 All right, good afternoon, everyone. Thank you so much for being here. My name is Jenny Conroy, and I'm the president of the board of trustees. And we have the rest of the board here, Joy walking in, as well as some members of the finance committee for our financial forum this morning. So before we have our opening reading and get started, I want to just give you a little overview of our handouts and our agenda. So as you came in, there was a draft of the budget that we are going to go over, as well as the foundation report and the FAQs that we prepared after the recent town halls. I wanted to note that those, we only printed about 50 copies of those because they're pretty long. So those are also on the website, fussmedicine.org slash finances. And that was linked in the red floors. So you can see those online, as well. And then we have our agenda that I'll go over real quick. So we're going to have an opening reading. And then we'll go over kind of an abbreviated recap of where we've been and where we are now and a few more data points based on some questions that came up from the town hall. Then we'll go over our proposed budget, foundation update from Connie Beam, then Larry Johnson from our finance committee will talk about how we, as members, can be more involved. Then we'll have questions and feedback. And then we'll have our closing. Also, I want to point out on the back of the agenda is our relational covenant. Just as a reminder, as we're having our discussions about how we have covenanted to speak with each other and bring up feedback and questions as we go. So just a reminder there. So the purpose of this is to share the proposed budget, to get your feedback and to answer questions. And then we have our May Parish meeting, May 19th. And that's when we'll actually be voting on the budget. So no action taken today. So before we get into the meat of things, I'm going to turn it over to Kelly A.J. for our opening reading. This reading comes from Steven Smith. Everywhere we go, we take our souls with us. And every time we meet someone, we wrap a little piece of our souls around them and pass it through them. All our lives, we weave our souls around and through everyone we meet, tying a complex tangled web to the earth. This is who we are to the world around us. Each of us has 1,000,000 tendrils of other souls wrapped around us and through us. And this is who we are to ourselves. Sometimes we need to grasp these tendrils for all we're worth just to keep ourselves here. Sometimes the tendrils snap and we can't weave anymore. But the 1,000,000 threads we have already woven remain tangled messily about the earth. This is still who we are. And we aren't diminished, but it does leave a hole. You have wrapped your soul around me and through me 1,000 million different times. If I gather all these threads in my hands and hold tight, and if you hold onto all the threads that have ever pierced your soul, wrap them around you like a protective cloak anchoring you to the ground, maybe the threads won't snap and you can keep weaving a little longer. If it snaps anyway, I will take all the threads you have left me and wrap them around a spool that I will carry with me always. But try not to let your tendrils snap. I'd like to feel you weaving your soul around me and through me for a little while longer. A reminder as we begin this conversation about our congregation and about its finances, that this is one of the places where we weave our souls together. And as much or however much or however little we enjoy talking about it individually, money is a part of how we do that weaving. OK, so we're going to do a little look back before we look at our budget going forward. So a reminder again of where we are, kind of how we've gotten to the position we're in over the last 10 years or so. Then we're on a good foundation for talking about our budget for this coming year. And I know many of you are at the town hall, so a little bit of this will be recap, but we do have some new data, again, to share based on some of the questions that came out of those discussions. So if you want to advance the slide. So again, as we're going into our next fiscal year that starts July 1st, we are projecting a budget shortfall from last year of about $200,000. And we'll talk about it in a little more detail in a moment, but over the past several years, due to the various circumstances we were in, we used some stop gaps, cash reserves, and government funding. So we use those well, I think, to be able to make it through those tough times, but we have exhausted those at this point. So this year we are proposing a smaller, what we think is a sustainable budget going forward so that we're not having to kind of make those stop gaps. Do you want to advance? So again, as we talked about in the town halls, we've had some compounding factors, which I know you're all familiar with, but just to remind you and kind of set the stage again, we did have a pandemic that we came through, and well, we're still living it, so we didn't completely come through it, but we've gotten through some of the worst of it, which led to our virtual services, canceled events, and then economic recession as well. We do have ongoing high expenses. Part of that is this beautiful building we're in, this $6 million atrium that we are making great use of, but we still have those expenses to address, and then we've had record inflation, which is finally slowing down a little bit, but we had a long time of that record, 10% inflation. And then kind of around the same time, we are going through this ministerial transition, a lot of upheaval with a long-term minister, Michael Schuler's retirement, and three years of interim ministers, and during that time, a lot of transition, we had a loss of long-term, long-time, high pledge donors, some passed away, some stepped away, so we've had all of these things kind of going on in the background. If you wanna go ahead and advance, and then again, as we talked about, we had some stop gaps, and some of these, it was very fortunate that we had these. First, the government assistance. We had almost $500,000 of government assistance that was provided specifically so that we could maintain staff, and so we used that money, and we were able to prevent any layoffs over those years, but of course that's no longer available. The ministers of Monica always are looking for grant opportunities, but those specific large pools of money are no longer available. And then cash reserves, so for about a decade, we've used cash reserves to cover kind of income shortfalls or income kind of fluctuations over the months, but in the recent couple years, we've really used them to patch holes in the budget, and as you may recall, in May 2023, we did vote as a congregation at that time to use 175,000 of our reserves to balance the budget, and so that we wouldn't have any layoffs at that time, though we did keep our salaries flat. So our cash reserves now are nearly depleted, so we don't have that to draw from. Do you want to advance? Okay, so now a few, those slides were mostly review, but here's now just a few more to give you a little bit deeper. So at the end of December, we had $309,000 in reserves. At the end of this past December, we had $86,000 in reserves, and that print might be kind of small in the bottom there, but we do have a policy to try to maintain 150,000 in cash reserves for emergencies, of course, and then again, also when there's fluctuations in income from month to month, if pledge payments are not coming in that month, just so we can kind of even that out. So we tried to maintain 150,000, and now we're down to 86,000, but we did do that, we knew we were making that decision last year, but we can't make that decision again. You want to advance? Okay, and then a few more. Last time we kind of showed you a snapshot, like 10 years ago, so we wanted to give you a little more detail on some of the changes over the last 10 years, so this might be a little hard to see, but this is 2013 to 2014 on the left and our pledge units over time, and it was about 800 at that time, and then way over here to the right is 22, 23, and we're just under 500 pledge units, and a pledge unit could be a household, you know, very often it's a household, could be a one person, so it's, well, it's kind of, you know, over time, 13, 14, 14, 15, so each one is a year, so this is 13, 14, 14, 15, 15, 16, 16, 17, so there's a drop there, 17, 18, then 19, 20, yeah, you're welcome. Okay, you want to advance to the next one? Okay, total pledge dollars over time, so this makes up the bulk of our budget is the pledge money we receive, not all of it, but a large bulk of it, so again, this is a little hard to see on this black, it's the same time period, so it starts in 13, 14, and then it's a year each all the way over to 22, 23 on the right, and in 13, 14, it's just over 1.2 million, and then over here, we're just under a million, yeah, so her comment was, even