in. A sustainable church looks like a solid foundation for our $2.4 million annual budget. With staff sustainability that does things like saves for staff sabbaticals, and family leave, and has a fair and generous salary base and provides retirement funds for all full time staff after a year of service. There's more to say on all of this. It's been a great journey here in Dallas for me and for the congregation because we focused on becoming sustainable as a church. And we encourage you to consider all the ways that that's possible for you. I'm going to pass it to one of my colleagues now to fill in their stories.

Rev. Samantha Wilson  24:49  
Hi, I'm Reverend Samantha Wilson, and I'm the Interim minister here at Mountain Vista Unitarian Universalist Congregation in Northwest Tucson and we've had quite an Interesting experience in terms of crafting financial sustainability here in this congregation during my tenure here. Now this congregation has had an interesting journey. They had several years of kind of what they call wandering in the desert, they left their previous home and then began seeking a new home after a really successful capital campaign. Then in the midst of that, while they were renting from another location, they experienced a ministerial transition, which is when I came on, they were still looking for a building or looking for land to build on. And within the first week that I was joining them just getting settled, they found a building in September of 2019. And they found the perfect spot, they wanted to renovate it, and they began renovations and sought a loan to buy the property pretty immediately. But as you know, six months later, COVID hit. So the renovations continued, but we functionally closed down and so what they experienced was just deferred income, and then having to integrate all these additional expenses of construction, and renovation. And then also this deferred opening, the kind of energy and excitement that would bring people into a new building and increase the revenue. They had also experienced this really incredible successful financial capital campaign just a couple of years prior. So there was really low energy around fundraising and money. There's just a sense of, there was a huge push, they finally got the building they wanted and then suddenly, you couldn't even be in the building that they found. And that deferred income and the increase in expenditure just led to a pretty big deficit budget in my third and final year here, where they passed about an 80, which became almost $100,000 deficit budget. So the board going into this final year really knew that they wanted more support, that they wanted to feel like they were in right relationship with their finances. And so we got connected to Stewardship for Us. And we began to work with Barry. And the effort was going to be a financial plan. And it gathered together this planning process cross section from our finance committee, our board and our staff. And with Barry's help, we looked at three previous years of revenue and resource drivers and expenses, but then used the current data we had of our life, partly in the building at that point, so far. And we started to project into the future three to five years, kind of playing with different drivers, different expenditures, and etc. And we could create different kinds of scenarios using this planning spreadsheet. And it required of us a really deep dive into the finances of the congregation. And it required that this group of people who are really tied together, but maybe don't always talk to create shared understanding, had to have a shared understanding about the kind of real data of the financial life of the congregation how resources were flowing in and out. And Barry suggested to us different ways to look at this data, we could look at what the future looked like if we took more risks, what would the future maybe look like if we were more conservative. And as this team worked together over five months, looking at these numbers and playing with this spreadsheet, what they decided to do was imagine what if we kind of continued as is, which was a kind of conservative middle of the road, minimal investment scenario. What would happen financially to us in the next three to five years if we did that. So we called it our planning tool. And what it revealed to us was not just what might happen in the future, but it also revealed to us by requiring that we look at the data, all the things that had actually already happened. So because we did that we realized we were growing, that we had actually grown in membership by 12%, over COVID, that we had quadrupled our RE program, we took stock of all the engagement we had experienced through a mission program that we had done to revitalize our mission and values. We had adopted all these new Justice teams that had actually increased giving because the giving was really inspired by the work we were doing. And we had actually been part of a local collaborative called the Baja Four here in Arizona that had led to grant funding, and then we had this huge financial asset and in the new home. So we were really kind of inspired by what we found just by looking at the financial data that we had. But it also revealed that if we continued as is without making any big investments, that we would not really have a balanced budget for a long time. Yes, kind of the margin was slowly closing, but it really wasn't going to be anytime soon unless we did some significant investing or some significant cutting. And our reserves would be depleted very quickly. So what we were suggested to try on is a sustainability fund. What we needed was not to make significant cuts now, because we had learned that we were really growing, we had all these really positive stories through the pandemic while we were renovating. So it didn't make sense to cut yet. It was hard to imagine where the money would come if we wanted to keep going as is. And the idea of a sustainability fund came to us through Barry, which would be this kind of fun, separate from the reserves, but functioning like a short term, reserve or more like a capital campaign, but a campaign for the ministry of the congregation. It would be a five year fund asking folks to give special gifts. And its sole purpose is to balance the budget and fund really specific potential growth initiatives that were prioritized by the board. And so since we were planning, we knew we have a deficit, especially in the next few years, they're about to call a new Minister, what they wanted to create was this, like creative breath, so that they could actually continue the good work they were doing here, with an eye towards the future, rooted in the reality, but with the resources to sustain our ministry. So the stewardship fund or the steward, the stewardship campaign kind of emerged from this. We took from the tool, and we were inspired by sustainability fund. And we built a whole stewardship campaign around those two asks. One that people consider increasing their pledge, looking at how the budget functioned in a new building. And to that the folks consider a special gift to the sustainability fund. And we put lots of emphasis in ways we hadn't tried before on different ways people could give, especially because we have a significant retirement community in our congregation, we looked at ways people could give, for example, from their required minimum distribution, and we designed new material in our stewardship packets to help encourage people that they could give in different ways. We also decided that the stewardship campaign, because we had just gone through this financial planning tool should be run by the board and the minister. So we really invested in the idea that this core leadership were the best people to make bigger asks for the congregation, particularly this year, as well as to answer questions people had or concerns they had about the future of the congregation going forward. We also designed this really nice presentation where we create a story around the tool, inviting the congregation in to the planning process, and bringing people along in really clear and easy to understand ways, which was also an effort to just build the financial literacy in the congregation. And me and the Board President worked on fine tuning that for over a month, we brought it to the finance committee got feedback, brought that version of the board, got feedback, went back to the Finance Committee and got feedback. So we spent significant time building energy and excitement and even consensus among core leadership, especially those most dedicated to the finance of the church, into this tool and into the story that we hoped people would be part of. And so we brought that presentation to a special congregational meeting, we recorded it, we put together a web page where people could go visit and see that presentation. And we also designed an additional video to help walk people through the financial planning tool. We did all that. And then we began our stewardship visits, starting with the board as our core financial givers and then moving our way out.

