 difficulties. Thanks for joining our first ever virtual financial budget form, a few us budget form. We have a full agenda with, you know, multiple speakers on stewardship topics. And then Monica will lead us through the details of our proposed budget. And we'll save some time for questions at the end. And I think Monica is going to start us off with some zoom meeting logistics. I will I will. So couple of housekeeping things. First, we have, as I mentioned, the board member and finance committee rep Creel Zering as our primary zoom administrator today. So she's going to help ensure that everybody stays on mute. If you do have questions, feel free to type them in the chat section to keep things moving along rather swiftly. And in case you didn't already stumble across them, we have two handouts available for the meeting. There's an update from the foundation and who will hear from at the parish meeting on May 31 and an overview of the proposed budgets. So you can find those on the homepage. Just click financial form information. There's another button that says meeting documents. Those are combined into just one master document. So you'll see the second foundation stuff if you just scroll down. All right, I think we are ready. Everybody's ready. Okay, we're gonna hand things over to Doug and Kelly for an opening reading and an introduction. All right, thanks. Our opening reading is from Gretchen Haley. For this one moment, know only that you are loved, that you are whole, holy, and loved. Know that you belong here, here among us, here upon the earth. However tired or broken, your heart may be. Whatever fear, disappointment, anger you carry. For this time, know you are not alone. Feel the presence of others surrounding you, breathing beside you and with you. Discovering together the way our voices rise and fall in harmony, in hope. Claim here a resilient freedom. The choice for love, for light, to live with joy and gratitude and praise. To believe in community, in connection, in one another, as a form of resistance, even now, even now. Thanks, Kelly. So we wanted to take a few moments as we moved into this forum for your clergy team to make sure that you knew that we acknowledge the extraordinary realities that we are coming together and talking about the finance forum in the midst of a time unlike any other. And we want you to realize that we understand how deeply and powerfully the virus has already impacted all of our lives, the changes that have happened in our lives, the, the sometimes very personal ways that COVID has impacted you. We know that many of you have already had that virus impact directly in your lives. And that many of you, if not almost all of you have anxiety about finances and that many of you have had your financial realities impacted deeply already. And so it is important today for us to be transparent and in conversation about our finances here at First Unitarian Society. But what is most important is that you know that we remain a community of support and connection in this time. This is your spiritual home, especially if you are struggling, especially if your world has become a very difficult place. We need each other now. Perhaps more than ever, we need to remember that we heard in our opening reading, we belong here together. When we talk about financial responsibility, we always mean that each person decides what they can do in support of FUS based upon the realities of their lives that really only they can know. So please know and understand, know that we hear and we understand the concerns about discussing financial matters during times of deep uncertainty and know that we are here and that your support ensures that we will continue to be here for you now and into the future. Thank you. Thanks, Kelly and Doug. All right. Well, on that note, let's get things started. I shared in my article in the May edition of the Madison Unitarian that I have found tremendous comfort and inspiration in history these last few months. So it feels important to me to remember right now, the resilience of our ancestors, and in this institution, those individuals who have long since gone, who saw hard times, who bonded together, and who remained committed and intentional about their vision for the future. So I have been craving opportunities to honor both those lives and the products of those dedicated efforts. So before we begin, I'd like to invite us to root ourselves by taking a moment to be grateful for all that's come before us. I think there can be tremendous power in reflecting both reflecting on where we've been both in deep history and in the recent past. So I want to invite you to stretch your memory back to almost a year ago. My experience with time right now is a little funky in that things even three months ago feel a little more challenging to recall. In some ways, it feels like things before the safer at home order feel less relevant than say a month ago. And perhaps the same is true for you. But all the same, I'm going to challenge us to think back over the last year rather intentionally. I'd like us to think about what at FUS at what at FUS influenced us in the last year in regards to how we think about our resources and our money. The team is a number of things that have influenced us and some of the congregants we've we've been chatting with. And the pandemic is perhaps the first thing that comes to mind. It's definitely the elephant in this virtual room. And we will absolutely talk about that a little bit later in the forum. But for now, I'd like to encourage us to think of things prior to March. So the very first thing we're