though pledge units have come down, the pledge, the overall pledges have stayed fairly steady, they are still, we're still about 250,000 or whatever lower with also the higher inflation and higher expenses, but that leads, that does lead into our next graphic here if you want to advance again, so our average pledge has gone up over time, so here 13, 14 again, 10 years of time, we were just under 1,500, oh that's nice, thank you, so we were just under 1,500, stayed under there, and then we've seen climbing since about 17, 18, and now we're over 2,000, so that's a really nice sign, and there are, Monica did say there, it seemed like 10 years ago, there might have been a little more focus on having more pledges that might have been smaller, so sometimes that could be some of the focus might have been a little bit different at the time, so that is definitely a positive we're seeing, but our overall pledge dollars have gone down a bit, so hopefully that gives you a little more data we wanted to show you over the last 10 years. I think that that is, is that my last slide? Okay, yeah, so now, so that's again, just kind of showing you where we've been and where we are now, and now we'll look at our budget, so if you wanna pull out that handout, we'll look at our proposed budget. So first of all, you may take notice that I'm one person and not two, Monica Nolan, our executive director, worked very long and very hard on a lot of the preparation of materials for this meeting and in organizing us, and due to circumstances beyond anyone's control, she's out sick today, so I hope you'll join me in wishing her recovery and that she feels better soon. So let's speak to what I can speak to about the figures in front of you and on the screen. So first of all, just a reminder, well, a reminder for many of you, perhaps new information for some of you about how this particular draft budget was built going to the reality that based on our income streams and based on the way that we do budgeting here, we were facing, we, Monica, so like step by step thing is that Monica alerted Kelly Crocker and myself beginning of this past fall, so sometime in early September, that based on the projections for what the final cost of quarter four of our previous fiscal year would be, we would have even less money in our cash reserves than was originally planned and expected, and given that, we would be needing to cut somewhere on the order of what turned out to be a little over $200,000 out of this coming year's budget relative to last budget, the current budget for the current fiscal year, the congregation approved in May, that that would need to be the change if we were going to present a balanced budget to the congregation. So Kelly and I, recognizing that was gonna be a big undertaking with significant consequences for how we operate together, started with the question of, okay, if we have to basically start over from scratch, rebuild the institution in terms of our understanding of its priorities, where do we do that from? So what you will see in the details of the, you've got a hand out there, there's details as well on the screen, is that of that number, it's a little bit more than $200,000, we were able to account for about a quarter of it, just slightly less than a quarter of it, in programmatic expenses, that is expenses that are just about the way that we do business, things related to the facilities, things related to the cost of our individual programs, that is not where the bulk of the money that it takes in order to run this institution comes from, or goes to rather, the bulk of our expenses are human expenses, they are the costs necessary to employ our staff. And so roughly three quarters of those cuts then needed to come from our existing staff team, very sadly. So we were happy to be able to find about a quarter of what we needed in the program thing, it's not that there are some cuts there that I wouldn't say I'm excited about, but I believe we can keep everything running essentially, just sort of working a little bit smarter. There's things like changing the company that we rely on for our payroll services, right, shifting things in order to save money where we could, but the bulk of them did necessarily have to come out of human resources there. So the budget was built by Kelly and I putting our heads together thinking okay, this is what we think we can as the people who are in charge of leading the staff team, but we think we can do the core work of the congregation as we understand it, this is the team that we think we can operate with given the budget constraints, we then went to the board with what we thought we could work with, we got feedback from the board that guided us in putting together some changes in that plan, both some new ideas and also some parameters, some guidance from them about well, this is where we think the priorities of the institution are necessarily important information to have and then we took that plan created in consensus with the board, we came to a place of agreement with them and took it back to Monica Nolan, our executive director because she is our primary numbers person so we needed her to sharpen the pencil and see is there anything that we missed, is there anything else that we can provide in terms of savings and actually some of the key programmatic changes that allowed us to retain as many staff members as we were able to came from her, so I wanna credit her for that. So, then we took it to you, that's what the round of town halls that happened in January were about, that's what this is now, we are, what you have in your hand is the budget that as of right now your board intends to present to the congregation for a vote in May, reminder, that's when the vote is, so this is sort of the difference about this year is that this would usually be the day on which or the weekend on which this document would be public, it was promulgated the congregation a little bit earlier than usual because we recognize it's a big set of changes. So, I wanna say a little bit of something about income just to make sure that we're playing with the same information here. On the income side, our sources of income, as a congregation, our first and foremost, are pledges. The financial support pledged to the institution by our members and friends is where the bulk of our income, the bulk of the resources that we have to share together come from. The second source on this is our relationships with our renters, primarily our long-term renters. We do see a small amount of income from one-off events or cyclical annual events, but the vast majority of our rental income comes from three consistent sources. The Meeting House Nursery School, which is a long-time rental relationship we have and which makes use of much of our facility during the weekdays. Cargation, Shireh Shemayim, a newer but still long-term rental relationship that makes use of the building many Saturdays, some other times during the week, and also they rent office space from us in the Isom House, so that's another ongoing daily expense, well, expense of them, income to us, and then our parking clients, who are mostly on annual and sometimes multi-year agreements for the use of spaces in our parking lot, another major source of revenue for the congregation. The third source of income I would point out and lift up is the annual contribution from our foundation, the investment income that has been, well, sorry. The foundation accounts for donations that have been made for long-term value to the congregation, they go to the foundation, the foundation invests that income and sends a payment to the congregation each year to help to underwrite the cost of the annual budget, so that's another major source of revenue for us, and then other smaller but still important resources that I just wanna make sure we're all aware of, the annual or the yearly sources of individual contribution that are not pledges, so contributions made to the outreach offering each weekend, most weekends the outreach offering is a shared offering, half to one beneficiary in the larger community, half to FUS, occasionally the entire plate goes to the recipient, that's usually for a specific reason. Unpledged income, which is various reasons but probably the single most common reason why we receive unpledged income is when someone new joins the congregation and wants to make a contribution but doesn't have an existing pledge from the current year's pledge campaign, and then money raised through fundraising events, most of our events that do raise funds here at FUS are actually fundraisers, that's the way in which we approach them, it's also the level at which they contribute, so their primary purpose is in connecting the community and building rapport and relationship, but they can also generate some revenue, and then there's really just one that I can name as being a really significant source of income, and that's the annual Art in the Right Place