 Good afternoon. Welcome to third Thursdays. I'm glad for all of you who are joining us today for this conversation. Just a couple of housekeeping details before we get started. I'd love to have you introduce yourselves in the chat feature and if remember to send that to all or everyone, not just to the panelists. And if you have any technical concerns anytime during the webinar, you can send a chat message to the ambias host. If you have a comment or question for our speaker, we ask that you please use the q amp a feature, which you can find by hovering over the bottom of your screen. And I'll be watching for those questions and comments and we'll select the ones that I asked Diana. Please note that the webinar, including the questions is being recorded. Turning now to our conversation. Diana Risser is vice president for administration and she financial officer for ambias. She graduated from Bluffton University with a business administration degree, and received her master of business administration degree from Indiana University South Bend in 2007. She also received a graduate certificate in theological studies from ambias last year. Diana is in her third year as an ambias employee. And before this worked at Goshen College for 22 years. Diana is going to start by answering several questions I've given her ahead of time and then after that we'll have time for your questions and comments. Thanks Diana for being with us today. What would you like to tell us about yourself as an introduction. Well, thanks Janine for that introduction. I can add a few more details that might be helpful. I grew up in Middlebury Indiana, which is here in Alkirk County. So I'm an Alkirk County native and have spent most of my time in this area, both profess professionally and personally. Other than my times at Bluffton and also after college, I worked for five and a half years on year round staff at Camp Friedenswald in Cassopolis, Michigan. And so that is a place that continues to be near and dear to my heart. And I currently on the board of Friedenswald. And let's see hobbies. I enjoy reading, biking, volunteering. And I would be remiss to not tell you about my dog. Her name is Estely. I adopted her as a rescue dog about a year and a half ago. She's a six year old Cavalier King Charles Spaniel. And I think she's about the cutest, sweetest thing around. But she does have her opinions and she's really smart. So I also spend a fair bit of time walking her we try to walk in the morning and the evening depending on the weather. So that's a little bit more about myself. Well, I will agree that she is one of the sweetest cutest dogs I've ever met. She is adorable. Do you want to say something about the, bring your dog to work days that we've been having at AMBS the last year or so? Yeah, after I'd been here about a year and a half. We, the president and I, Dave Buescher, were both our dog lovers and both have dogs and decided as a way of like building community we would have bring your pets to work so it doesn't have to be just dogs. It could be a different pet if you have a different pet. It has tended to be only dogs. So we usually have about six to eight employees who participate and bring their dogs at least for a portion of the day. And we gather in the courtyard for a little special break where we can meet each other and the dogs and share some treats. So that has been a fun thing. And I actually just added it to my to-do list like we need to have another bring your pet to work day. We haven't had one for a while. We try to do them about two to three times a year. Yeah, I also should say I'm my parents are Dennis and Alice Risser. My father is deceased. My mother lives in Goshen. I also have a sister Denise and a brother Eric. Great. So can you tell us a time, a story about a time when you experienced God in a powerful way? The story that came to mind was when I was working at Goshen College. As Jeanine mentioned, I worked at Goshen College for a number of years, serving in a variety of roles, the last five being vice president for finance. But back in 2012, I had the opportunity to lead a study service term, your unit with Goshen College to Nicaragua. And that's where Estely got her name, my dog. Estely is a town in Nicaragua. It's not actually where I lived, but it was a town that I visited and I just really thought it was beautiful, beautiful name. So I was a co-leader of SST unit, as they're called, with a friend of mine, Karen Swartz and River, and we were in charge of 22 students doing their cross cultural experience with Goshen College. And so we arrived about a month before the students were there and then we're there in country with those students for three months where the students do about six weeks of studying, mostly language study, but also culture and history and just immersing themselves in the country and then six weeks of service. I did not have a lot of cross cultural experience in my undergrad college experience. So in essence, this was my cross cultural experience as well. So fully immersion while you're leading 22 students can be somewhat challenging on its own. And I just remember being, I had a small group from my church who I knew was actively praying for me. And there were some challenging times when we had a mental health crisis with a student. We had some fresh frustrations behind the scenes with details working out or not working out. But I just remember I was very active in prayer during that time and praying for very specific things, having travel challenges and being like, you know, let us get here safely. Let us get here on time. Let the host family be ready upon our arrival. May all these arrangements that we've done at the last minute, you know, end up working out and may the students have a good experience. And so learning