The outcome is that we are still in it right now, as I record this video for you all, but there was incredible support. Even I would say, with an appropriate level of concern that people had there was this feeling of like this is actually rooted in clear, accurate and honest information. And people were really appreciative that we had spent so much time kind of doing some consensus and discernment building among leaders in advance. And so we began making our visits and we saw an incredible increase in pledge giving. And for our sustainability fund, our goal originally was to try to raise $100,000 this year, and try to raise another 100 to another 50, aiming for about 250,000 in the sustainability fund. And as of this video, we're nearing $200,000 in the sustainability fund. So I attribute that success to the inspired clarity of group discernment, the incredible cross section of people that were part of a planning process and then had a deeper understanding together and worked to create that deeper understanding. And the fact that that understanding was rooted in good information and good data that was real and honest, and that we saw from that data that we were growing. We were able to really check in on what's the story of this congregation right now, is this a time where we could risk or not, and then that it was rooted in our mission and a sense that the mission work we had done mattered and that it was worth funding. I also sense as a minister and an interim Minister, that financial literacy and health is just part of spiritual health in a congregation. And there was real power in the minister modeling that it's important to be engaged in the financial life of the church, to make it easy to understand, to make it rooted in data and to make it kind of a community collaborative process. So I feel like this congregation is healthier for the process. The incoming minister and board have challenges and decisions ahead of them. And those are also framed now as opportunities that this community has put some resources and funding into. So I recommend it, and I'm so grateful for it.