fundraiser. Other ones often turn a profit, but that is the one that most consistently turns a sort of a measurable profit. And then the sort of final source that I would name, and it's not really a thing that makes a difference in the budget, but it is important to acknowledge as a thing that's involved in our financial life, is that we do charge fees for certain classes and other programmatic events, and those really go to underwrite the costs of the classes themselves, but they are defraying something that would otherwise have to come out of the annual budget. So, in terms of transitioning now to expenses, like income, in general, we budget our expenses based on a two-year average of spending. This is what I was speaking about before when I said the, because of the way that we have historically done and continue to do our budgeting process here at FUS, a lot of these numbers, although not all predictable multiple years in advance, are pretty well prescribed for us. This, because they are based on this two-year average of both income and expenses. The benefit of that is that it insulates us about against individual hardship. One year downturns, we feel a much lighter impact from, but the drawback of it is that it's much slower to turn the boat. So, that is essentially the reason why the ability to just sort of jerk the wheel and shift the financial reality of the congregation isn't open to us in the way that some smaller congregations are used to things like recovery, I mean, just again to be candid, I've said this before, I am used to it functioning differently in smaller institutions that aren't dealing with the size and scale that we do as a community. So, as I said, the largest single segment of our, of our expenses are our human expenses, the compensation we pay to our staff team. So, if you can advance the slide. So, this was shared with the congregation in January, you may have seen it, you may not have, but this is the intended organizational chart for the budget as it is being presented from the board to the congregation. So, if that budget or something very similar to it passes in May, this is the arrangement of staff that you will see going forward in our next fiscal year. Just to make sure everybody, I know not everybody can necessarily see or read it easily. As always, there's no change in the role of the authority of the Board of Trustees. The Board of Trustees acts on behalf of the congregation in between its parish meetings and sets the policy that the staff is required to follow in the way that it does its job and its work. Kelly and I, as your co-senior ministers, that's the next level down on the chart, are responsible for managing the staff team and ensuring that the policies passed by the Board of Trustees are followed by the staff in their work. The next level down in this organizational chart will be five co-equal directors. Three of those positions are full-time, two of those positions will be half-time. The two half-time positions, director of stewardship and director of music, the three full-time positions, director of lifespan education, director of membership, director of finance and operations. All five of those positions exist at some level in our current organizational chart. The exact relationship of those positions has been ambiguous and not necessarily, not necessarily intended to be even. And so one of the, it's not really a choice related directly to the financial considerations. It's a choice more out of trying to organize the staff in what we consider to be both a more coherent way and a way that does more to encourage cooperation across different programs and throughout different parts of the organization to say these five people all will have the title director, not all of them did previously, and will all be intentionally placed on the same footing structurally. And then there are additional roles beyond the five director level positions, some of which are full-time, some of which are part-time. The one, possibly the position that has the absolute least amount of change involved in this plan is our facilities manager, because we have a sprawling campus, right? We have a set of buildings that both provide us great benefit both through the use of the congregation in terms of the income from them and also incur substantial costs and needs related to maintaining and protecting the congregation's real estate assets. So having a full-time facilities manager doing essentially the same job next year as he's doing this year felt integral to that. There are several part-time positions, the basic expectations and role of will not be changing in this plan. Our child care workers, our assistant music director, our child and teen choir director, and our AV and event specialists. Those are all roles that we have in our current organizational chart. They continue into the next organizational chart. Yes, and then there is one position on this list that is new, it is one new full-time position in making some cuts. I'm gonna speak to the cuts in a second, just as a reminder. In making some cuts to staff, cuts we did not want to make, but did not feel we had a choice, we did identify that there was an area that was already a weak point for our organization and a weak point in terms of the needs of our staff team in order to do their job and would only get weaker if not addressed. So while we had to present to the board a budget that required reducing our total number of staff, it also included increasing by one new member, one new staff position, and that's the office assistant position to have one person whose core responsibilities focus on the organizational needs of just functioning in an office environment and in particular our databases. We have well over a thousand adult members here and many, many more folks in our listings in terms of the friends, visitors, other people whose information we need to keep track of both for financial reasons and in order to serve the needs of the community. And having a person whose job it was to actually focus on that felt like an unavoidable need. So that's the reason for that new position. I've said this before, but just as a reminder or again for anyone for whom this is news, there are three positions that very sadly will be going away entirely in this budget. Those are Zan Hendricks who is our program assistant. It's about 80% religious education or excuse me, children's religious exploration and about 20% membership and adult programming support role. The social justice coordinator, Christie Sprague, whose focus is on our social justice programming and Molly Bacchus, our communications professional. Those are the three positions that will be going away entirely in this and as is pointed out on this org chart, two positions that are currently full time will be going to halftime. Our music director, Drew Collins, that's the same title. I will be working with him. We have a plan in principle. We have not written out into a detailed format yet for which responsibilities will be going away or moving to other staff members so that it can be a truly halftime position so that I'm not asking him to do more work for less pay. And what is currently our program manager position, the title change will be to the director of stewardship, a large part of the thinking in moving that position to halftime. I mean, I'm not excited about any of these changes, but the reason in thinking that that is possible is that much of the database role that that position has been handling mostly by default, not really by original design, will now be intentionally kept with the office assistant position. That's your walkthrough on the organizational chart. There's one more thing I want to make sure to highlight in terms of changes to expenses, right? Most of this is about numbers going down, but there is at least one key area where a number is going up. And that is, if you look, it's near the bottom, I believe, of the handout. Let me get that in front of me. Yes, the number is highlighted in yellow under expenses, partial replenishment of cash reserve. We've talked a little bit about why the cash reserves have been going down with some replenishment mostly from government funding over the last 10 years as we've been using them to fund budgets that were, I think they were good budgets. I have no criticism of those budgets. They simply were beyond the means of our immediate sources of income, and now we have to restructure to live within the means of our annual sources of income. We talked about why those numbers have gone down, but the cash reserves, in addition to serving essentially as a rainy day fund for the congregation, that's one role it has and can play, also serves a kind of a process function. We have a budget that is largely, not entirely, but more than half, shaped by the pledges that we receive from our membership, and then the contributions that members make in fulfillment of those pledges, and members can make those contributions at