 We'll do what we can to get through this. And this meeting is being recorded. I see that that started just now. So please know that any comments, anything on video, this will be recorded and made available to folks who couldn't be here, so just be aware of that. One more note about meeting controls. So on your own device, so everyone on the call, you can just familiarize yourself with the mute and unmute function and the chat function. You know, at the beginning of the meeting, if you aren't already familiar with that, if you, on most, I can't describe what it looks like for everyone, but on most computers and phones, those controls are toward the bottom of the screen. And so we will use those throughout the meeting. So check that out now if you're not already familiar with it. And we will be monitoring the chat throughout the meeting. So all right, I'm going to, well, thank you. First of all, thank you to Dorit, Monica, and Creel, helping gather us. They're going to be available throughout the meeting to help with logistics. We're going to, well, yeah, anyway, thank you. You've done a lot of work prior to this point and are going to continue to help with the meeting administration. I'm going to share my screen now. Get PowerPoint up. Oh, one more note on just on muting and unmuting, various points throughout the meeting. The host will be muting everyone and unmuting everyone. So please just keep an eye on that on your own connection, because we will want to be able to use functionality and we'll also want to be able to mute everyone so that everyone can hear well. So just please be aware that we'll be using different, you know, different modes throughout the meeting and just be attentive to what can be heard and seen on your screen and on your connection. All right. So Doug, if you're available to do our opening reading. I am. Good morning, everyone. Our opening reading is taken from the Reverend Sarah Eileen Lowell, reading entitled, Seeking That Which Unites. Spirit of life and love. In this time of uncertainty, a fear and angst, our nation and our world holds its collective breath. In this time when rhetoric blasters about and words are used as weapons, our nation clenches its fists, tightens its shoulders, eyes squeeze shut, some prepare for a fight. May we remember that we are a people of resilience. We have faced uncertainty before. We have weathered storms. We have been consumed by flames. We have risen like the phoenix from the ashes and we will again. We the people, may we remember our shared humanity, our universal kinship, our interdependence. As we quench our fists and breathe together, breathing in love and breathing out peace, may we recognize the spark of the divine inside of all of us, even those we are not quite sure about. In this time of uncertainty, may we remember that the good will go on as we move forward together, we the people seeking that which unites us with our arms reaching out wide for life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, may love prevail. So may it be. Thank you, Doug. Great. So I'm going to go and do a review of the agenda quickly. So this is our, hang on a second a little bit. All right, we're going to start off with, so aside from the zoom logistics, we'll try and imagine we will continue to talk about throughout the meeting. We do have a formal rules of procedure adoption slide. We will move into that just to kind of center us as we're experiencing our first virtual parish meeting. So we will have a few more words about that, but before we get to that, so just a preview of the agenda, first of all, the handouts of things that we would normally hand out as you enter the auditorium, just if you don't already have those, the materials for the meeting are available on the same portion of the website where the link to this meeting was available. There's a packet that has the budget, the minutes from the last parish meeting as well as bios for all of the candidates that will be electing today. So just taking a minute, if you have any, if you don't have those, please comment and chat and someone will help you out with that. So the items on the agenda, we will be approving the minutes from the last parish meeting. We have candidates to vote on for the board of trustees and the foundation board and of course our ministerial search committee. I will be voting on our budget for the upcoming fiscal year and we have an update from the stewardship team and from the foundation. We'll give a little bit of background to catch everyone up on the process to create the ministerial search committee and we will vote on that group. They end just a few notes on some major transitions involving our intern minister and our current and future interim ministers. So just a few comments on how we will conduct this meeting. So this is our, this is our spring parish meeting. We are unable to meet in person for public and personal safety reasons. So our bylaws do have a very broad allowance for meeting off campus if there are unusual circumstances. So we are in those unusual circumstances gathering virtually by phone and teleconference. So as the first act of this meeting, we will formally adopt these rules of procedure and this will also serve as a practice vote just to make sure everyone's clear on process. So we are actually conducting our business meeting and just to note there's precedent for this. A lot of congregations around the country are holding virtual meetings to keep going with the calendar as normal. And also at the regional and national level our regional conference, the Mid-America region held their most recent meeting virtually including the business session and the same thing will happen for GA next month in June toward the end of the month. GA will be all virtual and that will include a business session as well. So we have established quorum. We have at least 70 members present and I think we are well above that. Monica, do we have a sense of approximately how many members are present? I see 102 participants but we are still furiously putting things into the sign-in. So we have more than 102 participants. Okay, thank you. All right. So just confirming that we do have quorum and just to have kind of a blanket statement here, we are trying to keep the logistics as similar as possible to what we would do if we were in-person and we will use the Zoom functionality as needed. And so one of those functions that we know we want to use is the chat function. We have board members who will help moderate that discussion if there are questions later on or comments. So for each item that we're voting on, I will read the motion. We have all the motions are pretty much prepared in advance and I will call for a second and then we will ask for discussion and then we'll vote. So as we would in-person, please vote only if eligible. If you're a currently participating member and if you're on camera, if you can be seen, just raise your hand and we mean your actual hand, not the Zoom button. That's a different feature. So when we get to that point, as