Stacy Kottman  36:01  
Hello, I'm Stacy Kottman, a member of the Georgia Mountains Unitarian Universalist Church in Dahlonega, Georgia, where I'm chair of the ad hoc finance committee and a member of our design committee. A little about our community, Dahlonega is a town of about 8000, an hour north of Atlanta. We're located in the foothills of the Appalachian Mountains. In fact, the southern end of the Appalachian trail starts just a few miles from my house. But our reach is greater than Dahlonega because we serve several counties in Northeast Georgia and our reach expanded further during COVID with an online presence. Dahlonega is a quaint town with lots of history, and over the years is evolved into a tourist destination with a number of local wineries and frequently were found on best places to retire list. They have a large state university campus in town that was previously a military college. So the people in our general community are very friendly and are great neighbors, but typically are very socially conservative, politically bright red, demographically, 90% white, and there's a church on every corner. A bit about GMUUC. Founded in 1994 by a small group of brave like minded souls, we've had steady growth over the years, and currently number 81 numbers, plus a good number of active friends. This represents around 60 pledging households. We have a settled three quarter time minister, Reverend Charlotte Arsenault  and part time positions for the administration, religious education and music. Our membership is steady through the pandemic thanks to early adoption of multi-platform Interactive zoom services, which kept us all connected. GMUUC is well known for supporting community partners, helping those in need, social justice causes including LGBTQ and voting rights. You might have heard that voting rights is a big topic in Georgia these days. We're also well known in the community as a welcoming congregation. Here's an example of our presence. Two years ago, a locally known white supremacist sponsored a political rally for our former president on one side of the town square, Reverend Arsenault had a counter protest on the other side, with a large police contingent in between. With all the ministers in town, she was just one of two or three to show up. So in this community, GMUUC feels a special responsibility to be a beacon of liberal religious thought and a safe haven for those who might otherwise not be accepted. For all of these reasons, the UUA designated GMUUC, a small but mighty congregation in 2019. So here's a bit about our financial successes and challenges. For years, the congregation dreamt of a new, larger and more visible facility to call home. Making a long story very short. I'm happy to report that we are moving into that new building this June. It was a $1.9 million project, and it's fully paid for no debt. Members and friends are remarkably dedicated, highly motivated, and extremely generous. We were happy to have Liz Coit's support in planning and executing the capital campaign. People are very excited to start using our new space this summer. This spring also working with Liz we are wrapping up a strategic planning process to reset our goals and vision for the next three years, including meeting our many challenges, one of which is our demographics. The median age of our members is over 70 and many of these are lead givers. Today, we can count the number of young families on one hand, certainly we don't want the new building to become a museum in 15 years. So the proposed Strategic Plan faces this challenge head on.

We intend to increase visibility in the greater community. We included membership growth and retention initiatives. We are deepening the spiritual and social connections within our community. And this includes planning to bring the ministry position to full time and increasing other staff support. And we plan to improve our financial sustainability. For perspective, our current operating budget is $160,000 annually. Now the congregation has been financially prudent. And we've maintained a balanced budget over the years. We have no intra year cash flow issues. And 98% of the pledges made are actually paid, which is a very high percentage in my experience. To address our financial sustainability, the Board of Trustees appointed an ad hoc finance committee to offer bylaw recommendations. Now we're ad hoc because the current bylaws do not establish a finance committee. So that's the first order of business. And our bylaw discussion has benefitted greatly from reviewing the bylaws and other congregations as well as Liz's insights. We start with the premise that a sustainable financial plan and the discipline to execute it is an intentional choice that a congregation must make. We next define the distinction between congregationally approved bylaws, which set overall ground rules and authorities while avoiding inflexible restrictions, and board approved policies, which fill out the details and enable execution of our plans. My favorite example of an inflexible restriction had a congregation I was previously a member of a large congregation where the bylaws mandated that there'll be 12 lay led councils or committees. It didn't say what they did, but there had to be 12. In looking at budget planning, we are currently focused on our annual pledge drive, which this year must support a 50% increase in the total budget primarily due to the increased operating costs of new building. But we are also planning to develop new sources of revenue. For the first time we'll have a Montessori school tenant in the new building. We hope to attract third party building rentals due to our new wonderful space and unique technology. And we're planning community bingo fundraisers, where we'll split proceeds with approved partners for good causes. We will institute a more orderly fully informed year around annual budgeting planning process. And we've created a three year financial planning tool that enables What If analysis around the goals of the strategic plan, which will be put in front of the congregation for consideration this May. When it comes to long term financial sustainability. We approach developing policies with a four legged stool in mind. Now I know typically stools are three legged but we wanted that extra stability so we made ours four. The first leg is an operational reserve to cover income and expense disruptions are one time program investments. This will be of only upon congregational approval, and this is a reserve we did not currently have. The second proposed leg is building grounds technology capital reserve. This is for emergencies and equipment replacement. This is fairly typical, but we intentionally added technology because of our $50,000 investment in multi-platform capabilities in the new building. These need to be maintained. This fund is currently in place in a different form. But has a low balance, it's available at the discretion of the board. For both operational and a capital reserve fund. We set a minimum required level at 10% of the annual operating budget. And if it drops below 10%. The bylaws propose would suggest that we add 1% of next year's operating budget into that fund until it's replenished. Because if it's not a bylaw requirement, the reserves are likely to stay underfunded. The third leg is a sustainable ministry reserve fund. Now this is in place and is currently funded at about half of our ministers annual salary. I think especially for a small congregation, such a fund offers a minister stability and peace of mind the cases of disruption in pledge payments. Finally, and the fourth leg and endowment fund. GMUUC has an endowment fund established and we have an active chalice keepers program in place to solicit commitments for future requests. But after applying most of the existing balances toward the new building, we need to rebuild that endowment fund. So in summary, it's been my experience that changing times bring new opportunities if the leadership is willing to identify and embrace them with the congregation. If anyone has any questions after the panel, feel free to send me an email and I would certainly welcome and appreciate suggestions from others with experience working through similar challenges and making similar plans. Thank you 

