God and Mammon.
Apr. 15th, 2007 09:23 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rivkaToday was the budget meeting at church. Michael, in his role as church Treasurer, presented a proposed budget to the congregation for discussion of funding priorities. On Tuesday, the Board of Trustees will be hammering out a final budget that they all agree upon, and then the congregation will vote on it at the congregational meeting in two weeks. All in all, it's been a process that has had Michael tearing his hair out for at least the past month.
The big issue comes to this: people want more program funding than we have member donations to support. (That's always the case.) The church has substantial investment and endowment funds; right now we've got about $1.2 million in both funds combined, plus a couple hundred thousand dollars in specialized funds like a capital fund and a fund for "perpetual maintenance" of our buildings. Everyone agrees that some percentage of the interest yielded by our investment and endowment funds can be applied to funding current programs. There is substantial debate, however, about how much of the investment yield ought to be spent. Take more than about half the expected yield out, and certain members of the old guard start screaming that you're robbing the church's capital.
Today, at the budget meeting, one of our relatively new members raised her hand when Michael got to the part of his presentation where he reviewed our account balances.
"Why do we have so much money in the bank?" she asked.
I saw eyes blinking in confusion all around the parish hall. I don't think that's a question that's ever been asked in our church before. I don't think anyone has ever spoken up in a meeting and asked whether it makes sense for us to be storing up as much money in the bank as we possibly can.
And, you know, it's a damned good question. Why do we have so much money in the bank? Is "having a lot of money" part of our church's mission? If there are programs and building improvements that would make the church a better place, or social justice projects that would make the world a better place, does it make sense to put so much emphasis on maintaining or increasing the balance of our investments instead?
There have been some awfully lean years in our church's history. I suspect that some of the fiscal ultraconservatives remember the darkest days of the 1970s, when weekly attendance was down to a score or so of people and the church was dependent on welfare from the rest of the denomination to maintain our historically important building. Maybe they want to keep our belts tightened for that. But it ain't just that. One of the mainstays of the scrimp-and-savers actually told Michael, at a Board meeting, that we ought to be adding as much as we can to the investment fund because we need to save for the church's 200th anniversary in 2017. So some of it's definitely about looking backward. Some of it's just about holding on - keeping the church on a narrow path so that we can say "it didn't go down on our watch."
We have the same argument when it comes to "staffing for growth." It's pretty much a truism, in church circles, that if you want to increase the size of your program you have to increase your staff first. You can't have a plan like, "We'll wait until a whole bunch of families with young children join the church, and then we'll take that increase in pledge income and use it to hire a religious education director." Families with young children generally won't join a church without a good RE program, so if you wait for them to do so before you develop a program, you'll be waiting forever. Instead, you put money into the RE program first, and then more families join the church and pledge money. That's what our church has been doing, and it's been paying off in a huge way - half the kids in my class are from families who joined this year, and we've gone from a complaint of "sometimes we don't have enough kids to really hold class" to "sometimes we don't have enough chairs for all the kids."
Staffing for growth is obviously working. The strategy is supported by the experience of hundreds of other churches. But you still see the fiscal ultraconservatives complaining that "these new programs need to wait until we have the membership to support them." Meanwhile? We have $1.2 million in the bank.
After the meeting, I e-mailed the woman who asked why we had so much money. Among other things, I said, "It's too bad that, at a Unitarian-Universalist budget meeting, you probably can't get away with saying 'Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moths and rust destroy, and where thieves break in and steal.'" I'm not really advocating spending down the endowment - in fact, we can't; the investment fund is technically spendable, but the principal of the endowment fund is required by our bylaws, and by the terms under which most of the money was donated, to be inviolate.
But I would like to see more thoughtful, in-depth discussion of what our savings and investment goals should be, and whether our philosophy of church finance supports the mission of our church. I think that previously the discussion has been framed as "are we going to be responsible or irresponsible about making sure that our budgets don't ever impinge on the investment fund?" More and more, I'm becoming aware that that is completely the wrong question.
The big issue comes to this: people want more program funding than we have member donations to support. (That's always the case.) The church has substantial investment and endowment funds; right now we've got about $1.2 million in both funds combined, plus a couple hundred thousand dollars in specialized funds like a capital fund and a fund for "perpetual maintenance" of our buildings. Everyone agrees that some percentage of the interest yielded by our investment and endowment funds can be applied to funding current programs. There is substantial debate, however, about how much of the investment yield ought to be spent. Take more than about half the expected yield out, and certain members of the old guard start screaming that you're robbing the church's capital.