any time during the fiscal year. Some folks have things set up with their bank on a regimented system. We're very grateful to those of you who do that, but we're also grateful to the people who pay as they can and make individual choices based on their family budgets, about when is the right time in the year to pay. There isn't a wrong way to make your contribution, and all of it's appreciated. But because people can pay at any time, that can lead to a erratic cash flow for the organization, and so the other function that cash reserves serve is to basically help us even out the cash flow. It basically functions like a checking account for the congregation. You keep a certain amount of money in it just to make sure that if a bill hits before the next coming payment does, there isn't a problem with cash flow. So there is a need, even if not to serve as a rainy day fund, to replenish cash reserves at least to a small degree, and that's that number there. I believe it is a little over 14 grand. There you go. All right, thank you, Kelly. And next, we are gonna get an update on our foundation from Connie Beam, and we get an annual update on the foundation. We thought it would be a good idea to give this now, both because there's been some questions on sort of the interaction of how funding from the foundation comes, and why it's great to keep building up the foundation, because we are getting almost 200,000 this year, and then also the ways in which you can donate to the foundation, and kind of how that works. So Connie is gonna take us through the foundation report. Thank you, Jenny. And very nice explanation on the budget, Kelly. That was well done. Well, I'm glad to be here this morning, and I see if you're a member of the foundation board, would you raise your hand? So there's Carol, Kathy, David, and Peter over there. I don't think I missed anybody else. There's nine of us, and we are all elected by you, by the congregation, and you will vote on three new members or returning members at our parish meeting in May. So our foundation, as I think a lot of you know, has been around a long time. This congregation instituted this separate non-profit corporation to make long-term investments for, in behalf of the society. And what we do every year is we look at our total assets on December 31st, and we take 5% of that, and we hand it over to the church for the next fiscal year. And we've been doing that now for many, many years. And this report, you can see, we've got our income activities, our income expenses, our total assets and liabilities listed for the last two years. You can see that at the end of our last fiscal year, which actually we have the same fiscal year as the church, so that fiscal 23 is now last year, last June. So it's almost a year old. But at that time we had 3.4 million, almost $3.5 million in total assets. And then the little chart to the right shows you how the assets have grown over the years from 2014 right up to 2023. And then the chart below that shows you what our return on investment is, and it's kind of up and down and up and down as the market is, because we do invest this money. And you can see that, you can see that real pop in 2021 where the market went crazy, and then it collapsed in 2022. And in 23 now we've recovered a little bit from that crazy market time. And so what we do is we look at the last three years of total assets on December 31st, and we average those. And then we take 5% of that average and distribute it back to FUS on a quarterly basis. And so that kind of evens out, like Kelly was referring to, what was the term you used, Kelly? Because we use this averaging method, it turns the ship slowly instead of this up and down and up and down. It smooths out our distributions over time to FUS. So they'll have some sense of what the annual distribution is gonna be. It isn't gonna bounce around. Now I wasn't always like that. If you look at annual distribution chart 2015, see how that pops up there? Well, that was the last year. We had two of our largest funds distributed on a different distribution system. It provided up to 80% of the previous year's earnings of that fund. So in a good year you got a lot of money and in a bad year you got a lot less money. And so we fixed that. We changed that with the approval of the board of trustees. And now you can see that our payments have evened out a little better even though the market hops all over the place. And then in the bottom left, there's a little story there about Bill and Joyce Wortman. Bill and Joyce were members, well, Bill was. I don't know if Joyce was a member or not. But anyway, Bill was no, I'm seeing no. Bill was a member here for many, many years. And when he passed, or even before he passed, he, back in the 90s, he and Joyce set up some funds with us and permanently endowed those funds. And the music fund is just one of those. There's three that they established. And over the years they continued to contribute to that fund. The congregation contributed some matching money and individuals have contributed to that fund as well over the years. And now, as you can see, the fund is worth over $163,000. It provides a substantial amount of money every year to the music fund. And all of our funds work that way. There's some real little ones that started out with just $1,700 and now they're worth nearly 40. And they pay out a nice sum to whatever purpose they are intended for. So our distributions support the budget in almost every area. We've got social justice funds. We have music funds. We have undesignated unrestricted funds. So the board is free to put it where it feels it needs to. We have a building, huge building fund. We have program fund. Many, all of these funds really help. And over time, it really makes a big difference. So bringing us up to date, I'll just add this one little ditty. In last November, we were notified that we will be receiving, the foundation will be receiving a very substantial gift, the largest gift we've ever received from the Betty Bamforth estate. Betty was a member here for many years. She died relatively young, but she left her estate to benefit her sister. And when her sister passed away, which was just last summer, then the estate is now distributing to five beneficiaries and we are one of them. And we will receive somewhere in the neighborhood of $850,000 or $900,000. She designated it for building maintenance and endowment. So it has to come to the foundation, but we will put that money to work and we will help to add to the distribution we make every year for maintaining this building and our campus. So just another little story of how people can make a big difference over a long amount of time. So are we taking questions or? Okay, thank you. All right, thanks Connie. And like Kelly said, we'll have one more topic and then we'll open it up to questions and feedback. So Larry is going to talk about as members what this means for us. If we're having a bit of a contraction as members, what do we need to do to contribute? Thank you. Thank you, Anna. Can you hear me? And I'm going to sit here and instead of standing, I hope you can still see me. Actually, I have some nerve damage in my feet and so I have a balance problem. So if I stand up, I'm going to fall over. So I think I'm going to stand up. Okay, well, since I'm representing the finance committee, you probably think I'm going to talk about money, right? Actually, I'm going to expand our discussion and talk about wealth. Today we've talked about our financial resources, but money is just part of our wealth. In addition to our financial gifts, we also have a wealth of natural resources that we're using right now. And for example, we make money with our resources here and Kelly has talked about that, renting the parking lot, renting out our space here for events and for the Jewish congregation and the childcare center. And $280,000 is pretty significant. Also, we save money with our facility. We have solar panels on the roof and we're using our groundwater beneath us as part of our heat pump system. So we're saving money. But what is often overlooked is our wealth of human resources, people. Human creativity and our time and labor are a powerful combination for service to each other to FUS and to our community. When we think about it, our members have abundant skills, talents and abilities such as teachers, plumbers, children, lawyers, carpenters, mothers, computer experts, farmers, childcare workers, accountants, artists, musicians, teenagers, social workers, storytellers, fathers, physical and mental health providers, entertainers, government service employees, consultants, lawn maintenance pros, advocates, waiters, lecturers, connections with resource people, managers, elders and more, we could go on. We have much to share. The point I want to make is that the wealth of FUS and its many forms can be used to promote and sustain our mission and our values, our mission and our vision. So encourage us