Barry Finkelstein  44:54  
Well, I'd like to thank our three panelists. I found those presentations very inspiring and informative, just exciting to think about what the potentials are, from financial planning and from sustainability. And I'll make just a couple of observations and then ask a question. So my first observation is that the idea of sustainability and a sustainability fund seems to really be catching on. And not just with with our three panelists here, but we're seeing this with other other congregations. And I'm really excited about that. I think the idea of creating a kind of new kind of mid level reserve type fund is really has great potential for our congregations, and also is the kind of opportunity that our members would like to respond to, with the same kinds of contributions that they might make to a capital campaign. So I love that. And then the other thing that's kind of related to that, that we folks in stewardship have learned over the years, that at least a couple of you mentioned, is that it's really important to focus on strengths in our congregations and Reverend Sam mentioned that looking at the data and look, as part of the financial modeling, pointed out some strengths in the congregation that might not have been well known. And what we have found is that, that people are more generous in response to strengths and opportunities than they are in response to needs or problems. And it seems like your stories have all borne that out as well. So I think that's terrific. So let me start by asking the three of you a question that I'm sure some of our congregations will have. And that is just how important is the role of the minister in all of this, and in financial planning and financial leadership and stewardship, and sustainability in general?

Rev Daniel Kanter  46:39  
Well, a couple things on that Barry, as you know, in my church, because we've worked together here, the CEO, meant, senior minister is very much involved in all of this, not only modeling half tithe in giving, which we we always say I give 5% of my, what I'm paid back to the church, because I believe so strongly in the church, and I give 5% away to organizations that I believe in. So modeling that but also just in every aspect of of planning and in conversations with the board around strategy and how it meets sustainability. So for us, we have a tradition where the minister really is deeply involved in that. And I will relate it also your question back to something you just said, which is we inadvertently created sustainability reserve funds, not your model, but we did it for specific programming in the church. And that was because somebody gave me a big gift and said, do what you need to do. And so I created specific reserved funds for building sinking fund, staff support fund, racial equity work, I created a legal defense fund in the event that we had to hire a lawyer or something to defend ourselves, for whatever reasons. That's our version of the sustainability funds. We have not yet started fundraising for those but just the other day, somebody said, you know, I know you're out there doing a lot of reproductive dignity work, do you have a fund to defend yourself? And I said, we have the Defense Fund, and they're getting give money to it. So it's things like that, that. I mean, we're concert ministers in this church are constantly involved, not only in fundraising, but in sustainability work and strategy. 

Barry Finkelstein  48:32  
Super, thanks.