to plan and schedule and navigate in a culture that's a little more laid back than North America was definitely a learning experience. But just feeling sometimes a little bit in over my head and feeling like I really needed to have really needed to experience God. I'm seeing God work through the students and what really happened how they grew in the three months they were there and became more comfortable and confident. And the way I grew in my leadership. Carrie and I joked at the end that we by the end of our four months we finally figured out what we were doing and maybe we should do it again. Because now we kind of knew what was going on instead of feeling like sometimes we were learning right along with the students. So that just feels like a time, especially looking back where I felt just covered by prayer and protected from a lot of things that could have really gone wrong and really experienced God through the people I met and through the experiences we had in Nicaragua. So that's that was the story that came to mind. That's wonderful. I'm also interested in hearing a little bit about what attracted you to begin taking classes at AMBS. I know that we have this arrangement with Goshen College that makes it you know like a financial bargain, but what what in you said I want to try some classes at AMBS that then led to you getting the certificate, the graduate certificate and theological studies. I started taking graduate classes, seminary classes in 2014. And at that time, I had just agreed to be a high school youth sponsor at my church with a friend of mine, John circle, who now is a current AMBS student and will graduate as part of the graduating class of 2024. And it wasn't necessary, it was partly to be a little bit more prepared as a youth leader, but it also was a personal feeling I had of wanting to learn more about spiritual practices and faith formation. So I was wanting more adult faith formation than I felt I was getting in Sunday morning at my church. So I was like what are what are other ways that I can. I can experience some different ways of learning about spirituality I wanted to go a little deeper than just what was happening on Sunday morning. So I decided, you know, I can take some classes online. I am located in Goshen. I could get to campus to take some classes if needed. And so just started kind of dipping my toe in the water of taking what the one hour spiritual practices classes that were interesting to me. And then it was like, oh, you need to declare a program that you want to be in. And I'm like, oh, I, I wasn't really, I didn't really have a long term plan in mind. I was just kind of interested in taking classes. So I became officially, I guess a student in the graduate certificate in Christian spiritual formation at the time. I think now it's just been renamed graduate certificate and theological studies and you can design your own graduate certificate in a variety of ways. So I took classes off and on while working full time at Goshen College, mostly in finance and administration there as well. Had to take some semesters off depending on what classes were offered or what time I had. And got part way through a degree and stopped in 2019 when I had too many things going on and something had to give. And unfortunately seminary was what had to give. Unbeknownst to me, I my journey would end me back up here at AMBS anyway professionally. And one thing that attracted me to becoming part of the AMBS community as a, as an admin faculty member was knowing a little bit about AMBS and experiencing the community as a student. And looking for something that was a little bit smaller, maybe unmanageable. I was experiencing my Goshen College work in the midst of coven, which we all navigated in different ways. And it became I got a little bit overwhelmed and burned out. And finally decided I needed to make a career change. So I started exploring various options. AMBS is not the only place I considered, but luckily the door kept staying open for AMBS. And looking back on the other options I had, I'm so grateful that this is where I ended up and that I can serve AMBS in this way. So it felt like the job was a good fit for me based on what I had been doing at Goshen College. It's actually a very similar role. But a little bit, a little bit less complex based on AMBS being smaller and not having quite as many things going on such as athletics and property in Florida and things like that. Well, thanks for going ahead and answering the second part of that question. Go ahead and tell us about your role and what kinds of things you do as part of your role. Well, as you, I have a long title, Vice President for Administration and Chief Financial Officer. I'll talk about the Chief Financial Officer first. That's essentially keeping track of all the finances of the seminary. And it's slightly different than financial aid, which you might hear about from a student context, which is like when we're awarding scholarships to students and working with donors for endowed scholarships or other people who want to support students. There's a separate financial aid office that works with them and I partner with them, but I am paying attention to things like financial reporting, budgeting. I spend a lot of time with budgeting, monitoring how our expenses are going, cash management, keeping track of accounts payable and vendors. Keep working, partnering with the development office on donations and grants that are coming in and keeping track of all that money coming in in all these different places. And then also, as a nonprofit organization and BS does an annual audit, so we produce official financial statements that are as required by the Department of Ed since we are an accredited educational institution. So that is also a lot of work