we would in the room, we will just get a sense of where the A's and A's are and if you are on the phone. So during the voting, we will unmute everyone. So if you can be seen on camera, please just raise your hand and if you are only on the phone and can't be seen on camera, please, please vote out loud. Please say yay when those are called for and nay when those are called for. And so that way we'll be able to hear the few people who are just on the phone only. Creole or Monica, do we have a sense of how many folks are just on the phone where we can't see on camera? Approximately, not sure if you heard my question, but we can, if you did. I can hear you, I'm just counting. Okay, sure. I think I'm seeing six. Does that align with what you're seeing, Creole? It's hard because we've merged some people, although actually, no, I think it's only six. Creole, how does that sound to you? I don't know. I'm counting a lot more folks who don't have their videos turned on. I guess I don't know. Are you looking for phone numbers only or folks without a video on? You know what I'm seeing in participants, people that only have the telephone icon. I think those that have the video icon. I see, yep. Just the telephone is quite a bit fewer, yep. Although there might be a couple of people that have iPads that are showing up as just video. So, Terry, I'd say we have less than 10. All right, great. Just wanted to get a little bit of a sense of that. And as we just did now, we will just slow down if needed. If we need to figure something out, we need to figure out something technically, or if there's any confusion, we'll just slow down and get through the agenda. So to start off our meeting, so I propose we adopt these rules of procedure as just outlined in method of voting. Is there a second to adopt the rules of procedure for this meeting? I second it. Alice Delacroix. Thank you, Alice. All right. So are there any questions before we get started just on the rules of procedure, just on the holding of our business meeting through Zoom teleconference and the method of voting? Are there any questions? Terry, I have a question. John, how does that, Alice, spell her last name, please? Delacroix, E-Z-N-DAVID-E-L-A-Q-U-E-S-S, rhymes with make a mess. Delacroix. I have a question. Yes, someone had a question. I have a question. Go ahead. When you're asking for votes, do you want us to speak or do you want us to hold up our hand? Hold up your hand. If you're on camera, hold up your hand. When you want to speak, do you want us to speak or hold up our hand? I'd say first preference, if possible, enter questions and comments in the chat. Creole, a member of the Board of Trustees, is going to compile those to help moderate that. So that's the first choice, is to use news chat. Okay, good. Are there other questions? Anything that's come in via chat? No, we're doing okay on the question side. I will note that some people may not be technologically competent to use chat, in which case, talk. That's my suggestion. If they can't figure out how to chat. Right, keeping in mind that we've got a lot of people on the line, so please try to use chat if we can, so we can keep the meeting moving forward. Terry, how about just a quick reminder to people that at the bottom of your Zoom screen, you might have to hover over it with your mouse to get the bottom ribbon to show up, and there's literally a little dialogue box with the word chat underneath it, and if you click that, it will show a box that actually allows you to essentially text back and forth. So it identifies who's texting or chatting and what they're saying, and then it allows the staff to have a permanent record, not permanent, but an actual written-of record, so it makes it easier for Creole and Monica and others to keep track of who's sacking, for example, or things like that. Yes, thank you. All right, so let's try out voting now. There are no other questions about the rules of procedure, so I move we adopt the rules of procedure as presented on the screen here. All in favor, if you are on camera, please raise your hand to vote yes. If you are on the phone, please say yes. Yes, verbally. Yes. Hi. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. And Creole or Dord, I will let you notify the group when you're ready to have folks lower their hands. Okay. Thanks. I have a question. Yes. The question I have is how do we know that you've recorded our voice when everybody is saying yes? Well, votes will be by consent by what's the parliamentary term. Just a sense of the assembly unless we feel there's a need or a vote and counting would take more time, but we can do that if needed. If votes seem to be majority yeas, we won't need to count precise votes. And again, that's similar to what we do in person. We would have verbal yeas and nays. And so we're trying to replicate that here. I see. Thank you. Sorry. Hey, Terry, yep, I'm getting a majority vote yes. Sorry, Dora, was that, did you want to go too? No, I think that was me. Terry, the only other suggestion I'd have for the other vote is if you could stop sharing your screen. I don't know about you, Creel, but I could see everyone wake up here. I would agree that would be helpful. So when I, oh, no, that's a good idea. That's a good idea, okay. I could see gallery view, and then I could just have you. When I share my screen, you can also see the gallery then, seeing. No, I don't believe so. Okay, okay. Let's see again. Cool, that's great, thank you. Terry, people could please keep themselves on mute almost all the time, and only unmute yourself when you need to say something. Well, and we'll do that for the majority of meeting as the host just did now. So again, just be aware that we will use mute and unmute, and you, if it's a portion of the meeting when you're intending to speak, you may need to unmute manually. All right, so I think we have, the yeas recorded, are there any nays? So same voting procedure if you're on the phone, or phone by voice, camera by raising your hand, are there any nays on adopting the rules of procedure? Good, Creel? Yeah, I'm not saying any nays, and I didn't hear any either. Are there any abstentions? We'll just do this for all the votes. Okay, well, thank you, everyone. So our first item on the agenda is to approve the minutes from the last parish meeting. So again, those were distributed in the meeting packet. So this is from our February 2nd, 2020 parish meeting in person, so several months ago. Is there a second to approve the minutes? Either chat or verbally is fine, we will record that. All right, I have, oh, we have many seconds. Let's see who was first. I think Rob Savage was first. All right, any questions or discussion around the minutes from the last parish meeting? So I'm gonna stop sharing my screen so we can see the voting more easily. All right, so again, same process. Raise your hand if you are on camera and vote out loud if you're on the phone. All those in favor, please raise your hand or say aye. Aye. All right, I'm seeing a majority. Please lower your