Rev. Samantha Wilson  48:34  
Yeah, I would say at Mountain Vista. I don't know if we had such a strong history of the ministerial involvement in the finances. I think certainly during capital campaigns, there were but kind of your everyday year, that might not be where the minister it's been a church of this size would spend their time. And I've, like I said earlier, had been transformed by it. Because I know intellectually, in my preaching that I don't preach on stuff that I don't actually believe. And I don't ask people to do things that I'm not willing to do. And so it always felt a little ironic that there was this kind of season every year where you're asking someone to do something that you yourself haven't practiced, that haven't been comfortable with, aren't actually willing to do yourself. And then this year, it flipped. Suddenly, I was just deeply it was one of my number one priorities from the board. And suddenly, my my world became finances. And I actually it just it grounded and strengthened me differently. Some ways that the board helped me was that they knew that I was doing this. So there was a way that I could step back from other things. I took out certain office hours, for example, and I really made space in my schedule with the support from leadership, to just say, I am solely this month about talking to people about money, how they feel about it, where they're at with it, how their money feels in right relationship with the congregation if they need to lower their pledge and be supported in that. If they need to be provoked into imagining what it would mean like to give more, and then be celebrated in it and that that experience was very, very different for the community. And even recently, we had a board meeting where we started with money stories. Tell me your money story. So I feel like this the ministerial involvement. Here was part of one reason it made it so successful, I think, and it's transformed my ministry going forward.

Barry Finkelstein  50:24  
Thanks, Sam. 

Stacy Kottman  50:25  
Well, how about you, Stacy? Well, unlike my two panel, colleagues, I'm not a minister. I sit in the seats in and hear the sermons and sometimes I think giving a sermon about money is probably no less comfortable than listening to a sermon about money. But I think one key role a minister can play is keep the congregation focused on vision and mission. Because a budget is nothing more than an embodiment of what the congregation wants to achieve, in terms of its vision and mission is probably best positioned to make that translation at at a high level. And I found that was very powerful. I used to think having a minister that was stable in the congregation a while was important to raise money, but then in the congregation, we had an interim Minister come in. Within one week, he started the annual pledge drive cold and we have the most fabulous successful annual pledge drive we've ever had large increases in Agile pledges. And this minister didn't know anything about the congregation, didn't know anything about our history, knew about vision and mission. And he had a great tagline because Reverend Kanter, you broke up tithing and he brought up tithing. And he goes, now I know some of you is going to be you get your hackles up when I mentioned tithing, right, because that's a very conservative sound. He said, If you don't want to give 10% Don't worry about it give 11. So it was a very successful engagement by the Minister. 

Liz Coit  51:49  
Before I bring up another question for our panelists. As Barry mentioned earlier, in our session here, we have worked with lots of congregations across the country. And one of the key factors that I've seen is when the Minister is not on board in annual pledge drives or capital campaigns, it is a real Achilles heel. And some of our congregations actually have a history of keeping the minister out of anything that has to do with money on one of the suppositions that if the Minister knew that someone gave more than someone else, that the minister would automatically favor that person or favor what they thought. And I think that speaks to trying to make sure your congregation is built on trust and right relations from the start with the minister, as the first person that that involves. So I think what we brought into our panels are three congregations where ministry is very strong and very supportive and very engaged and invested in the financial part of it, and in the generosity part of it. And so working toward that end, is very important, especially in those congregations where there's been this history of segregating the minister away from the money conversation. But with that, I'll move on to my own question for the panel, which is, and you all touched on this, but the it is the question of engagement, it is the question of techniques for engaging them. And creating that culture of giving. It could be, as you know, simply thought of is what is really the best marketing strategy. Stacy, you've talked about mission and vision, how do you speak that language as the asking for a sustainability fund or and then Reverend Daniels case, multiple sustainability funds and special funds? So could you talk about actual techniques, encouragement, incentivization, motivation in building these funds? On the ground work around a Stewardship Committee can fall apart and one of the things that I find is the more distant your met your technique is ie, from the pulpit, but not calls or not visits. It can be a deterrent from actually raising the money so how, how does a congregation really reach people in an engaging way?