Today, at the budget meeting, one of our relatively new members raised her hand when Michael got to the part of his presentation where he reviewed our account balances.
"Why do we have so much money in the bank?" she asked.
I saw eyes blinking in confusion all around the parish hall. I don't think that's a question that's ever been asked in our church before. I don't think anyone has ever spoken up in a meeting and asked whether it makes sense for us to be storing up as much money in the bank as we possibly can.
And, you know, it's a damned good question. Why do we have so much money in the bank? Is "having a lot of money" part of our church's mission? If there are programs and building improvements that would make the church a better place, or social justice projects that would make the world a better place, does it make sense to put so much emphasis on maintaining or increasing the balance of our investments instead?
There have been some awfully lean years in our church's history. I suspect that some of the fiscal ultraconservatives remember the darkest days of the 1970s, when weekly attendance was down to a score or so of people and the church was dependent on welfare from the rest of the denomination to maintain our historically important building. Maybe they want to keep our belts tightened for that. But it ain't just that. One of the mainstays of the scrimp-and-savers actually told Michael, at a Board meeting, that we ought to be adding as much as we can to the investment fund because we need to save for the church's 200th anniversary in 2017. So some of it's definitely about looking backward. Some of it's just about holding on - keeping the church on a narrow path so that we can say "it didn't go down on our watch."
We have the same argument when it comes to "staffing for growth." It's pretty much a truism, in church circles, that if you want to increase the size of your program you have to increase your staff first. You can't have a plan like, "We'll wait until a whole bunch of families with young children join the church, and then we'll take that increase in pledge income and use it to hire a religious education director." Families with young children generally won't join a church without a good RE program, so if you wait for them to do so before you develop a program, you'll be waiting forever. Instead, you put money into the RE program first, and then more families join the church and pledge money. That's what our church has been doing, and it's been paying off in a huge way - half the kids in my class are from families who joined this year, and we've gone from a complaint of "sometimes we don't have enough kids to really hold class" to "sometimes we don't have enough chairs for all the kids."
Staffing for growth is obviously working. The strategy is supported by the experience of hundreds of other churches. But you still see the fiscal ultraconservatives complaining that "these new programs need to wait until we have the membership to support them." Meanwhile? We have $1.2 million in the bank.
After the meeting, I e-mailed the woman who asked why we had so much money. Among other things, I said, "It's too bad that, at a Unitarian-Universalist budget meeting, you probably can't get away with saying 'Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moths and rust destroy, and where thieves break in and steal.'" I'm not really advocating spending down the endowment - in fact, we can't; the investment fund is technically spendable, but the principal of the endowment fund is required by our bylaws, and by the terms under which most of the money was donated, to be inviolate.
But I would like to see more thoughtful, in-depth discussion of what our savings and investment goals should be, and whether our philosophy of church finance supports the mission of our church. I think that previously the discussion has been framed as "are we going to be responsible or irresponsible about making sure that our budgets don't ever impinge on the investment fund?" More and more, I'm becoming aware that that is completely the wrong question.
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Date: 2007-04-16 02:11 am (UTC)That's definitely been us in the past. Our building is nearly 200 years old, and there's extra pressure to sustain it because it is so historically significant to the denomination - it was the first building in America that was purpose-built to be a Unitarian church, and it's the site where the foundational sermon defining American Unitarianism (http://people.bu.edu/dklepper/RN212/unitarian.html) was preached by William Ellery Channing in 1819. I've actually seen visiting ministers get all teary when they ascend into the pulpit Channing preached from. I love our building, but there's no question that it's a huge millstone around our collective necks.
The church really suffered - seriously suffered - from white flight in the 1950s-1970s. Three suburban churches were founded during that era, and many many congregants left to join one of them. (Now, interestingly enough, we have many members who drive in from the suburbs to attend First Unitarian.) Over the course of the past decade, though, urban Baltimore has seen a steady increase. People are moving in to the city, not just staying there because they can't afford to leave. The neighborhood the church is in is seeing substantial investment and improvement.
We're also seeing real membership growth. Average weekly attendance is about 160; when Michael and I joined in 2001, it was hovering around 100. Pledge income has doubled in the past five years.
I think it's hard for some people to really believe that all that is really real, though.
It leads to lots of other questions, such as whether there are better ways for your current or future donors to leave bequests than adding to your endowment.
If someone were to die and leave me a lot of money tomorrow (which God forbid), I would want to give a substantial donation earmarked for capital improvements. I'd be particularly tempted to specify that the money was for improvements to our unbelievably inadequate RE building, but Michael would probably talk me into being a little less specific.