all to find lots of ways to share our vast wealth with each other. Thank you so much, Leary. That was such a good reminder and good kind of recognition of the part we all play. So before we move on, our next steps here are that we're gonna take your feedback, your questions, hear from you and then the board will have a couple more meetings before our May Parish meeting when we'll present our proposed budget for voting on then in May. That will then begin in July 1st. So now we can take your questions and Mike is gonna be Matt. He's gonna be, my name is Vicki Jones. I've been a member here for 35 years. I appreciate how difficult this task has been for everybody and thank you for all the hard work that you're doing. I know that the focus of this meeting is about sustainability but kind of the yang to that yin is growth and I'm wondering, and I believe that two of the program areas that are most successful in attracting potential new members are our RE and music programs where we are seeing some significant cuts and I'm wondering what kind of conversations you've been having about how to foster and stimulate growth and attract new potential members as you've been thinking about this. I can start that a little bit. I don't think we mentioned it now but at the town halls, we talked about two membership teams, two ministry teams that will be starting up, membership and stewardship. And so those are two ways that we wanna not just rely on staff but see how members can help in that area to think about ways to grow our membership, grow our engagement. So those are two ways. I do think it's gonna take a lot of us kind of contributing and not being as dependent on staff. Did anyone else wanna add anything on that one? Just a quick comment. We do get quite a few visitors here every week and our new member classes are, I think, full for the most part but I think focusing on new members is really something that we wanna do. So I wanna offer just a, maybe a different framework perspective on it. It seems like you're sort of asking like what is happening organizationally around this? So I think it's an incredibly important thing to be continuously open to and welcoming to new members for reasons utterly divorced from finances, right? And that that is the primary reason why we do, I think everything that we do with the possible exception of like renting things out. I mean, I think maybe the rental value is maybe a little bit more dollars and cents focused but everything else we do as a congregation first and foremost is guided by things that aren't money. Money is necessary and important to consider it is not the primary driving factor in why we make, to my understanding, almost all of our key decisions. And I just wanna like in terms of making sure that people have an awareness of this piece of information. We, every congregation in the Unitarian Universal Association is asked, not everybody does it but almost everybody does it, to turn in certain facts and figures, data points about their congregation every February. It's part of our recertification process as members of the UUA. And that includes reporting our total adult membership. For this year, we just reported the beginning of February and so did everybody else. So that's a point where we can compare and say, okay, here's where we are. We are the second largest brick and mortar Unitarian Universalist congregation in the country. I think we've been there before we had, oh, all right, all right. You know, I don't know that it matters if we're big or not. Like I'm just gonna say, like I don't, I don't think it's inherently good or bad. It simply is. Like it's a thing to know about ourselves. We are the second largest by adult membership. It's a piece of information to have. So we see a lot of, that's because we see a lot of visitors. We see a lot of newcomers. We're absorbing, but I think, pretty respectable number of those newcomers each year because we just hit 1190 is the figure we reported and that's a objectively large group of people for a congregation. But I do, I wanna put in the like, the voice for the reasons why we need to be thinking about how we are welcoming as an institution, how we are connecting with the wider community of which we're a part. And, you know, things that do have a big impact on our numerical growth as a community, the first and foremost reasons for that have nothing to do with money. And I feel that very strongly. I wanna be transparent about that as my perspective. So I'm Nancy Vedder-Schultz and I just wanna follow up to what Vicki said because you spoke to one of the things that she wanted you to talk about. I've been a member for I think a year longer than Vicki. But you didn't speak to the fact that children's religious education and music are two major draws to our congregation. And whether you thought about how that works with respect to the budget you just gave us. So indeed we did, at least insofar as we thought a lot about what do we understand the crucial functions of the congregation to be? And then what material resources do we need in order to meet that kind of baseline, right? So it is the case that the total amount being spent on the music program is going down in this budget. That the total amount being spent on the children's religious exploration program is going down in this budget. I would highlight that it's, that's more than just across the board and depending on how you wanna, I mean, we could have a whole debate about what's the most important thing? Is it dollars? Is it staff hours? There are other different ways to look at resource distribution, but by at least some measurements, there are other programs being more negatively impacted. I'm thinking especially about social justice. Going from one full-time staff member for the whole of our social justice program to zero full-time staff members, there'll be some reapportioning of that. Those work tasks to me, but I don't pretend that I'm gonna be a substitute for Christie, that's not imaginable. So there, it has impacts throughout the programmatic structure of the congregation. We believe, both based on the past experience of this congregation, what Kelly and I, as the leaders of the staff team as the people who supervise, supervise or supervise the supervisors of everybody on the staff team, we believe that the critical function and the high quality that we are used to for both our music program and our children's religious exploration program can be met with the resource lines in this budget, or we wouldn't be proposing it, right? We would be doing something else. We'd either be cutting the cake differently, or we would be having a different meeting that was about we need you to level set to just expect fundamentally less from us programmatic in the areas. That's not what I'm saying. I believe, Kelly told me she agrees with me. You know, she's on sabbatical right now which is why she's not here, but I rarely like to speak for her, but we were real solid on this. So I am speaking for her in this instance. We believe together that the overall high quality and robust offerings in those areas can be continued with this level of functioning. And the one other thing that I do wanna highlight is there actually is a programmatic area that is seeing an increase in resources in this budget. It may or may not be transparent and if it's not, I apologize. We will be going from having what is currently one person whose title is the director of membership and the director of adult programs to one person whose whole title is adult, is the director of membership. I think that I'm given to understand that was actually a title previously in other iterations of the organization, but we've been part timing that role for several years now and going to having it be one full-time person devoted to membership and engagement and helping us two together be welcoming and integrating new members and deepening our relationships together as ongoing members, to my mind, is a significant and meaningful change in resources. Hi, my name is Susan Koenig. I've been around less years than the other people who have spoken, but still a long time. I believe that what I wanna say connects with the idea of where our wealth lies and how we think about it. As I look at the budget, one of the things that caught my eye is in the program lines and the areas where we have underspent and all of those lines make me very sad and part of the reason I wanted to comment on this is that I think it's really tempting in a time when we may feel scared about money to look at areas where we've underspent and feel really glad about that and wanna celebrate that and wanna encourage our staff to be parsimonious to try to skimp. When I look at those lines, those look to me like plans that weren't realized. I assume that a budget that behind all of those numbers were things we intended to do and didn't get done, that there was something that people were excited about and for some reason we