going to talk about our are you partners? So Doug is going to talk to us a little bit more about that. And there are many ways I actually could talk about that. But the main thing I wanted to let us know and remember is that for the last 10 months, or more really, we've started even before that, the first Unitarian society has been the beneficiary of a very generous spirit from the Unitarian Universalist Association itself in the form of them offering us some of its best leaders in stewardship and some of its most successful and dynamic fundraisers in to meet with us monthly via zoom, especially the staff members who work most closely with the financial health of the congregation. And this team included some of the regional leads from all over the US and UUA staff. And they sort of tried a pilot project with us where they offered for a year to meet with us and support our financial health at no added expense on our part. And so this was a really incredibly generous gift where hours and hours of their resource was offered in sharing advice, giving us moral support and cheerleading us through sometimes some very difficult decisions and connecting us with resources that we might know, otherwise not have known about. But really, what I think is most important for the future is that they offered a bridge to us hoping that we in the future will partner more meaningfully with the Unitarian Universalist Association. And they gave us an insight into what some of the other best practices that larger congregations use in stewardship, as well as giving us some idea of what our best and brightest ministers right now are thinking in terms of stewardship practices and what we might expect when you attract one of those best and brightest to be your future minister. So they really have built a bridge for us to ground ourselves in the larger movement of Unitarian Universalism. And it just really has been an incredibly generous act that we received from them. And we wanted to make sure that you knew that that really has benefited us and amazingly over the last months. Next, we have the stewardship ministry team, which was officially formed this year in August, although many of the members have been making their mark on the stewardship department for years. Behind the scenes, we have Dorit Bergen, Matthew Doyle Olsen, Steve Goldberg, March Schweitzer, Alice Delacwes, and Connie Bean, working with Cheryl Melenfein, all of whom have been taking time to share what they know of our congregation, their areas of expertise, and have been helping us modify our stewardship practices accordingly. So Cheryl, do you want to say a couple of words about the stewardship ministry team's efforts? You might have to unmute yourself. There we go. Thanks, Monica. Thank you. Thanks to the team. I think most of us are here. I think we're incredibly fortunate to have this team working to do both the long work of transforming FUS into a community that fully embraces concepts around abundance. And then also the more immediate work through programs that we have implemented and projects to work on some of the best practices that we've learned that we've learned from the UELU partners. And then for us to learn and what it feels like to live more generously. And I'd like to thank them so much for all the things I've learned from them and their long tenure here at FUS and looking forward to this next year and all the things that we can build on together. Thank you. Thank you, Cheryl. All right, Terry is going to remind us all now of the Fall Parish Meeting and how it impacted how we think about the culture of abundance. Yes, in our Fall Open Question Parish Meeting, we explored the sense of abundance we see here at FUS. And for this conversation, we use the framework and we're just going to read the definition that we used at that time. A culture of abundance happens when a community grounded in the sense of gratitude for the gifts of their lives lives with generosity, realizing that together we have enough. And in that spirit, we pose to the group, where do you see abundance at FUS? And in what ways could we increase the sense of abundance here? Some of the themes that emerged in that conversation were an appreciation of intellectual depth, our history as a congregation, the many small group setting, interact with each other, ways of, you know, ways of kind of opening up the expanding the sense of abundance. One thing that seemed a little bit more theoretical at the time, people mentioned the possibility of virtual and online gatherings. We are certainly, certainly exploring that now. And other, you know, people had a lot of really interesting suggestions for for other ways to interact. The Board of Trustees has been reviewing this information and we're looking at ways to continue the conversation throughout the year. And in coming months, it will certainly be certainly be virtual as the as the format for those conversations. Someone is feeling mighty creative. That wasn't me. I don't know who it was, but looks good. Thanks. And we could also remove it if anybody feels so inclined. I don't know how though. So we'll just move forward. So in November, we held the close the gap or initiated the close the gap campaign. I think it was an important moment for the congregation. For me, it felt like a testament to being transparent about financial challenges and sharing that information with the community in a timely fashion that allowed for a meaningful change to occur, instead of trying to solve the problems behind the scenes or solely amongst staff by cutting expenses. For you all as members, I hope it resulted