hands now. Are there any nays? John, are you voting nay? John, we're on nay. The minutes are adopted. I will go back to the, I'll go back to sharing my screen for the next agenda. Sorry, I think I was on mute for a moment. Okay, so our next agenda item is nominees for the FUS and Foundation Board of Trustees. So first up, so with the, we have bios for each nominee for the three groups that we are voting on today. So I will refer you to that packet for the details. I hope you'll read those. You know, we have a very diverse group of folks, you know, joining our boards. And I will just scroll through these relatively quickly just to read through the names before we vote. So first up, Kendall Harrison, these are the Foundation Board members. So first up, Kendall Harrison, Carol Stang and Kurt Stiggy. There's a motion to approve these members of the Foundation's Board of Trustees for three year terms. I will stop sharing. Is there a second to this motion? I believe there were many seconds. I think Marker and Nancy Bader-Schultz was the first to second this. I wish I had one of the questions. I'd love to have one somewhere. All right, is there, please stay on mute if you can unless you have a question. All right, is there any discussion on the Foundation Board candidates? Seeing no questions, I will call the vote. All those in favor, please raise your hand or say aye. Aye. All right, thank you. Please lower your hands. Terry, who? John, are you trying to say something? Are there any nays? Please, same process. Are there any nays? Please raise your hand or say name. Who moved it? Who seconded it, please? Well, the motion is from the, you know, it's from the Board. I believe Nancy Bader-Schultz was the first to second. I don't see any nays, Terry. All right, motion carries. I will share my screen again. All right, we have several folks either continuing or joining or rejoining the Board. You know, it's interesting we have, you know we've had a lot of work and focus going on around the candidates for the Ministerial Search Committee. But as we were thinking about the composition of the Board for the next year, for the next three years, you know, we're keeping a lot of those same considerations in mind. So we're thrilled to have several candidates for the Board of Trustees that are very connected to the congregation and, you know, have been very active members. And I think there will be real assets to our congregation as we move through the year that we will be in search. So we have, we actually have this configured as separate votes for each person. So first is John McEvna, who will be continuing as Secretary of the Board. This will be his second term on the Board. And let's, so move to this. I don't know if we need to second each individual vote here when it's coming from the Nominating Committee, but we could, oh, I'm just looking, just looking at a comment we could try to announce when everyone's being muted and unmuted. I'd say in general, the intent of, you know, when we're administering the meeting, we're trying to keep everyone muted, except for when we're voting. And our meeting kind of has a lot of votes right now. So, but that, that's the intent. Voting on John McEvna for Secretary of the Board. Thank you, John, for agreeing to another term. So I, I'll in favor, please say, hand lower your hands for this section. All right. Are there any nays? Motion carries. Thank you, John, who is also taking notes as we speak. Kerry, you're muted. Yeah, I know. It's a keeps going back and forth. Can you hear? All right. I think I'm muted now. Zara Canada for Board of Trustees, President-elect position is Alyssa Ryan-Joy. Very happy that she was interested in joining the board. So this position is a one-year term as President-elect and then two years as president. And I think Alyssa may be even more interested in governance than I am, which is a feat. So, all right. So let's vote again. I will stop sharing my screen. All in favor, please say aye or raise your hand. Aye. Aye. I'll go back and I'll go like this. All right. Aye. Seeing lots of ayes, thank you. Please lower your hands. Are there any nays? Nays. The joke nays that are real nays. Any nays to record? I don't see any, Terry. I don't know what that was at the beginning. Okay. Some noise. All right. Thank you very much. I believe there would be a round of applause at this point if we were in person. Sorry, I skipped over John, but yes, thank you. Thank you, John and Alyssa. Final candidate for the Board of Trustees, Lorna Aronson, who many of you know, she is, this will be Lorna's third time around on the board. So we are very happy she is willing to agree to run for the board again. She's been very active on the transition team, which I know was a lot of work. So I'm hoping board service might actually be a little bit of a break from the things that Lorna's been doing. So I will stop sharing my screen again and we can vote on Lorna Aronson. All right. So motion to elect Lorna Aronson to the board of trustees. All in favor, please say aye or raise your hand. I'm seeing many, many ayes. Thank you. Please lower your hands. Are there any nays? Motion carries. Thank you, Lorna. Welcome back to the board. Hey, Terry, just a request. Can you give me just a couple more seconds on the nays so I can flip through all the videos? Yes, sorry. Thanks. Yes. Are we good for this vote? Creole, do you have everything you want? Yeah, we're OK on this one. Thanks. OK. Turn things over to Monica for any comments about the 2020-2021 budget. Yeah, can everybody see and hear me OK? All right, let's take just a minute break from the votes. So we had a lovely and lengthy overview of this budget at the financial forum. But for those of you that missed it, I can try to give you this budget in a nutshell. So in essence, the operating budget supports $1.8 million worth of programs and services that aim to support you and your personal and spiritual development and connects you with others who are aiming to be a force for good in the world. Thanks, Terry. That's perfect. Next fiscal year, the programs and services will likely look a little different than they have in years past. But we hope at their core, they accomplish the same goal. So we are very grateful for everyone's generosity always, but especially these last few years, as many of you have made both annual campaign and capital campaign donations, in addition to some unexpected close the gap gifts. One of the many outcomes of that generosity has been the $1 million mortgage paydown, which in tandem with the refinancing and the reamortization is saving us approximately $110,000 next year. The timing of that is especially helpful as we are projecting approximately $60,000 less in pledge payments and about $18,000 less in unpledged donations next year. You'll notice that we're also decreasing our fund transfers by approximately 1 third of last year's amount. That's in large part because those funds are dwindling down. We are budgeting 8k more in fundraising events, which will include an art fair, a fall cab