weren't able to pull off. I know that even with our level of staffing now, people feel absolutely overworked to the end of their level of sanity. I know that from firsthand experience, what it's like to work here, it is crazy making to work here. I think it's better now than it was when I worked here but it's crazy making. And joyful but also crazy making. I wanna encourage our staff, spend this money. And I wanna also encourage all of us to understand that the only way we make these things happen is if we all help. And this is that moment. I know that I'm so sorry I've forgotten your name, Larry. And has said this and that we've seen it in print, the glass half full way to look at this is this is our moment to really live into the abundance that we have in this community. I guess I have an observation and a question and I'll try to be brief with each. First of all, I noticed one of the few areas of increases in the cash reserve, it's doubling almost. And I think this is a positive thing. I don't know how different a, I live in a kind of minimum. And the rule of thumb is you want a cash reserve that is at least half the size of the annual operating budget because you don't know what could happen. You could have a burst gas or water main. You could have a bad wind or blizzard storm that rips off tiles from the roof, that sort of thing. Which leads me into my question. Do you have any kind of golden rule you follow in trying to determine the proportion of your total cash reserve to the operating budget? Could you give us an idea of what it is if you do? Yes, our policy is to try to retain $150,000 in cash reserve, so not half. So 150,000 is what we strive to have. And then when it dips below 100,000 is when the executive director and the ministers alert the board. So, and I think we had, it was maybe 86,000 about right now. So we're well below our policy that we like to have. So this would get us almost to 100,000, still below, but get us in a position to start building that back up. Hi, I'm Rob Savage. I've been around for just about ever. But not quite. First of all, I want to say that when we first started coming here, we were out in the loja having the coffee hour. And who do you talk to? You talk to your friends that you haven't seen all week. We had no friends that we didn't see until we went to Trees for tomorrow. So we then had friends. So one of the things I've been trying to do as I noticed somebody. So for instance, this morning we were upstairs and Mary did the voluntary greeting thing and set this person downstairs. And I went, made sure I went over and talked to them to say, I'm so glad that you're here. And so I think that's one of the ways that we can grow our congregation is to make sure we go and say hi. So the other thing I would remind people of is that some of us have retirement income and one of the ways we can use that without having to do taxes on it is to give qualified charitable donations from our IRAs or whatever because you have to take out a certain amount every year based on what your salary, what your total was at the beginning of the year. And so I would urge people to think, go ahead, make those contributions based on your required distribution. So, at any rate, yeah, so do I. So, thank you very much. My name is Renee Rice and I'm a relative newcomer here. I've been here about 17 years, I think. And one of the things that I especially enjoy is hearing how many years some of you have been here, 30 and 40 plus. And what an amazing treasure that is to have in our congregation. I have been a part of lay ministry for the last 10 or so years and on the coordinating team. And you may not be familiar with the lay ministry program. What we do is we come to services and we are one of the many faces here for newcomers. And it's been my privilege as part of the coordinated team to collect the number of individuals and contacts that we make each month, each quarter, each year. And our lay ministry program talks to 10 to 15% of our congregation, which is a phenomenal amount. It is such a joy to hear about the newcomers who come through our new UU program, who come to Blue Christmas, which was better attended this year than it ever has. Although we've been doing it for many years, it was on a Saturday instead of a Tuesday and that made all the difference. So I wanted to represent our lay ministry program and our mighty team who helps make everything go along with the rest of you. And I want to express my profound gratitude for our dedicated, tireless, elected volunteers and staff who have spent countless hours creating a budget that is sustainable and based on years of congregational input. We continue to trust you to act for the greater good of our beloved congregation. And we have already seen, we've seen the benefits of these conversations in that there are more volunteers. There's more awareness of what it takes to make a congregation like ours happen every week, week after week. And what I have most noticed about being a lay minister is that people come here because of who we are together. Hello, I'm Dorit Bergen. Since we're playing the numbers game, I've been a member for 48 years and therefore I'm kind of embarrassed to have to ask this question. Connie, the $198,000 that's in the budget that's gonna come from the foundation in the proposed budget. So some of that money comes from different funds and out of that money, a certain amount would have to go to music, would have to go to the building, whatever it's designated for. And then part of that is undesignated for the board to use as they want to. Thank you. That's all right. Hi, I'm Katie White. I am probably the newest member in the entire room. Thanks. My family moved to Madison in March of 2020, right at the same time as COVID did. And we've been coming to FUS as pretty much as soon as we could come back to FUS. And I don't know when I just signed the membership book, but pretty soon thereafter. So I don't know, two years maybe only. And I've been in journey circles. I'm now singing the choir. My kids go to CRE, trying to be involved and volunteer as much as I possibly can. Thank you to everyone who's been awesome and welcoming and thanks to the board for all of your efforts. That being said, I'm really concerned and unhappy with several things in regard to this budget proposal. Can you give me a minute? One of my daughters. And I know you've said that there was feedback from the board and lots of back and forth, but it doesn't seem that there were a lot of feedback and back and forth with the congregation. And I know there were town halls that we were invited to. I couldn't attend. I'm here today even though I don't really have childcare because this really matters to me. And I know that you've said we're not acting on anything, the vote's in May, but it's a vote of yes or no. There hasn't been an involved process in like, hey, what do we think? Is there an alternative? Are there other people that have ideas? I understand this is a problem, no question, but are there other options? And why haven't I been asked? Like ever. And like you said, oh, we're pretty sure that the religious, the CRE program and the music program will continue with the same quality and robustness. Did you ask Drew or Leslie? I'm curious. And if you did, what did they say? Did you ask the members of the choirs or the parents of the CRE program? What did they say? As members in both of those, I'd say I don't think so. I don't think they will continue in the same way that they exist currently. And that's really important to me. And even more important to me, and one of the things that drew me to FUS was democracy. And I feel like this has not exactly been a democratic process. If there's a budget that's created by two people or three people, it's brought to a board and there's some back and forth and then here's the budget, the one budget. And we are just supposed to come and rubber stamp it in May. That doesn't feel good to me. And so that's, I guess, more of a comment than a question. And I do have a petition in the interest of social justice and democracy. If anybody's interested to come take a look at it and sign it, it's just asking as a caring, concerned congregation or member as I am, asking the board to act now and provide an alternative budget proposal in a way that has more involvement and participation from the congregation and more closely follows a democratic process. Sure. Well, I personally have a lot of ideas. So I'm a licensed psychologist. I also spent six years in New York City working in the finance industry. I don't have a professional credential but I did work at an accounting firm and a hedge fund. And I'm guessing there are a lot of people here who have a lot of really great experience and knowledge and skills beyond what I have. So I think there are ideas of ways to increase the income, maybe make cuts if we really do have to. I understand there's a $200,000 deficit. I'm not sure at this moment what I