in a sense of pride that together we were able to meet the goal and help us maintain the same level of programming and staffing from which we currently benefit. And I think for better and for worse, that muscle memory of generosity in times of need will likely come in handy this year. So in December, Doug and I offered a class for all congregants that was based on a UUA curriculum, the wisdom path. So about 15 of us explored both our own personal relationship with money, as well as learning about our fellow congregants money stories. For me personally, the process of preparing for the class helped me clarify some of my more deeply held beliefs about managing money. So for example, I've been robbed several times in my life and I believe that probably played a part in my interest in doing worst case scenario planning with finances. Fortunately, that tends to be hoof me, but left uncheck. I think it can inhibit things like generosity. Things like this had never occurred to me. And so I'm incredibly grateful for the wisdom path. The feedback that we received from those individuals that were involved with the curriculum were very positive. And I would highly encourage anybody who's interested in this to either explore the curriculum on their own or come come find me and we can maybe find a way to do it together out of us in the future. All right. So those were some of the things we feel have influenced us to the greatest degree in the last year. We're a little bit warmed up now. So let's dig into financials year to date as of March 31st, 2020. We're also going to review together 10 events that had relatively significant fiscal impacts. You can read more about our year to date financials if you're interested in the May edition of the Madison Unitarian that is available on our website under the happenings menu. In this time of safer at home, we are trying to minimize the number of mailings that we're doing. So you'll notice your newsletter was emailed to you in lieu of a hard copy. If you didn't see that email and you'd like to, please don't hesitate to reach out to Brittany Crawford at Brittany C at FUSMadison.org. All right. So you can see when looking at the statement of financial activities report that three quarters through the fiscal year we're doing about $20,000 better than budgeted despite a net operating income amount of negative $35,000. So year to date in the operating fund, we anticipated $1,383,000 in income and $1,437,000 in expenses projecting a deficit of $54,000. Ultimately, our actual income fell a bit short of the year to date budget by about $19,000 with $1,364,000 received by March 31st. And our expenses thankfully were under budget by approximately $38,000 with a total of $1,399,000. So let's walk through the fiscal year to point out a couple of events that had a larger impact. First, as many of you heard at the winter parish meeting, an August storm resulted in FUS being hit by lightning which damaged a number of our systems including the atrium audio and speakers, the fire alarm, telephone system and door controllers. All systems were repaired or upgraded. We received $43,000 in other operating expenses from the resulting insurance claim and there's approximately $13,000 in expenses connected to that claim. So reflected in the year to date year to date financials, there's a net of $30,000 from this. All right, next up in September, the Board of Trustees was honored to have a weekend governance retreat with Dan Hatchkes to review our governance structure and to focus on how to effectively implement strategic planning moving forward. We invested a little bit over $4,000 in the in this board development and this was not something that was included in the original approved budget. It was an opportunity that came along afterwards. Back billing October. So in October of 2019 we learned that for the last 10 years the Village of Shorewood Hills has only been billing us about 10% of our water usage in the B-wing. That was a result of a faulty meter that they had installed. So since then our bills have looked about six to eight times higher than they had been. We promptly were provided a backfill of $2,000, could have been worse, which we promptly and begrudgingly paid in full. The art fair. So in November the art fair income reached an all-time high. Leslie Ross and the newly minted art fair ministry team surpassed its net goal by $2,500. Its gross income surpassed its $13,000 goal by nearly $7,000 reaching the $20,000 mark this year. Local business sponsors were pursued for the first time, which played a key role in the art fair's success. And then close the gap. So as I touched on briefly before in December, November and December, we held the close the gap campaign in light of low pledges. At the end of the campaign we had a total of 614 pledgers who had committed to a total of $1,107,000 in pledge payments and 63 close the gap donors who gave or committed to give $67,000. Those ranged in donation size from $12.50 to $25,000. So we recognize many of you in this virtual room dug deep and shouldered a larger amount than you had originally planned, and for that we thank you. I was moved, as I so often am, by the many many stories of heartfelt generosity in the close the gap campaign. There were so many stories of support, but if you'll indulge me, I'd like to highlight one family in particular, the Delakwises. So many of you know the dynamic Delakwis family has been making annual stewardship pledges since 1999 for over 22 years. I think Alice was about 15 when she started pledging, and of course that's in addition to the overwhelming number