usually in late summer and early fall of finalizing all these financial numbers on an annual basis and working with the external auditors to do that work. But my work touches most of the other areas of the seminary, helping people come up with a proposed budget for a department, help them write a grant budget, giving them detailed information about expenses that they've spent as a part of a program. Just a wide variety of things. The vice president for administration role means that I oversee 6 departments as part of. And BS some. I won't say all of the non academic departments, but a lot of them there are still some other departments that I don't oversee. Particularly non degree programs and academic support and things like that, but I do oversee human resources. So payroll and hiring. And policies and all that work. We have a half time person who helps me in HR that I oversee and work closely with. Also, we have 1 person in the business office. So I work closely with her. On all the accounts payable accounts receivable student accounts. All that sort of thing. I oversee it. So Brent Graber and I work on it technology needs for the seminary and keeping track of all those details. Food service. We do have, we don't have as much food service as we used to have on campus, but we still do have regular food service or events on campus meetings on campus. We have at least a monthly community lunch. And we just hired a new caterer and residents who is starting here this week. So getting involved in my own hiring instead of just helping facilitate some hiring on campus. I also oversee our maintenance department. So we have 2 people in maintenance. So all the day to day things of keeping a campus running the buildings. The buildings maintained. We have student apartments on campus that we maintain all of those. So working with Norm and Orion in maintenance and what our needs there that we need to keep track of. And then also the front desk and housing. So Lindsay at the front desk. Working with student housing and their request for apartments and what, and she helps with some of the financial aspects as well. So my role is. I feel like I do a fair bit of supervision. I meet with those people, most of them at least once a month, but I have the open door policy. So sometimes I feel like my day has spent. Helping problem solve people will stop by with a question or need some information. Or we just had a payroll or payroll date was yesterday. We had a payroll issue that I was helping solve this morning. It's not really what I was planning on doing with my morning. But that's kind of the way it works out. So what are the things that need attention from the areas I oversee. I work with the academic Dean Beverly lap on adjunct needs, how we're budgeting for what our faculty needs are. Are we going to have adjuncts to help keep some of our courses and how we budget for that. And my role as vice president and CFO means that I also sit on administrative cabinet. So we meet every other week during the school year and talk about a lot of high level things. So that is, I think there's 8 of us on ad cabinet now led by the president. And so we have a regular agenda where we're talking about strategy about the strategic plan. About budget about brands. There's just a wide variety of things that we are, you know, managing the bigger picture of the seminary and all working together with. You know, enrollment development, church leadership center, our director of the campaign marketing, all getting together every other week. So preparing reports for them participating in those meetings. Is also a big part of my work. There are so many things. And you didn't even like mention the guest houses, which would be in that mix too right. And I know last year you were finding the kinds of furniture you wanted to put in the Trinity house that used to where Clarence and Alice Bowman had lived. You have 2 guest house on campus. Hopefully you know that the fry house and the dick house, which are basically behind the maintenance building off of 6th street kind of read 107. That we use for our programming. It's also available to other people to rent out as needed. We have people from MC USA offices use it occasionally, but our board members stay there. People in our ministry integrity circles. Some of our so far programs graduation. It gets fairly regular use pastors and leaders. So yeah, keeping track of maintenance needs there working with Lindsay at the front desk with reservations. Upkeep. Do we want to change around the furniture? Yeah, and Trinity house is a new thing that it was in process when I started 2.5 years ago. So getting that across the finishing finish line deciding what we wanted to really use it for how we wanted to. How we wanted to furnish it and how we wanted to handle reservations has been something we've been finalizing here in the last 6 to 9 months. Another thing I'm wondering about. Do you work with investments or. Does somebody else track the investments that am BS has. I'm actually very involved. Well, I would say I'm involved in managing the investments. Most of our investments are in our endowment, which is a long term investing for the very long term. And am BS partners with other men and I institutions. In the men and I education agency endowment fund. So we have pooled our endowment. Into a larger group of investments. To pool all our endowment assets together, which gives us kind of more buying power and can give us a higher returns. And so like the choosing what specific investments to invest our endowment in is actually the work of the investment committee. And so we work with evidence and then a foundation, they help manage our endowment. My role is essentially. Sending money as donors contribute to our endowed funds, sending money to the