Rev Daniel Kanter  54:25  
So I mean, at the scale that I'm at met with a with a very large church in our association, I have staff who just do communications and marketing. So we work, we work on what our messaging to the congregation is, when and how they're going to receive those things every week. So you know, when Canvas comes around, we're working months in advance. We usually tie our canvas or annual Canvas to our annual theme year. We don't use theme months we use a overarching theme for the year. So we are, we are talking through that at the beginning of each program year with our congregation, and it all usually boils down to why does this place matter in your life today? And for some of our donors, why does it matter that we exist in this place, in this time, because we have members who are all over the country at this point. And don't go to the marches downtown Dallas, so, or whatever it is, engagements we're doing here. So marketing staff work on, you know, what is the messaging that makes sense? You know, but how do you tie your commitment to the congregation and its mission and its impact not only in your life as a consumer, but in the life of our community? And in the world beyond that? Because that is really what is sustaining this place? I think we are combating a lot of consumerism, what do I get out of this? Or what is it get? So it, you know, you don't go to church just to get fed and go and you disappear, you have to you go to church to be part of something bigger than yourself, you might change, grow spiritually, and gain a lot. But you're also there to support a larger impact in your community and beyond. And so we try to tell those stories, we always have testimonials from members of the church and leaders who are impacted by the church. And we also go back and look at the year that we just had, how many service hours did we, you know, accumulate through our committees? How did how much? What did we do? You know, so we're, we're not just, it's not just in the abstract, it's actually like, this place did this, you know, X, Y and Z. And we're telling those stories, when we come around to our annual canvass for sure. Capital campaigns slightly different. Because we're putting a mission, a vision that's not yet here in front of people helps to have a building project and that, but that doesn't always have to be. So that's quick response to your question.

Stacy Kottman  57:20  
So as a small community of about 80, hearty members, we we have kind of very informal peer to peer communications on a lot of bases in working on a lot of committees, and working in the community. Even so, it's been my experience, whether it's a small or large congregation, the budgeting process, can easily become maybe held to the 11th hour, maybe well, we'll do what we did last year, maybe we'll bump up the staff a couple percent. I think it's very important in any size congregation, because good governance is good governance, that the congregation understand and appreciate how the budget process works, and how these recommendations that reflect our aspirations, and our mission were recommended. It just wasn't that we just copied in last year's budget and changed a couple of numbers, they were either they were based on thoughts or reflections by the board. Or as in our case, they're based on a whole strategic planning process that we're in the midst of. But I think being very transparent, and educating members on the budget priorities is a necessary condition. And then on top of that, you would do the inspiration and the aspiration. And I think those two are very important because it's too easy not to engage people, I think just just out of habit.

Barry Finkelstein  58:45  
And if I could jump in, I would say that not just in our congregations but in, in all the all the clients that I've worked with over the years, communication is just one of the big challenges. It's very hard to communicate with people, they don't get the messages, they tune out. People have a relatively short attention span these days. And and I think you're, you're really have to work at that. And it's, it's great, Daniel, I love that we have such different different sizes and, and compositions of churches here, because it on some levels, that seems very different from an 80 member congregation to 1100 member or whatever Dallas is at the moment. But at the same time communication is still hard even with 80 people. It's hard to reach people and it's hard to get them to focus. And you know, using all the tools and whether it's informal communication or formal and using social media, and telephones and whatever I think is it's just all part of it.

Rev. Samantha Wilson  59:43  
I I was trying to school myself up this year because this was a board priority. So I also took a fundraising class this year from Kim Klein. And her statement that she pounded into our heads is that people give money to organizations that meet needs not that have needs. And so I hear that in both of the stories that you both were sharing. And it was this kind of loopy reality with Mountain Vista. When we did all that data work together, we actually realized how many needs we were meeting. And I don't think we would have had such a clear picture of what we were doing well, if we hadn't done the numbers work. And in a way, the way we we named this was that this was a capital campaign, and they had just done this kind of capital campaign for this building. But this was a capital campaign for the ministries of the building. So you had just funded this place. Now, how did you fund the life force that was going to emerge within it. And we also kind of described it as giving, giving themselves a big breath, that they could think of money over longer periods of time than just pay, it's either a super long term fund, or it's next year that they could give themselves these like creative breaths, that allowed their leaders to make to make good choices, rather than these pressure filled choices based on artificially imposed timelines that we all made up and we can all reimagine. And so that was really helpful to people just to say, Oh, this is about funding what we love creatively and giving ourselves as leader space and time to do the right thing. And when we felt that way about it, then it was just like, let's, let's do this thing that we believe in and take care of each other.