array, a Valentine's foray, and a select to connect in spring. And of course, there's both in-person and virtual plans in the hopper for those. So the stewardship ministry team is getting very excited, very creative, about their ideas for meeting that $51,000 budget goal that you see there. Let's look at expenses for a second. As we mentioned at the financial forum, we have not budgeted for any salary increases for next year. This, unfortunately, will be the third year in which we will not see a cost of living increase for staff. We're obviously committed to reassessing that even mid year to see if our financial outlook has changed at all. Our primary goal right now is obviously to keep, at least as an employer, to keep staff gainfully employed and do our very best to provide a myriad of benefits, tangible and intangible, that support their well-being. The $200,000 PPP, or Paycheck Protection Program loan that we received in April, will likely be forgiven this summer. So it should show up as income in the first quarter of next year. And that anticipated income is not reflected on the budget that you're looking at now. The Finance Committee will be drafting a policy proposal for the Board of Trustees, hopefully this summer and fall, to help guide how we create, utilize, and hopefully maintain cash reserves in the coming years. So we'll be sure to share more information about that at the next year's parish meetings. Terry, do you mind switching to the next slide? We'll take a quick look at the designated and restricted fund budget. Thanks. So you can see we are, oh, got a little overzealous with the slide changing there. If you could go back one more. There you go, perfect. So you can see we are projecting ending this current fiscal year with approximately 48k in that account. We anticipate 18,500 in new income, spending about 2,600 in partner church funds, and transferring nearly 18,000 to the operating budget to primarily support the music program. So we'll anticipate designated and restricted fund balance of nearly $46,000 at the end of next fiscal year. And then, Terry, you can go to the next slide. Let's take a peek at the capital fund. Yeah, perfect. So things look a little different than last year as we enter the final year of collecting capital campaign donations and spending the last of the capital campaign project funds. We propose transferring 45k of support to the operating budget for the mortgage as we have for the last half decade, give or take. And if we receive the 230k in outstanding capital funds that were pledged, we'll have just under $400k in the unrestricted funds remaining. As I alluded to before in mentioning cash reserves, we are proceeding very cautiously with the use of those remaining funds. So we have placed a hold on remodeling the glass walkway by the partner church area, doing a number of beautification projects in the atrium, as well as buying a new boiler. So we propose deferring most of those projects until we have a date next. So there you have it. Those are the three proposed budgets. Before we move to motion to vote, Steve Goldberg or any other stewardship team members, did I understand you wanted to make a quick plug for next year's exciting events? Sure. I don't know if I'm on or not. Found you in my list of people. Yep. You look wispy. Looking great in that tuxedo. OK, well, these are my stewardship event clothing items. Thanks, Monica. I am proud and excited on behalf of the Stewardship Ministry team and our staff liaison, Cheryl Melanthine, to just mention a couple of things as we unveil the stewardship event season for the remainder of this year and the beginning of next. Whether these events are virtual or in person, they provide great opportunities to connect with each other while raising money for the place we call our spiritual home, namely First Unitarian Society. We've got a whole bunch of events, but there are four that I'd like to highlight for you this morning. One is the Food Cart Friday that we're planning for the summer. There'll be car hops in the FUS parking lot, so an opportunity to honor social distancing while enjoying the food provided by local food carts. And this also gives us a chance to support local businesses. And we know how important that has become recently. Another event for the summer is a drive-in family movie that's going to be out every night. Details still to be determined, but if we can pull that off, that'll be a lot of fun. And in the fall, we've got cabaret, of course, but a new twist on cabaret this year is going to be a talent show. And the theme is FUS Got Talent. And we're going to feature talent and special treats from people here at FUS, whether it's singing or telling jokes or playing an instrument or dancing just to ask if the car hops will be on roller skates. Of course they will, because we don't have to worry about shoveling the parking lot in the summer. The family movie night will be a highlight of the summer season, again, if we can pull that off. And something we know we can pull off, as I mentioned before, is cabaret. There'll be an online auction along with the talent show at cabaret so that we can continue raising money for FUS. And highlighting our winter season, we're going to organize family caroling Sundays in December. So how can you say no to this wonderful lineup of events? It's kind of like a Broadway preview brought to you by the stewardship ministry team and everybody else at FUS. Back to you, Manaka. Thank you, Steve. Well, I think we're ready to motion and to vote. And then we typically answer questions once we've got a second. Right, so the motion here is on the screen. So we have a motion to accept the operating budget, designated budget, and capital budget for 2020-2021. I wonder if there's already a second in the chat. We'll check that. All right, we have a second for Mike May. Stop sharing my screen to call for the vote. All right, well, in favor, oh, I'm sorry, discussion first. So I know we had one question in the chat. I just forwarded to Manaka. And we'll open it up for other questions. There was a question about the event, oh, I'm sorry, the rental income and how it could be increasing next year. We have built-in increases contracted with the Meeting House Nursery School and Shari Shamayam, as well as a 3% increase of our parking renters. So we are anticipating a decrease in weddings and meeting space usage. But overall, an increase is anticipated. All right, are there any other questions on the budgets? Yes, I've got one. Yes, Steve, you on the hat. Yeah, what's the total amount required to provide a cost of living increase to staff? What's the dollar figure that we would be talking about if we were able to do that someday? Well, Steve, I know, I know that we are anticipating having exactly that discussion. For the past couple of years, we've been looking at really mapping out what it would take to incrementally bring all of our staff up to at least the midpoint of the recommended guidelines. And that was the plan. These are extra. So it was the plan to