would cut but I have some ideas about the process that we could go through to come up with some of those kinds of ideas. And I don't think, I'm not suggesting that one person or I would do that here and now but maybe there's a small group of congregants who could get together and come up with some other options. Real quick. Yeah, I wanted to just say, I really appreciate you speaking up. I know that's hard to do but I did wanna really talk about the governance process and I know we do have democratic processes but we also have policy governance and the bylaws and our policy manuals on the website. So we don't have a thousand people come and do the budget. Our process is that we have a finance committee, we have a board of directors elected by the congregation and that happens in May. So we have democratic processes but we don't have the congregation as a whole. We're all members of the congregation and so we have finance committee giving input and this year we did have quite a bit of discussion and transparency earlier in the year but we are governed by policy governance. We can change our bylaws and our policies but that's what we're governed by and that's what works for our church and I do know, I do know these are really hard and I have kids in RE2, it's very challenging but we do have to make cuts and we are all here to make fiduciary recommendations and it's just how we govern ourselves. So I did wanna make that clear. I know you can say it doesn't feel democratic, there's democratic processes but we have policy governance. But even the democratic process that you mentioned which is electing the board of directors doesn't seem democratic to me because a year or more than a year ago there was a blurb in the red floors about would you like to serve as a board of trustee, email this person and I did and I got a call and I spoke to the person and I learned that essentially I can't show up at the meeting and say I'd like to be a board member, here's who I am, what I think and you could vote. No, there's a nominations committee and if you're not in with the nominations committee then you're not going to be nominated at the main meeting to be voted on and so sorry but you can't, I was told no which again is frustrating and doesn't actually seem democratic. So I understand that but I don't know. There are a number, you talk about welcoming new members which is really important but you've also got to keep the new ones that you get and I'm not the only one in conversation since this is all come about who has felt like something's kind of broken and could be improved and people do leave and consider leaving and so I think it's kind of important not just to give me the official word about governance but like maybe we do something different this time. So sorry, that's all I'll say, I'll stop monopolizing the microphone. Yeah, again just want to express so much appreciation for you voicing your concerns and I'm sure any number of us have some issues small or large with the way that we currently do things here and there are ways to change the ways that we do things here. It's not gonna happen just by kind of making a comment or two in a forum. There are processes laid out in the bylaws which I strongly encourage you all to go look at. That is part of our democratic processes as well. A couple of comments I wanted to make kind of regardless of the larger system but with this specific situation in mind. In thinking about, so first of all everything that I've heard from my fellow board members is that we are listening to the feedback of the congregation and considering it and it is possible for our minds to be changed in some way to change the budget that we put before you in May. Are we necessarily going to make every change we are asked to? No, and we have some very good reasons why we might not but we are listening and if you don't feel like we're listening to you come talk to us in a different setting because we really do wanna hear from you. The comment I wanted to make about this specific situation is there's a really big impact to our staff, to the people who are in those positions that we are talking about making cuts to and the idea of presenting a few different options for what our budget could be effectively would look like which staff members are we going to cut? We could cut person A and B, we could cut person B and C and that doesn't feel like a good way to treat our staff. Though something we've tried to be really cognizant of throughout this process is treating our staff with integrity, giving them as much notice as we can about what the situation is going to be and taking care of them to the extent that we can through this tumultuous process and I don't think presenting options in that way would look like treating them with integrity so I did wanna mention that specific of the situation as well. Also to follow up with what Katie said, it is Katie right? I loved singing next to her during All Music Sunday. I was on the nominations committee for a while and Katie if you had come to me and said I wanna be on the board, your name would have been on it because we're always looking for people who want to do the work around here so I don't know how that process broke down but I really do think that it's true that the board is listening to us and that it is as democratic as it can be within the policy governance that we have decided to follow. However, I do think is a forum where we need to be saying I disagree with this budget and I do, I disagree with this budget. I disagree with this budget in many of the same ways as Katie does. I think losing Drew Collins would be a major blow to our congregation. Not just to the music program but to the whole congregation. Drew is a remarkable musician. He has done amazing things with our choirs and I think that a halftime position is not sufficient for what he needs because he has two small children and a wife to support and I think that this would be terrible to lose him so my suggestion is to increase his position to 100%. Yeah, I just wanna say that I don't wanna lose any of our staff. I really don't but I don't want this to turn into a popularity contest. I don't want this to turn into a popularity contest and I'm really sensitive to that that the staff is going through so much with these cuts and we have kept the personal out of it as much as we possibly can in defining specific jobs that the church needs and then fitting people to those jobs. Hi, my name's Anne Fleming. I am a member of the Healthy Congregations team. My wife Carolyn and I have been members here for about 14 years. We raised our two daughters here, we're now adults and I have the experience of having spent the first part of my career, the first 10 and a half years working in a professional ministry capacity in another tradition. And I echo what Susan, Susan Koenig had said that it's exhilarating work to work for a congregation. It is also crazy making to work for a church and part of the reason for that and I think one thing that we need to be cognizant of here is that what kind of employer do we want to be? We want to be an employer, but we want to be a just employer and we've recognized in this budget that for years we have underpaid a large staff. And working now in social work, jobs that don't provide a living wage are stressful. They are hard jobs to live in. They are hard jobs to support your family for lots of reasons, all you think about is money. Is that the kind of employer that we want to be? Or do we want to have a smaller staff that we can justly pay? My name's Tim Conroy, I've been a member here for 10 years and I was on the personnel committee for many, many years. I just want to say that everyone here cares about the congregation because we're taking time out of our day to be here, which is great. And our board cares a lot, they're volunteers and it's a lot of work. And I want to say I support this budget, it's the best we can do. Non-profits and for-profits, your biggest suspense is usually your people and that makes it really hard. And we're doing all we can. Our revenue comes from us, from pledges and that's really where we have to start. And if we can't get more members and more pledges then we have to make cuts and we're doing the right thing right now. Hi, I'm Karen Medione and I really appreciate Katie's talk because I think that the music program is not just something that affects some people, it affects everybody here. And Drew is absolutely critical to that program and he can't afford a mortgage and a family on a half-time salary. So we will probably lose him and then what are we gonna do? We're gonna go out and recruit another music director for a half-time position. I don't think so. I don't know if you probably watched the PBS News Hour and they had something that's talked about people singing individually and people singing in choruses. And when people singing choruses, not only did they have much improvements in health and attitude and