of volunteer hours that they both have contributed over the years. We estimate that last year Alice volunteered somewhere in the neighborhood of 200 hours to the stewardship department alone. The Delakwises heard FUS's message last winter about the projected pledge deficit, and they answered with a beautiful gift, 75 percent above and beyond their annual stewardship campaign donation. Here's something that Alice recently said about her involvement. Cheryl's gonna gonna read it for us. I can't see the whole thing one second. FUS is the community that has called me to be my better self for over 22 years. Through belonging to FUS, I've gained tools to live a life of greater reference and to do so in service of a kinder more just world. Whenever I join with FUS, others at FUS, or think of others, I have grown to know through my years of involvement, I feel a deep sense of hope. I walk in the door or log into FUSMadison.org and I feel at home. Thank you, Alice. Thanks to everybody who pledged or donated to the Close the Gap campaigns last year. It really made a tremendous difference. All right, five more events that we'll talk through. Computers. So in January, when we finished installing new computers for staff due to a new security requirement, it was recommended that we upgrade all of our computers to Windows 10. Unfortunately, nearly none of our staff computers were capable of supporting that operating system, so we opted to get new computers for everyone. As a result, we exceeded the budget by about $2,000 for a grand total of $3,500, an investment that I think was well worth it. In February, on February 14th, we held the first inaugural Valentine Jazz soiree, which raised over $7,500 in new income and hosted over 180 guests, a fair number of whom were from outside the FUS community. The Darcy Johnson Quintet elegantly blended requested jazz standards with stories of love and shared by our members for partners, children, and parents. It was a fabulous evening, as well as a wonderful fiscal success. Snow. So I shared in January at the parish meeting that the no-show snow was good for the bottom line. Mother Nature did make up for some lost time in the third quarter, but assuming we don't have any other snow storms in May or June, we are assuming we will end the fiscal year with about five cave savings. And then mortgage. I'm very pleased to confirm that at the beginning of February, we did pay down $1 million of our commercial loan or mortgage thanks to the two and a half million dollars we've received to date in capital campaign pledge payments, as well as the roughly $750,000 from the Hale Damage Insurance Claim. So we were pleased to accept a refi with Summit Credit Union, our current banking institution. They ultimately offered us the best deal of a 3.75 interest rate down from the previous 3.99%, which we've locked in for seven more years. We also opted to re-amortize using a 25-year schedule in order to maximize annual operating savings. We will spend 45k less than budgeted in mortgage payments and look forward to saving nearly $110,000 for at least the next six and a half years. All right, last but not least, for the last year we've had a million dollars collecting interest in a Summit Ultimate Money Market Account thanks to a wise recommendation from our finance committee. So with a 1.3 percent interest rate year to date we've garnered over $13,000 in unexpected income from the interest accrued and now that we've paid down the mortgage we won't see those types of returns, but it was thanks while it lasted and I think I'm okay trading that for the $110,000 in operating savings we'll receive from the mortgage. All right, so that brings us to March of 2020. So we wanted to tell you a little bit about what we've been prioritizing since we increased our awareness of the public health concerns connected to COVID-19. So Doug Kelly and I are going to do our best to provide an overview of five key priorities we've held over the last two months. But first I can't talk about the impact of the pandemic on FUS without taking a moment to acknowledge how bizarre this all is and for many of us as Doug mentioned before really devastating and traumatic the situation is incredibly challenging in such a variety of diverse and unique ways and simultaneously there is as there has always been lots of unexpected joy and beauty in this time as well. As a staff I'm really proud that we've done our best to honor that dichotomy and create space for that truth, but now we'll start by talking about safety. So safety obviously was our number one concern especially as we as we entered this new era. On March 8th we made available a plans for coronavirus prevention and emergency response document. This was a modification of a pandemic plan that we've had in place for over five years at FUS. The first item on that plan was to closely monitor the pandemic by following updates from experts at the local, state, national and global level. We've done our very best to interpret and implement the best practices to the best of our abilities. We increased the frequency and methods for facility cleaning. We've increased our communication in order to clarify expectations. Really we aimed to center ourselves around how to care for the most vulnerable amongst us. Next, transitioning. So as the situation progressed we quickly shifted our focus to transitioning ourselves into a virtual organization, first operationally and then programmatically. So we migrated to a cloud-based data management software and moved all bills, all bill paid to online. We trained ourselves and some of you all on virtual