communicate that in a more integrated way. So it's integrated into the projected budget. These are not ordinary times. And Monika acted very quickly to get the federal funding we were able to get. So it's certainly a setback. But there are setbacks throughout our society right now. And so I just wanted to put that in just from a congregational perspective that that was what we intended to do. Monika, if you want to add anything. Yes, so you can see that overall personnel expenses salaries are about $884,000. So if you did a 2% cost of living increase for everyone, it would be around $17,000, $18,000. Thank you. There is a question in the chat. And I'm sorry I've been doing other multitasking. So I don't know if you already talked about this. Mike Goodman. Did you talk about this about Mike's question, Terry? No, I think Mike is your question specifically about the budget. I mean, you're asking about cost of living in general. But is there a question about the motion on the table? All right, if there are no other questions, let's call a vote. So all in favor of adopting the budgets as proposed, please raise your hand or say aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. That was a clear-looking underscreen thing. You look good, Terry. All right, please lower your hands. It's better. And are there any nays? The same process for any nays, please say, no, or raise your hand if you're on camera. OK, no nays. No nays. All right, thank you, the motion carries. Thank you everyone. Thank you for your patience and our votes here. I'm sorry to interrupt, but I wanna know how I can get rid of my space. It seems that I'm there permanently and I like somebody else to be there once in a while. How do I get rid of that? There are settings to take care of that. Maybe someone could send a chat message on advice how to change the speaker. I don't know what to press. Yeah. I don't know well enough to describe it right off, but I bet someone on the line does if they could send you a chat message. Car, it's Gail Bliss. Call me. We'll talk about it. Thank you, Gail. Thank you, Gail. All right. So next up, let me share my screen again. So Connie Beam is here to give us a update on the foundation. I guess I will stop sharing so that we can see Connie. Okay. Hi, everybody. Well, thank you for allowing us a few minutes to talk about the foundation a little bit. In these really uncertain times, it's good to have a foundation because the foundation will provide consistent funding to FUS every single year. Whether it's a good economy, a bad economy, no matter what's going on, the foundation will be there and its wisdom FUS members made this foundation, put it in place many years ago. And I don't know if you noticed, but in the budget, there was a significant increase in funding for the 2021 budget. We had a $10,000 increase in our annual distribution to FUS as well as some other funds that rolled over from last year that weren't used, that will be used in the coming year. So we're really thrilled that the foundation has been able to support the FUS budget in such a significant way. I'd also like to say a very big thank you to Tad Pinkerton. Tad has retired from our board this year and he's been serving, he's served as president and has been on our board for many years. And I really wanted to say a special thank you to him for his many years of service and to welcome Carol Stain. Carol brings wonderful technical and professional skills to our board and we're really thrilled to have her join us. So welcome aboard Carol and thank you to the congregation for voting her on to our board. So I think that's it unless anybody has any questions, the handout explains what our finances look like and how we determine what our annual contribution to the FUS is going to be. And we work closely with Monica and the staff and the board of trustees to make sure that that funding is always there. So unless somebody has questions, that's my report. Oh, and I will say that obviously we make our payout calculations based on December 31 numbers. And since that time, of course the market has done, not done so well but that's why we average it out over three years to make sure that we have some good years in there, some bad years in there. The average always helps to maintain a fairly consistent payout from very years. So FUS isn't dealing with a lot of surprises in terms of consistency of funding from the foundation. So that's it. Thank you, Connie. Are there any questions? All right, I'll have back up just a minute. We skipped the stewardship update and I believe Monica has some information for us there. Kerry, yeah, you've grown up that one slide right before the foundation update. Thanks. Let me get to that. Kerry was so excited to hear about the foundations. I do like hearing about the foundation but stewardship's good too. All right, so in a moment you will see a slide on the current stewardship campaign and how it's going. You will see almost... And you? Yeah, there you go, perfect. You can see that our budget target for the budget we just approved is $1,110,000. As of May 30th, we've received 459 pledges, totaling $949,000. So we have $161,000 left to raise in pledges. Last year at this time we had $203,000 left to raise. So last year we had 513 pledges, totaling $967,000. So we do have less pledgers so far comparing this year to last year and about $18,000 less in pledge dollars. But given that we started our campaign a week or two before going to solely virtual services, I think we're doing okay right now. And those of you that have not yet pledged, we do ask that you do so as soon as you feel comfortable. Feel free to reach out to Cheryl, Mel and Fine or myself. And we're looking forward to another really beautiful year. These funds help support that. So thank you everybody. Thank you, Monica. Yeah, it's good to see how well we're doing given all the uncertainty right now. Okay, so I want to recap a little bit. So our last formal agenda item is voting on our ministerial search committee. And this has been a lengthy process to get to this point. So, but today we will actually vote on our slate of proposed members. And these are the folks who will work over the next year to go through the process to identify our next settled minister. So to back up just a bit about how we got here to recap the process, we circulated an electronic survey asking everyone, members, friends, affiliates to provide names of people they would trust to serve on this committee. So we had more than 125 responses to that with each person suggesting up to three names. So thank you for that. We could not have done this without that input. And we did want as much input as possible in creating a pool of potential members of the committee. So the next step was just working with a spreadsheet, doing some data cleanup, making sure we knew who the names were, making sure they are currently active members. And kept the survey open for, I think it was two months, maybe something like that. We wanted to make sure everyone had a chance to reply. And