Rev Daniel Kanter  1:01:30  
I was gonna go back to Liz, your question just to get very practical on this, because Barry, kind of addressed this a little bit, we always do a direct mail to every member family for the annual canvass. In our capital campaign, we tried to have one on one with everybody. And that was very difficult. When it got harder. We did one on groups. But we also do videos, we also do social media posting week. So we try to hit this thing in many different ways at the moment. So our annual canvass pretty much runs itself. We also do a lot of projecting on people's pledges, and we check in with folks. And then we do a lot of follow up to go back after the mailing goes out. And we've gone through a month or so the budget process, Stacy's in the middle of that, we always set our budget on what we receive our project we're going to receive rather than, you know, set the budget, and then try to fill that hole. So there's a lot that goes on, in all of this, communicating back reflecting back. And we always have a parish meeting, right, you know, at the end of the canvass where we can reflect back what what's real to the members of the church. So those are some of the more specific things I think you were asking about, too.

Liz Coit  1:02:59  
Thank you. Well, now, we've got another question coming from one of our panelists. So, Reverand Sam, give us your best shot here.

Rev. Samantha Wilson  1:03:09  
Yeah, my best my best shot is a curiosity of if we were forced the five of us to get to the heart of what we learned. And if someone was coming on our heels with similar situations as our own, what would be the message, what would be the nugget we would want to give them? What's the bumper sticker, but a little bit longer.

Liz Coit  1:03:31  
From where Barry and I sit, having talked to lots of congregations, pre pandemic, pre versus post recession, pre pandemic, pandemic. The successful congregations that I see are those that truly show a covenant of cooperation and caring and the work and a commitment to leadership with love. That does start with the minister, but the board also. And the leadership and finance and stewardship, where there's truly a commitment to listening and caring for each other that then extends to how the rest of the congregation is asked to participate in a capital campaign or a stewardship campaign or a sustainability fundraising drive. That's what I feel I I can sense that those congregations are going to be more successful than those that don't have that basic human respect, caring and building of caring community.

Rev Daniel Kanter  1:04:44  
I don't know exactly how to answer this question, except to say a few things more. There's so much more to learn, right and no minister coming out of seminary, including myself and all the large church ministers I know we're ever trained for any of this stuff. You know, so get get an education is so I'm so glad to hear Samantha that you said you, you went took a class because because it just takes a lot. And you know, I think in in Unitarian Universalism, whether you're an 80 member church or over 1100 member church, we have an allergy to things like thinking about who's really sustaining the church and the mat, the truth of the matter is 25% of my church support 75% of the annual giving, and to forget that or to try to, you know, pretend that's not real, or to smooth that out somehow, and just think everyone's the same. It's just not the case. I do have to prioritize some of my top donors, because they're going to move the needle, we have a strategy to communicate and be with top 25% donors, and then the next 25%, because we know that's where the needle moves. Whether we like that message or not, is neither here nor there, you kind of have to get past that. The other reality I think I said in my in my statement, which is something I learned from Lauren Mead, at the Alban Institute 25 years ago, which was that the the older elder donors who grew up prioritizing the church as a place of giving are dying. So if you take your top 10 donors, and you put ages next to them, I guarantee you, they're probably over 75 years old. So you have to create a strategy to increase the base of of donors in your annual giving. And that takes a lot of relational work, takes a lot of storytelling, and a lot of impact work. So there's strategies that we as ministers were never trained to do, that we have to learn. And we can learn from Liz and Barry, and we can learn from each other. And but we have to be talking about these things with our leaders too. And the leadership's of churches are really important. If they come at us with allergy to authority or, or these ideas around stewardship, it's an uphill climb that's really going to not serve the church well. So I don't know if that's a bumper sticker. That's a really long bumper sticker. But those are some of the additional things that anybody who asked me about fundraising I talk to them about.