endowment and then also managing the payout that we get, which is a significant part of our budget. To calculate what is going to support our scholarships. What is going to support our other programs or oversight. I also do some short term investing when we have cash around to earn a little bit extra interest. And that sort of thing, but the main investing we are doing is with our endowment, which I have some good partners to help with that. One of the things that I've been so impressed is how you can communicate to our community. What your work includes and you used a number of little buckets to try to explain what your work involves and I wonder, could you share just a little bit of that like. So people get a sense of how you have worked with our community to understand your, all of the things that you have to pay attention to. I actually found at the dollar store some little buckets that I use as a as a prop so that I can explain these and the conversation actually started with the president when we were talking about. You know, finances is a lot more than just the annual budget and annual budget is a really important part of the seminary. And are we being sustainable in our budget from year to year, but we actually have. We have these 4 different buckets of money that I'm managing on a regular basis. So the 1st 1 is our operating budget. So here's my little bucket. Our operating budget are routine income and expenses donations to the annual fund tuition income endowment payout other income and then our expenses, which is mostly compensation maintenance programming academic programs that sort of thing. Now, so we're in the midst of a campaign. So what is our campaign contributions and those are supporting programs separate from the operating budget. So some of the work we're doing with our. Ethiopia program or Matt to Ethiopia program our program in South Korea. Those are not coming from the operating bucket. They're coming from contributed funds for the campaign. So keeping that separate and that reporting separate from operating. And then we have our endowment. So our endowment payout. Where's that money? How's money coming in? How's money coming out? How are we managing the payout that comes from that? Endowments are set to have money that stays in principle. And you use generally a 5% payout. To support our operations. So how are we managing that endowment? How are we trying to grow it? And what do we use the payout for? And then we also have a variety of grants that go in that bucket. We have actually 3 lily grants right now that we're managing as well as. Teaching faculty regularly get small research grants that they're managing. We've gotten grant support for the Benham West documentary. So trying to help people understand like, well, you're spending money from this bucket when really it's a program that's funded by this bucket. And so trying to keep the complexities of accounting out of people's minds too much because if I talk about too many numbers with certain people, their eyes kind of glaze over. So trying to keep it as simple as possible and both my parents were educators. So I think maybe this is where I get some of my. Like, how do you explain this as easily as you can to people who maybe don't have a mind for numbers as much as I'm used to. Thanks. That's been really helpful for all of us. I'm wondering if there's, if you could give us an example of something that you worked with while you've been at ambias that surprised you. Or something you've never done before you came to ambias, because a lot of, as you said, a lot of your work is similar to what you did at Goshen College. I would say one of the biggest things has been Canadian banking. We are a bi national seminary. So we are owned by MC USA and MC Canada. And we have a US dollar denominated bank account and a Canadian dollar denominated bank account and keeping those separate and accept being able to accept donations in Canadian money. And how we're just transacting business in two different countries has been very interesting and something new. I have learned we spent a lot of time jumping through a bunch of hoops with our Canadian bank account just to get my name on the account, for example. So, when there was a transition over two years ago, so working with two different countries and different bank accounts has been something that has been new and surprising for me. I've also been more involved in this role in international student visas. And I'm not directly involved in that the registrar takes care of all of that, but. And it's surprisingly hard even in this day and age for money to move back and forth internationally. So support that's coming for a student from an international place or them putting money on their account before they come as a student can be surprisingly hard. I'm not sure if that money gets to return to them if they don't use it all or they end up not coming that has been has taken a surprisingly amount of time in certain instances. So we are blessed to have a lot of international students on our campus right now, but helping them navigate in a new financial system and helping them get the support they need from variety of places has been surprising. Well, you're very gracious not to just name those things as headaches there. Because I know sometimes it's just very hard to figure it all out it's very complex. I'm going to invite our alumni who are present to start putting their questions or comments in the Q&A. As you answer this last question that I have for you, what is a dream you have for AMBS. My dream is that we continue to attract students who are interested in theological education, especially to campus we are really excited about our MDiv Connect program and the way it can really help train people who are, you know, already