we did have, thank you to staff who also did work for us forwarding responses from those who were not able to complete the electronic survey. So the next step was for the board to do a couple of different phases of narrowing the list. And the goal here was to just see, I mean, we have to narrow it down. There's no other choice. We have to eventually get to a slate of seven committee members. So the goal in the board's work was to see where there was consensus around folks who are the best match for this particular task of being on the committee itself with the primary criteria being working well on a team and people who can keep the needs and interests of the whole congregation in mind. So that you've spent some time on that phase, just compiling our input, again looking for areas where we had the most consensus. And a narrowed list of folks was, invited to complete a written application. So we wanted to not just go kind of on perceptions and our personal experience because no member of the board knew everyone on the list. So we wanted to give people a chance to really speak for themselves in a more detailed way and give us some information about why they want to be on the committee and how they would foresee their role in that work. And our last phase after this, so reviewing those materials, we had the board went through an iterative process of voting and also some discussion to come up with a balanced slate that was balanced in terms of perspective and personal demographics and skills for they would bring to the committee. So just to say briefly, it's a small committee to represent a large congregation. So there are gaps in representation. We can't represent every group fully. We're a big congregation. We can't represent every demographic fully. But one thing that I hope everyone will feel good about, we do have very broad set of FUS experience. You'll see if you've gone through the bios of each of the candidates, very involved in FUS activities, variety of newer to longer term members. And we try to balance in many ways knowing that we can't have direct representation of everyone. So we hope that members will see themselves represented in some way, knowing that the goal for every member of this committee is to keep the needs of the whole congregation in mind and to consult the congregation throughout the process that we'll be going through over the next year. All right, so here's the formal motion. Let me just read through the names and motion and then we'll run through the bios. So if you haven't had a chance to read those carefully, you can at least see names and faces and then we'll move on if there's any discussion. So let me just read this. All right, the motion is that the following people be approved as members of the ministerial search committee. Dorrid Bergen, Emily Cusick Putnam, Sandy Esfridge, Chuck Evanson, Gene Sears, Emily Smith, and Joyce Deglitz-Scotshaw. Is there a second for the motion? All right, we have a second from Gail Bliss. Well, hang on a second. Let me, I'm sorry, let me go back. Let me go back to share the screen. I didn't get to the slides yet. Didn't get to the slides yet. And there was a question in the chat regarding why there's only one mail on the document. Okay, let me just go through the slides quickly. We have Dorrid Bergen, Emily Cusick Putnam, Sandy Esfridge, Chuck Evanson, Gene Sears, Emily Smith, and Joyce Deglitz-Scotshaw. All right, so yes, that's, I'd say you pointed out the most, so there are gaps in representation. That's correct, there is one man. I'd say the biggest gap in personal representation and demographic representation that we talked about as a board is there are no people of color on the committee. These, as far as we're aware, as people identify, that was what we spent the most time talking about. But in general, again, the goal was representation possible, but the primary goals of the committee is to have a team that will work together and balance of skills and perspective. And I would say your personal demographics, like who the people are on the committee in terms of whether you're male or female, a member of the LGBTQ community or any kind of those demographics, that wasn't the primary goal, that was secondary. And that's just how things worked out that we had fewer men than women. And I would say how we got to that point, the process of narrowing the list was iterative. So the final list that we're considering had fewer men than women on it. One interesting, and I don't have statistics like all the way through here, but one thing that I looked at to try and figure out how we got to this particular point was if you look at who responded to the initial survey, it's 80% women approximately. So when you look at where we're balancing a lot of things and knowing that we can't represent everyone fully, there are gonna be some big gaps. And I'd say those are two of them, knowing that we can't have one person from every group, whether that's a few S groups or whether that's personal demographics. I'd encourage everyone to read the biographies and if we're in person, we should be chatting a little bit more naturally. But as you get to know the members of the search committee and interact with them over the course of the year, I think you'll find a very broad experience and very capable to represent the congregation as a whole. Have other questions come in? Kerry, can I say something? Yeah, go ahead. So talking about complete transparency, it may have occurred to some of you that, wait a minute, Doritz on the board. So I wanted to know that as soon as I decided to fill out the application, I stopped having any hand in choosing the search team. I don't know who else applied and I excused myself from the board meeting when the discussion started to center on putting the search team together. Yes, thank you, Dorit. And I should have said this, I skipped over this when we elected our board for next year. So Lorna Aronson is filling the at-large slot that the at-large position that the Dorit currently holds. It's typically advised that you don't serve on the search committee and the board at the same time. So Dorit will resign from the board if elected to serve on the search committee. I would say, so one question I'm seeing in chat here and I think Creel is going to help kind of mind or chat as well, but I see one question about equity and how that's integrated into the process. You'll learn more about this from the search committee itself as we move through the year, but one of the parts of the process is a beloved Conversations Weekend Workshop and that is something that all congregations in search go through just to open up thinking about candidates they'll see and to just encourage, focusing on the work of ministry itself and not the demographics of the individual in that role. And just to reiterate again, the work of the committee, if you're wondering, and I haven't read all the questions yet, but if you're wondering how the congregation will be involved, the work of this committee is going to be to involve the