Barry Finkelstein  1:07:30  
It's a bumper sticker that goes on the church bus or something. 

Rev. Samantha Wilson  1:07:34  
Thereit is. It's the billboard I like an electronic billboard.

Stacy Kottman  1:07:43  
Why don't one thing we're doing in our new building is incorporating multi-platform technology as a way to expand that reach not only within the community, but geographically. It's an experiment. Well, we'll see where that goes. But also, I think it is just important to remind ourselves and the congregants, why it is UUism is unique. And it's presumably it feels more so as we see the challenges nationally entered the world every day. The place that promotes and values liberal religious thought, doesn't seem to be an expanding community. And I think it's a community in a way of thought that's worth preserving and promoting and supporting financially. And aside from giving to a budget, I think giving to that kind of vision and saying, you know, what, what would this be worth if you didn't have the opportunity? You know, how many people in the Ukraine are saying that now? I think that that's just a very powerful message that we can remind ourselves without being afraid.

Barry Finkelstein  1:08:54  
I would say, you know, I also don't really have a short bumper sticker thing, but a couple of things that come to mind that haven't been said that I've learned. One is that asking people for things is powerful. And we Unitarian Universalist, maybe humans in general, are uncomfortable asking, and we're uncomfortable recognizing the value and the power of asking and, and I think that stewardship in many ways is about giving and receiving and connecting with each other. And part of that is asking people and asking people to volunteer to do things, asking people to give money, asking the leadership to be involved, asking people to tell their stories, like you're saying, Stacy to talk about why, why are we why are we here today? Why are we so committed to Unitarian Universalism. And so to me that that's a really powerful message that I think is sometimes overlooked.

Rev Daniel Kanter  1:09:46  
One of the things that we say I have a saying in this church, which could be maybe not a bumper sticker but a t shirt is from Reverend Rahbl, who was here from the early 40s to the early 60s, Robert Rahbl who said Unitarians are rational people, they know that it takes money to run a church period. And we have to be up to claim that we have. 

Barry Finkelstein  1:10:11  
That's right.

Rev. Samantha Wilson  1:10:12  
I feel like my nugget is a little bit stealing from everyone else's nuggets as well, especially Liz, when you mentioned the, the idea that ministers should know what people give. I almost want to laugh at that. Like we don't know, especially in a church my size, or maybe even Stacy's size like, like, in a church when we're about 130 members, 150 friends? It of course I, of course, I know. I mean, if I'm all up in your business and your life and your house, like I have a sense of where you are now, we're just not talking about it. And of course, there's surprises along the way. But it's kind of it's a very foolhardy belief. And I think there's a minister Tandi Rogers, who works in conflict engagement work, and she likes to say something to the tune of all conflict deserves a pastoral response. And I don't think money is any different. I think that money in fundraising and stewardship in a congregation is fundamentally a pastoral issue, people's relationship to money, people's relationship to capitalism and people's relationship to giving. I feel like that's firmly in ministerial territory. And so I feel my nugget is that this was an unclaimed part of my power that I had neglected for a really long time. And it wasn't benefiting anyone least of all myself. So my bumper sticker would be fundraising as pastoral. You're doing pastoral care when you talk to people about their money.

Liz Coit  1:11:42  
Wonder, wow, what a great way to that's a great final nugget. So we have billboards, electronic billboards, bulletin boards, multi platforms, and then bumper stickers. That's a terrific way to end all this. And I want to thank you all for for joining us for this special General Assembly 2022 pre recorded video. And you all can find this when you go to the GA 2022 website at the uua.org. And thank you again for joining us. We're going to end with a closing reading a very short one. And a little bit of a pivot from the you know, hardcore subjects we've been taking up. This is a quote from Gloria Steinem. Without leaps of imagination or dreaming, we lose the excitement of possibilities. Dreaming after all, is a form of planning. And with that, thank you blessings to all.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai