The Finance Committee, alongside church leadership, work hard all year to manage and guide the stewardship of our congregation’s finances. Listen to Board President Lorie Craddock explain our recent budget and financial history.
- To review our line-item budget, please look at the church Finance Page.
- To read the text of Lorie’s video, scroll down.
Distribution of pledges by level of contribution:*
* $385,000 in pledges from 2020. Each slice of the pie represents ~$38,500
What we see:
30% of our pledge dollars are provided by 13 households (7% of total households.)
Almost half of our active households pledge less than $1,000 per year.
99 member households did not pledge in 2020 … we need to share the message that pledging at every level is welcome and appreciated. If you support the values and mission of this congregation, please consider showing your support with a pledge. Thank you.
VIDEO TRANSCRIPT:
Hello. My name is Lorie Craddock and I’m the current president of the Board of Trustees. I’m here today to talk a little bit about the pledge drive.
Now let me say over the course of this pledge drive, about 4 weeks, you will hear from a lot of well-spoken people who are smarter and better looking than me talk about the amazing things our church does—our ministry and outreach, social justice programs and faith development opportunities. This church community celebrates with us in good times and stands by us when we suffer. And no matter how this pledge drive goes, these things will remain true. UUCville is a wonderful, caring, compassionate home and always will be.
But today, I’m speaking to you as Board President and to my way of thinking, it is the Board’s job to manage the business of the church. To look out for our best interests as an organization and to make fiscally responsible decisions. To that end, I want to talk about the church’s finances, how we got to where we are today and what we need to do to move forward.
Let’s go back to July 2019 and the beginning of the church fiscal year. I had just started in this job and Stan Walker had just become our treasurer. We had not passed a 2019-20 budget and we were projected to close out the year with a $24K deficit from the 2018-19 budget. By August our projected deficit was $43K.
If you want a more detailed explanation about this time period, there is a super-helpful video for which Stan and I are famous. There is a link to the video on the church website.
But in September 2019 a miracle happened (or panic set it) and the church received nearly $40K unpledged donations, an increase in pledged donations of $25K and a no-interest $40K loan from an anonymous donor.
So in October with that increased revenue, we passed a balanced budget for 2019-20 with budgeted expenses at about $48K/month. Salary + benefits. Utilities. Supplies. Paperclips, candles, coffee.
If anyone ever wants to know more more about the budget, they are all available either on the website or in the minutes of each month’s Board meetings.
November….December….January…..we start to hear some noise about a virus in China
February 2020 the pledge drive begins.
March 2020—church closes and worship services go online. The pledge 2020-21 drive ends and we are $81K short of our goal.
April 2020—pledges continue to come in but we are still $40K short. In the meantime, income from other sources (rentals, fundraisers, etc) is clearly going to be MUCH lower, leaving us even further behind
May 2020—the church receives a PPP loan of $83K. Although pledges are still $30K short of our goal, and income is much reduced for the next year, the loan very nearly balances the budget.
June—trying to hold it together
July—new fiscal year starts
August—Linda OP starts work. Sean Skally our DAF goes full time. Finance Committee is able to create a balanced budget thanks to two of the staff agreeing to take a reduction in benefits that were in their contracts
September— online congregational meeting and we pass the balanced budget.
October
November
December
January
February
Now five months have passed with still no appreciable rental income or fundraising. Here we are back in February again starting the pledge drive.
Let’s start with the good news from a financial standpoint—
- Sean has done an amazing job managing the books and keeping expenses down.
- The building is in great shape thanks to the Glenn Short Trust and we don’t need to work about the boiler exploding or the roof collapsing.
- While fundraisers and rental income has been down, as members we have continued to honor our pledge commitments from last year, we continue to donate money on Sundays to both the social action collection and the church collection plate. Our endowment is now being pro fessionally managed with accurate record keeping and is valued at $500K.
- We will get out of this lock-down at some point and we will start to see income from rentals and fundraisers again.
Here are our challenges—
- Building expenses are fixed whether we are physically in the buildings or not. Gas/Electric/Water+Sewer all need to be paid. We can’t lower those expenses.
- Linda OP’s salary only covers 11 months this year. In 2021-22 it will cover 12 months
- Professional expenses for the entire staff have been cut over several preceding years, and should be restored. This budget also brings all staff up to 85% of the recommended salary UUA guidelines. Right now some staff paid less than 85% and some staff is just at 85%.
- Fundraising isn’t back yet. 2019 it was $19K. 2020 it was 6K.
- No guarantee of a second PPP loan
The Board of Trustees (and Minister) are committed to avoid a deficit budget but we are facing a formidable challenge, to increase our pledges significantly – ideally by 30%. We have a few members who can give over $5,000, but most of our members are giving well below the level we need to stay out of deficit budgeting.
Let’s take a look at this pie chart:
The pie chart takes the total revenue from the last pledge drive, $385K, and divides it into 10 equal slices or $38,500 each.
Let’s look at this first slice. There are 84 families giving between $10-1,000. An average of $452/family. That’s less than $20/week. The way our current revenue stream Instead counts on 20 families to give more than $5000 per year or about $100/week
Our church needs an average pledge of $2,200 per family every year to maintain current levels of staffing and programming. That translates into a $500 annual pledge for those who are currently not pledging or a $500 increase for the 84 families in that first slice of pie. And if you are pledging in the $1000-$3000 pledge range, an increase of 30% to your annual pledge.
Let me say that again so there is no confusion about what we need to do if we want to maintain the staff and programming at our church. For those members not pledging or pledging between $10-900, please increase your pledge by at least $500. For those members pledging between $900-3000, please increase your pledge by at least 30%.
The pledge drive is going to end on March 27 and the Finance Committee will prepare a budget based on the pledges we have at that point. We can’t continue the pledge drive for weeks and months beyond March 27. The staff needs to know if their positions are going to be funded and the volunteers managing the pledge drive deserve a firm end-date to their work.
We will soon mark a year of living with this pandemic yet our church has been able to hold a live service held every Sunday beginning the very first week of the shut -down. Now we hold two services with a robust turn-out and welcome people from all over the country. Our thriving active community has been helping people handle challenges of the coronavirus lockdowns. People have been paying their pledges and giving to those in need with Social Action Sundays.
We are a very active lively congregation and our thriving church is making a difference in people’s lives. This church is an amazing faith community. And I have faith that we will come together to make this pledge drive a success.
No matter what level you’re able to pledge at, every offering is honored and appreciated.
Please send in your form as a sign of support for the staff and programming in the coming year.