working in ministry placement or don't want to move to Alcarte, but and are really excited about the way our work is is really expanding globally. So how do we continue to attract students. I think one thing that I have a dream for too of course is financially we are getting ready to present our fifth year of a balanced budget to the board, which I'm really proud of and is something that has is really challenging in this day and age in the higher government and for seminaries especially. And so my dream would be that we will have the we have reached a place of financial stability, I wouldn't say we've reached a place of long term sustainability. So how do we continue to steward the financial assets as best we can. So we have a long term sustainability for AMBS. And really also that we can just live into our mission statement of serving the church and what is the church asking us to do how can we prepare leaders for the future church. And sometimes my work can feel very adjacent to that but it is the work that's kind of behind the scenes that helps the faculty be able to do their work in the classroom. So that people can be trained and can be effective leaders for the church. To me, I feel like that's something that AMBS has done well in our history. And I'm hoping that it's my dream that we can continue to do that in the church. I feel like we have been able to pay as nimble and kind of flexible as possible. And we need that in the seminary environment today to survive, I think if we aren't doing that and just saying this is what we offer and no one's interested in it. Then I don't see that as being sustainable for the future. So my dream would be a financial stability and sustainability and I work, I work hard on that every day because I want, I want AMBS to be here for the next generation. Thank you so much. We have a question from Eileen Sainer, who saw the announcement about the sidewalk along Benham Avenue. And she is asking how did that come about and what's the timeframe for that for the completion. And where exactly will the sidewalk be thank you Eileen that's an excellent question. Yeah, I can tell you about that. We, my understanding from Ron Ringenberg, who is my predecessor, I replaced him when he retired is this has been something we've been asking for for the South Central part of Elkhart. He said he went before the Common Council 20 years ago. This has been a project in the making. It was funded by the city in 2019 and then COVID happened. And so it's basically been on the shelf since then. Last year we were approached by the city of Elkhart saying this project is moving forward. And we would like to purchase an additional easement off of Benham Avenue because we're going to put a sidewalk there. So we sold a small strip of land to the city of Elkhart last year with the hopes that this project would happen relatively soon. The city green lighted this project for this spring. They held a groundbreaking right by our main sign on Monday morning with the mayor and public works people there and President Bush Art was there and our maintenance team. And I was there. Kicking off this project. We are supporting the project by agreeing to help maintain the trail. We will take care of snow removal for them for the city, which they are very appreciative of. It will be on our side of the street. So I think that's the west side of the street. And it's a 10 foot sidewalk so that it will be handicapped accessible. And we also can drive a pickup truck down it to plow the snow when we need to. And 1 feature that they are adding that we're excited about is. Lighting for the whole path that is powered by solar. So they're putting solar lighting. All the way along. So the sidewalk will run from the intersection of. Hiveley and venom. All the way down to Michelle Walker road. So this our whole section of Venom Avenue, essentially, and turn the corner on Michelle Walker road and go to the old farm apartments. The project officially started last Friday on March 15. The engineer told me that the contractor needs to have it done by May 31st. So they are on a tight timeframe every day I come to work. I'm like, you haven't started on it yet. I hope you can get this done in time. But it should be done by summertime. And so it feels like it's a long term time coming. We're excited to see the city investing in south central Elkhart. You know, we have provided a walking path through the front of our property through our prairie and along our lawn for people. Who prefer to walk to, you know, woodland crossing, which is the shopping complex that has like. The grocery store and things like that in it. And we see community members regularly using our walking path. We don't plan to get rid of that, but this creates a safer, more accessible plant. Access to getting to that part of town. We've seen people. Navigating on the road in ways they shouldn't be. And so this will be a safer option for the community and we're happy to be able to support it and get people walking across the front of our property and seeing more about the cemetery. Yeah, it's very exciting. And the groundbreaking was really cool to be there with all these different city folks who are very excited about it. Obviously. And Eileen says this is going to be a great service to the community, especially to the old farm apartments. I agree. And I know that in the last year before this project started, our maintenance team planted a lot of trees that will be not. They're not right next to the sidewalk, but kind of lining that area so that eventually they'll be shade along this path as well. Our maintenance director norm sender has gotten a lot of smaller trees that he kind of had in a nursery back by the maintenance building that they planted a string of those last spring. We also got a grant from the just packs organization that we used for a variety of things, including buying some trees to replace some old trees we have on campus, but also to plant some more mature trees. Also in that quarter along the sidewalk. So as those trees grow here over the next several years, it should be a nice shady path for people to walk on. I'm not seeing other questions yet. So I'm going to ask another one and I'll give folks one more chance here to get their questions in. But we, we in the last year received a really sizable estate gift, and you got the fun job of figuring out how that would be used. Would you be willing to tell us a little bit about how you decided what the different things that that estate gift would go towards because it really was exciting to be able to cover a lot of different needs here on the campus. Yeah, I'll see if I can remember. We plan on a certain amount of estate gifts every year in our budget and it's kind of a hard to know where we're named in a state gifts. How much will receive when that happens. And so we try to limit the expectation of how much we can plan on on a yearly basis for the operating budget. And so it's been part of our strategic planning work over the last several years to say, if we do have a significant gift. We don't want it to just go to plug a hole in the operating budget and then it's like gone very quickly is what it can feel like. How can we be more strategic about using this money. So we received a gift of almost $1.4 million from John and Irma Stitzman who were from Illinois and Canada. And he was totally unrestricted. We aren't sure, but we think it might be one of might be the largest unrestricted a state gift that we have ever received from ABS. And unrestricted a state gift means the donor has not given any direct designation of what we need to use it for. So they aren't saying you have to use it for scholarships. You have to use it for maintenance. You have to use it for something. So it gives the administration the discretion to decide where it's needed most. Our policy is that we put the first $15,000 of any estate gift into the operating budget. And then we decided, so I worked with Bob Yoder, our director of development and President Bushart to decide where else do we want to use this money. And so really we looked at the strategic plan and said, what could the strategic, what can this help us achieve from the strategic plan? One of the goals of the strategic plan is to create more long term funding for capital projects. We have an annual allotment that goes into a capital projects account to help fund depreciation, ongoing maintenance capital projects for our facilities. The transfer from the budget is not adequate for funding it on every year. So we use some of that money to put money into that account right now to help with some near term expenses. And then we also put money into an endowment for capital projects that will pay out to help support that transfer every year. So that we have more continued funding for the library heat pumps, which we just replaced, which were an expensive projects for sidewalk replacement for. I'm surprised how many things are going on behind the scenes here at MBS that need funding. So we created an endowed scholarship in the stutzman's name. We also added just to our general endowment. We also had taken out some loans for our latest solar project when we put solar panels on the roof of waltner hall we paid that off so we are now I'm proud to say a debt free institution. I'm very grateful for that it gives us again that goal of building financial sustainability for MBS really helped us get there. So I'm trying to remember, am I forgetting anything Janine, what we added to our reserves. I mean things that really help us be sustainable for the long term. It was really helpful. Did any of it go into the campaign. We did not use any of it for the campaign of the 1.4 million, just a little over a million went to the endowment, which is great to be able to have that much of a of a push to the endowment which then gives us pay out for the future. We're also trying to build up the endowment for our church leadership center which provides key non degree program education for. For the church, and that's 1 area that we're trying to prioritize some fundraising on for the endowment so we gave it kind of a boost with some of this money as well. Well, thank you so much, Deanna for answering all these questions. It's just really interesting to hear all of the things that you get to work with. And I want to thank you, our alumni for joining us today and for your continued support of ambias. I say this. Every time you are so important as influencers both your prayer support your financial support but also to encourage those in your congregations and your and your groups of friends to support the seminary as well. Also, to tap people on the shoulder to ask them, have you ever considered seminary take advantage of these options like Deanna has taken advantage of doing a graduate certificate to add to her MBA as well. So continue to encourage people if you know of someone you'd like to have us contact about seminary, please let me know and I'll be in touch with them. And I hope you'll also continue to stay connected to the church leadership center and the programs that are offered there and remember that you can always take classes if you're a graduate you have a special audit rate. So if you're interested in taking a class this summer or next fall, let me know. Next month on April 18 our third Thursday conversation will feature Mary Ann Weber director of enrollment. Thanks again for joining us today and thanks also to student Janet McGeary for providing the technical support for our webinar. This concludes today's third Thursday conversation. Have a wonderful day.