communications like Zoom and we tackled the barriers that staff were experiencing in working from home as quickly and creatively as we could. And fortunately we were able to do all of that before the safer at home order was put in place. So next up, ministry. Kelly, do you want to talk a little bit about ministry in this time? Sure. So you all know that we move to virtual online services. Our layman is our our lay ministers really kicked into gear. Many thanks to them. Many are with us this morning or this afternoon. They have a call list of about 200 of our elders that they are each checking in with each you know they each have their own little section of that list and they're calling and checking in with them regularly and they've they have learned many things about our folks. Some who appreciate a weekly call and check in and others on the other end of the continuum who said between family and friends I'm feeling over cared for at the moment. So thank you for calling and I will call you if anything comes up. So some very sweet connections and have been happening as well as our children and families made handmade cards to send to our elders in the retirement facilities of Capitol Lakes and Middleton Glen and Oakwood. So those were some sweet connections as well. Creating virtual opportunities. There are now Zoom meditation groups. The grief group and the caregiver support group have moved to meeting by Zoom. There is a new pandemic support group that meets weekly on Thursdays at 10 a.m. for anyone who needs a space to talk about whatever they need to talk about. So that is a very sweet small group that is now happening Thursday mornings at 10 and we invite anyone who would like to join us who need some support to please do. Those are all listed on the website. Our journey circles and chalice groups and book groups and men's groups. They all have Zoom links now and they are doing that work of connecting to one another and continuing to nurture their spirit over Zoom. So I think that's what we've been doing. Doug, you want to say a few words about staff care in this time? Sure. I'd love to do that. We have been working over the last months in general to improve the sense of staff morale, to have our meetings really try to be flexible enough to help the staff engage what is important in their lives and to understand supervision as an opportunity to really help and assist our staff to do their best job. And I say all that because as we moved into the pandemic, that foundation ended up really being an important thing that we could turn to in our work with the staff specifically because as we indicated in a very, very fast order, every staff person had to revamp their way of doing things in their ministry intensely. And so one of the things that we emphasized before we moved into this time was the importance of having collegial connections both within the congregation but also with the larger UU movement and also with other Madison area congregations. And so we turned to those resources as we moved quickly into a virtual ministry. We learned from some of their best practices. Many of us on staff attended a Zoom meeting that was huge that invited various larger congregations to share some of the unique challenges and resources that work well with larger size congregations. And that was an incredible help. I know that regularly throughout the week, we turn to some of the ongoing resources that our colleagues in every level of in style of ministry have offered to us. But internally, we first of all made a dedicated promise to our staff as long as we are financially able to to make certain that we continue to pay their salaries. It is unclear even in Wisconsin but certainly in other places what level of financial resource would be available to an employee within a religious organization. So we took very seriously that we really wanted to do our best and again, big kudos to Monica for immediately stepping up with a payroll protection plan in making sure that we got that money to be able to do that. We meet three times a week. We meet for our usual staff meeting time but we also meet two other times. For one thing, because really those virtual meetings are the only way that we remain connected with each other directly. We no longer have the opportunity at least not very often to safely meet one another here at FUS. And we also use those two extra meeting times to review what we are doing in terms of offering virtual ministry and to step back regularly and make sure that we're finding out in a variety of ways what you need is a congregation and trying to continue to innovate and rethink what we offer. And so we have really stepped up to make sure that we are seeking to find ways to continue to serve you in this very quickly changing and often somewhat mysterious way of reaching out to you all. And so we remain open to hearing from you about what you need and we continue to work together to offer what we can to support you. I think that's my thought for now. Thanks Doug. All right the last priority that we'll discuss is the financial health both of FUS its staff and its members. So in order to ensure that we can maintain our current level of programming and staffing as Doug mentioned I applied for the Small Business Association's Payroll Protection Program the SBA is PPP. Please just share that we receive just shy of $200,000 to support our efforts. So this loan with a 1% interest rate can be completely forgiven becoming more like a grant than a loan if our staffing levels are maintained. So we will be applying for that forgiveness in early July and expect to hear