congregation each step of the way. There's a lot of work, there's a lot of preparation that goes into the process before, long before they're looking at candidates. The first several months of the process are much more focused on presenting us as a congregation to the pool of candidates. So that there's, and throughout the whole process, the balance of activity is much more inward focused than it is focused on the candidates. So both need to happen of course, but candidates primarily want to know about the discernment we've done as a congregation. Terri, I had a private question come through that I don't know the answer to. Do you know exactly on the committee who has gone through beloved conversations already? It would, I may have said the wrong thing. So beloved conversations is the, I'm blanking on the name of the workshop that we'll go through. Beyond categorical thinking. Thank you, Doug, beyond categorical thinking. I said the wrong thing. We do have, I don't know how many members, but at least one member of the search committee has been involved in beloved conversations, which is the UUA or one of the UUA's curriculum for thinking about racial equity in our congregations. Beyond categorical thinking is the workshop that congregations go through to prepare to be in search for a called minister. So I'm sorry, I misspoke earlier. So to both questions, beyond categorical thinking, that's something the whole congregation would be invited to participate in as we move through the search process. And we do have representation on the search committee in participating in beloved conversations. There aren't any more questions in the chat at this point. Seeing lots of appreciation. And oh yeah, and thank you to everyone who has participated in any way up to this point. We have many folks who have helped out getting our, everyone who replied to the survey and many thanks to the board in doing this and doing this work. There were a lot of hands in this and a lot of focus. And thank you to all of the applicants. It was very helpful to the board to have everyone's responses to the written application would have been very difficult to narrow the slate without that. It was still difficult with applications, but at least we were more informed in how we could kind of balance perspectives on the committee. Someone's asking, yes, yes, there's someone from the choirs and the search committee. Yeah, that slide I showed, that was just a snippet of the personal experience of the seven committee members. I'm sure they've done many other things. I just, things from the bios and the list added up quickly. A question about Dorit. So Dorit, so the Dorit's place on the board has already been filled. We just, we just voted on that. So, so there's a plan, there's a plan for that since Dorit won't do both at the same time. Hey, Terry. Sorry, I miss Lori did have sort of a follow up to her question about the equity issue. Lori, you can go ahead and unmute yourself. Thank you. I have not been a part of the cross categorical thinking training. So maybe it addresses all of this, but I, for everyone else, my name is Lori Schwartz and I have watched as Madison Metropolitan School District has proactively taken on an equity lens. And I am grateful that there are very committed active people on this committee. My question does not mean that I imply that they cannot do this. I follow up with an intentionality question because I believe it has to be deliberate and a part of, by design, the search, the challenges facing us as a community, as a society and as a world. But Madison Metropolitan School District has everything that they do. And I've been in weekly meetings where they say that this is with an eye towards equity. And I realized that we have to have more things balanced in the First Unitarian Society, but I feel pretty strongly that we should consider what they do or something that intentionally, by design, seeks input in the process as it relates to the inequities within our community, within our First Unitarian Society committee. And as the parent of a biracial child and as a member of the beloved conversations, there are inequities, but there are inequities everywhere. So again, I don't wanna just know about something and not have a suggestion. My suggestion is that we look at what other organizations are doing like Madison Metropolitan School District to have a clear lens to bring racial divide and economic divide to the search. That's all. And I'm very grateful for the wonderful people that are put in and that those that are selected as well. Thank you. Just a couple of quick things in the written application. So the committee members in forming the committee itself, one of the questions we asked people to write about was their experience in helping create an environment of inclusion and collaboration. So that speaks to how we will be moving through the process as a congregation. There are many layers to that, of course. Hang on, I need to plug in my computer so it doesn't die during this meeting. Just a minute. Sorry about that. So just to set us up for the types of things you're talking about, Lori, I know that question has a lot of layers in it, but just so how we work with each other in including folks in the discussion of moving through the search process itself, we wanted to make sure the committee itself is very agile and informed in being inclusive and consultative activities. One resource that will be available to them, which speaks to the equity in looking at candidates, ministers want the process to be fair to them as candidates because ministry is, it's a calling, but congregations are also employers. So the folks who will lead the Beyond Categorical Thinking Workshop, those same folks are the representatives from the region and the UUA, they will be available to the search committee to guide and coach them in this work. So when you're talking about kind of looking at what other organizations do, there are a lot of resources that will be available to the search committee in that work. We also plan, I won't go into detail about this now, but we also plan to do a lot of work internally as a board to help support the search committee where we are too large a congregation to just put all of this work on seven people. So we are going to be a lot more structured in terms of supporting the non-confidential work. So holding focus groups, holding things like running the Beyond Categorical Thinking Workshop. There's a lot of work that goes on that doesn't have to be done, doesn't have to be completed by the committee members themselves. So although they will oversee the work. So we're going to go into this, knowing that we will have many more people involved than just the seven people on the committee. But thank you for your comments, Lori. There was a suggestion for something called like a community advisory committee for the search that Doug added to the thread. Not sure what that means. Community advisory committee for the search. Drew, are you interested in expanding upon that? Ironically, he