everything, but they were more generous. And I can tell you that since I joined the choir, I had a limiting factor which was my husband and how much he thought I should donate. But once he was out of the way, not only has it increased, but I used that required minimum distribution to give a heck of a lot more money here. And quite frankly, I've got a required minimum distribution for this year too. Now I'm not only taking the one from my inherited inherited one, I've got one of my own that has to be taken. And I would like to know that that money is being used where my heart is, which is the music program. And I have given things and in one case, somebody actually called me and said they couldn't take my donation because I put music program on it. Now I've been sending the RMDs from my brokerage firm which says for the music program, I wanna know how does that get credited and can that be used to be able to save half a position? All right, so I wanna try and answer this question as fulsomely as I can. You have a number of options when you decide that you want to share your wealth with the congregation. One of the ways you can do that is through an annual pledge, annual pledge goes into the same pot of money that the congregation that is determined by the congregation how it will be distributed when the congregation votes or does not, you have the right to vote the budget down. If you don't like it, it is possible for you to do that. It's a real option. I'm not trying to hide that from you. You can vote the budget down. That is part of our democratic process, right? The congregation votes on the budget each year. The pool of money that we determined for that is largely, I already said, more than half of it is our pledged incomes. There's the money that comes to us from our members pledges does not come with conditions or earmarks attached to it. It's determined by what the congregation decides when it votes on the budget each year. You have other options, things to give. Connie can speak to you in detail about ways in which you can contribute to the foundation. There are existing funds in the foundation that are earmarked for certain specific purposes. And if you like those purposes well enough and you wanna make a contribution that may have a longer term impact on the congregation and less focused on one year, the current years or the coming years budgeting, then the foundation of the people to talk to. And I know that Connie is ready to have that conversation with you and I encourage you to follow up with her. If you either find that you don't, none of the funds that currently exist with the foundation that have special controls on where the money can and can't be spent. If you find that you don't like any of those, you have something more specific or something different in mind. You can also start a new fund. There's a minimum amount of money that takes to start a new fund, but that's a thing that a person or a group of people can do. You can talk to Connie about starting a new fund, how the restrictions work. And then the final thing, I think it's the final thing. The last thing I can think of is that you can also make a donation to the congregation with whatever restrictions on it you want. You can say, we can only use it to buy purple elephants. Recognize I'm being facetious here, but that's as narrow as you can get. You can be as specific as you want. However, buy policy, any gift that's like a one-time gift for this or like next year's budget that's not a gift to the foundation. Any gift like that, whatever restrictions the donor wants to make on it, they can make, but it has to be approved by the board. It has to be accepted by the board in order to do that. And so if you want to make a specific gift for a specific purpose, please come talk to the board. They are ready to have that conversation with you. I think you've answered part of the question, but maybe I should ask staff about this because where did that money go that I put music program on the check and you cashed it. So Karen, I'll be really happy to follow. This is the first time I'm aware of this question. I'll be very happy to- This has happened, a lot of people have brought this up. Oh, okay. I'm not the only one. I believe you and I will follow up with you about it, but I don't have an answer for you in this moment. I'm Donna Beesman and my husband and I have been members for four months. We have been active church members in another tradition for 50 or 60 years, but we've had questions and it's a theological dilemma that brought us here and we have found this to be a warm and welcoming congregation. And I've described to others that we have found that it's both spiritually and intellectually meaningful to us at this stage in our life. So thank you. But I think also one of almost all churches are struggling with the same dilemma. It's not new here, but I wish that the greater Madison area could somehow approach others who are questioning their traditional religious tradition that's no longer maybe rings true. And I wish we could somehow get this message out that we hear every Sunday here, that we question boldly, listen humbly, grow spiritually and courageously in love un-pologetically. I think that is very powerful and I think there must be hundreds of people who would be attracted to this, coming in to visit if they knew this phrase. I think we'll probably just take one more question, maybe someone who we haven't heard from if that's okay. And then we'll wrap up cause it's almost two and we do wanna be respectful of everyone's time. So one more question. Hi, I'm Terry and I just wanted to thank the board for all the work that's gone into communicating this budget so carefully for all the extra meetings and everything. For those of us who still are wondering at the end of these meetings, what can I do? I wonder if the board members could kind of share if you kind of have a short list of the things that you're especially hoping to see from the congregation as we work through these changes. And thank you for sitting up front. Thank you, Terry. So you can email me, fussprez at gmail.com that is linked on the website. We also meet monthly if you wanna come talk to the board. Please contact us first so we can have an agenda item for you but you can always just come in and sit into a board meeting as well. And then as far as if there's something that you do wanna get the word out for engagement or membership engagement or stewardship, we are, as I said, organizing those ministry teams and you can contact our staff over here if you are interested in doing that. And especially if you have an idea or there's a way that you want to do it, I know everyone's different gifts are welcome. And what else, anything else that folks wanted to say of ways that you wanna? Also a shout out for our FAQ document. I think it's the second to last question is exactly this. So a couple of the other things we put in our answer to the FAQ, other important opportunities are supporting our worship services by being an usher, a greeter or a hospitality person making the coffee that those roles really contribute to the experience of newcomers making sure they feel welcome as well as the existing members. And the social justice and religious exploration programs as we mentioned earlier are particularly impacted by the staff cuts. And so in order to continue programming there the way we have come to know it will certainly need increased volunteer support there as well. I also know that Kelly Crocker mentioned that a couple of the previous town halls that in response to some of this news a couple of members of the congregation had reached out to her saying I've got two hours a week or four hours a month and I wanna support the staff, how can I do that? And those offers are also appreciated. Does that cover it? Thank you, good reminder. So I do wanna really thank everybody. We are listening to you, we wanna hear your feedback. Again, we can't make all the changes so I hope that you're understanding if we can't make the changes that you are suggesting but we are hearing you and we do really appreciate your time. And I wanna very much thank the board and the finance committee because it's a lot of hours of work for these folks unpaid, you know? So really appreciate the board's time too so I appreciate that. So thank you and we'll wrap up with our closing reading from Kelly, thank you. Yeah, so this reading comes from Kaki McTique. What question do you think you need answered in order to wake to the morning and step into your life with joy? Listen, the dark branches scrolled sharp against a pure sky are the only map you will ever receive. When you look at those lines, when you attend to them until you feel yourself lifted by their dark runes into the clear winter sun or the dimming light of evening, there is your guide. When gratitude rises as the only prayer of your heart, you are learning at last what it is to be fully alive. Thanks, friends.