doesn't have a microphone. Drew, I'm not sure. Okay, Drew's typing. And just another note, and again, I know I didn't go into detail and into the backgrounds of the individual members, but members of the search committee do bring extensive background inequity work. Yeah, and Drew, I think the, so the whole search process will build on the work we've been doing in the interim and the group that went out and talked to community partners. That will very much be folded into how we present ourselves as a congregation. Everything's kind of a balance. We'll, certain things wait. If you wait until a new set of ministers there, say taking on a major initiative as a congregation, that might be the sort of thing that would, that wouldn't unfold during the year that we're in search. But the way we're presenting ourselves as a congregation to the search process, to candidates to the, to the domination, you know, a lot of the work that we did during the interim, that will all play into that. So, you know, the interviews with community partners, you know, all of that information is certainly available to the search committee and it will build, they will build on that as they, you know, as they kind of finalize our congregational record. Are there other questions in the chat? Creal, is anything else? Come in. One more specific question. Some good, some good additional comments in there, though. Yeah. Yeah, and I say, and we're not reading everything. There are, there are comments. If you're not following the chat, there's some good discussion, just comments and appreciation for the folks who have volunteered to serve on the committee. Just in the general discussion, I knew this is, don't want to put anyone on the spot here, but I would say if anyone, if anyone of the nominees would like to say anything, you're welcome to, welcome to do so. If we were in person, we'd like, have you stand up? I'll just say that I'm really excited. I'm honored. I'm excited. And honestly, a little bit nervous. Yes. And I hope that excitement comes through. You know, right now it's kind of, yeah, we're going to have a very good committee. I'm kind of, you know, focused on the logistics right now, trying to multitask and look at questions. But, you know, I mean, I'm excited. It was, you know, reading what everyone wrote in the applications, it was really encouraging. We have such an informed and committed group. It was, well, I mean, I'm sure you can imagine that it was very difficult for the board to narrow down. And, you know, we have so many capable folks in this congregation. You know, I think that it will be apparent when this group begins work, you know, just how inclusive this process is going to be. All right. So if there are any other questions about the process, if not, we will move on to the vote. All right. So to approve our slate of members for the ministerial search committee, all in favor, please raise your hand or say aye. It's funny the kind of audio feedback, yeah. No, only during the vote. All right, I've seen lots of ayes. Creole, I can't see. I look like you're still counting. I'll wait. Yeah, Terry, I didn't hear any, hardly any ayes. Did you unmute folks or did I just miss that? I didn't unmute anyone. I unmuted everyone, but I can- Aye. We look good otherwise I've done, so. All right, thank you. All right, please lower your hands. Are there any nays? Please, so for nays, please raise your hand or say nay. Okay, I don't see any nays, Terry. All right, thank you. We have a search committee. Thank you, everyone. All right. Largy and Pete. So say nay. No. I'm gonna go back to sharing the presentation for a few things before we wrap up. All right, so nearing the end of our church here, we are going through several transitions. So we're going to be saying goodbye to Karn Berglson who graduated with her MDiv this spring. So congratulations to Karn. And we will be recognizing Karn in a more formal way in an upcoming worship service, but congratulations to Karn. And FUS just wanted to share with the congregation that the Board of Trustees in our April meeting voted to co-ordain Karn in collaboration with the James Reeve UU congregation also in Madison. So we are, so as her student congregation, along with her home congregation, we are joining together to co-ordain her. There will be a service award nation on Saturday, August 8th at 4.30 p.m. So everyone is at least invited virtually. There'll be more details on what, what if anything will happen in person. And interim ministry, and again, we will have time to thank Doug and bid him farewell and best wishes for his next ministry. Again, we'll have some time to focus on this in a worship service later this month. But just a little bit of logistics, Doug will actually be with us through the end of July. And we have our next interim minister, Roger Birchhausen. He will be starting August 1st. Many of you may know Roger from his work in Appleton. He was the longtime minister of the congregation there. So much more to come, but just wanted to, just wanted to share the, you know, the next steps of what's happening. So Doug will be here through the end of July and Roger will formally begin August 1st. So Kelly, are you here for some closing words? So these are the words from Linda Barnes. She says, we're staying home. Love has never asked this of us before. We're staying home. This is our gift to humanity. Let us wish each other well. For those staying home alone, I offer you this blessing. May you grow a deeper understanding of your own worth. Dear one, leaven the aloneness with gentle care for this too shall pass. May you be blessed with a peace and serenity. May you find the courage to reach out to hear another's voice and to remember others need you as well. May you be well. For those of you staying home together, I offer you this blessing. May you find moments of patience and grace in your relations. May you offer each other enough time apart, reassurance and space enough to cry to safely rage for this too shall pass. Then let peace come again into your home. May you see one another's whole self as a gift. May you be well. For those who are working from home, I offer you this blessing. May you remember to take breaks. May you find the means to relish your imperfection and the imperfection of others as evidence of our shared humanity. You are enough even when there isn't enough. Make order in your days and then let it go. May you be well. And for those staying home with children, I offer you this blessing. May you find humor and compassion in your days. There will be learning of a different kind, deeper, no doubt, unexpected for sure. May there be patience and forgiveness again and again and again, for this too shall pass. May you all remember the deep love that brought your family into being. May there be peace and understanding in your home. May you be well. May we be well. May our world and our community be well. May it be so and amen. Thank you, Kelly. Thanks everyone for joining and hanging in there and as we figure this out. Have a good afternoon.