good news back before the end of the summer. So we're also very closely monitoring income expenses and subsequent cash flow since March we've seen a slight decline in things like parking income mostly as a result of furloughed hospital employees. Our outreach offerings are down by about half. We do hope we'll see an uptick in this when we implement a text to give option this summer. And on the flip side there are areas where we're experiencing savings like in programming and energy usage as a result of the building closure. We fully understand that we are in the midst of a global financial crisis but are still unclear the extent to which that will impact our microcosm of the community. So though national unemployment levels are near 15% we've only received three notifications to date after much outreach regarding modifications to pledges or pledge payments. So how hardly you all are hit and or how uncertain you are about your financial future will directly impact the degree to which FUS's financial health is impacted. So as you well know the annual stewardship campaign began two weeks before we went to virtual services which has presented a very unique challenge. So we wanted to share a snapshot of where we currently are. So the annual stewardship campaign for 2021 has a budget target of $1,110,000 as of May 15th actually we've received 433 pledges totaling $894,000 so we have $216,000 left to raise in pledges. Gotta just move my screen hold on. So last year actually Cheryl if you're available I have two screens and I can't see what's below. Do you want to share the last little bit and then I'll chime back in. So last year at this time we had 499 pledges totaling $969,000. So at this point we have 66 fewer pledges and $75,000 less than the pledge dollars than last year at this time. Which isn't terribly surprising given that we are not in person but it's obviously still of significant concern and something that staff and the finance committee the board the stewardship ministry team will all be monitoring very closely. So we will of course stay very transparent with you all about where we are throughout the summer likely but definitely at the beginning of fall and if we haven't yet met our budget goal please know that we will very likely ask again for support much like we did last year for the close the gap so that we can avoid cutting expenses mid-year. Of course as always we are very grateful for those of you that have already pledged and I'd like to call out one family in particular for their generosity this year. I don't know if they know that we're going to do this but the Ryan Joy family has been a wonderful example of stewardship. Cheryl is going to read a note for you all that they sent to us about a month ago. Let me pull that. Here we go. Look at that family. Cheryl you want to share those words? Sure thank you. The first Unitarian Society provides our family with a spiritual home, values that challenge all of us to be our best selves and community that is supportive, loving and fun. When we give back our time, talent and treasure it not only supports FUS but deepens our own feeling of belonging in this community. We know that participating in the annual stewardship campaign supports our talented and resourceful staff for whom we have been incredibly grateful during the COVID-19 pandemic. Being able to ground ourselves in weekly traditions and connect with this community virtually has been important to our family. And again we want to thank the Ryan Joy family. We might have lost her for a second. Can y'all hear me still? Hello? Yes. Great, oh good. So I think what Cheryl was saying is that we're very grateful to the Ryan Joy's and everyone who's made a pledge to the 2021 campaign. Of course if you haven't yet please do reach out to Cheryl and do so as soon as you're able. So before we talk about the budget I want to share one final thought. I have been utterly awestruck truly by staff's creativity and commitment to our mission these last few months. I wanted to share just a quick overview of many of the initiatives a few of the many initiatives and programs that have been implemented both for you with you and behind the scenes. So let's see a little word art here. So the June newsletter that you'll get in a couple of weeks will aim to encapsulate for the readers the diverse array of new initiatives that staff and leaders have been busy planning and implementing. Some of those forward-facing things like the virtual services and the CRE classes and the bedtime stories have been really impactful as have things like creating grief boxes which are given to those who lose a loved one in this time and AIDS aims to provide additional support for those that we can't physically comfort in their time of loss. We've also done lots that isn't yet visible to you like painting the facility and upgrading our internet service. So huge kudos to all staff and their hard work. If there's something that you all as parishioners feel that we're not doing we really truly invite you to be in conversation with us. We'd love to know how to best support you in this really challenging time. We recognize that our needs are ever changing. So again, please do stay in communication with us. All right. So there have been incredibly beautiful and heartwarming moments created in this time and to that end I wanted to take a moment to to provide a little musical interlude and to allow you all to take a quick break and to need to refill my tea. So Dan is going to help me play a clip. Feel free to listen or again take a take a little stretch this song is called Beauty in the Ugliest of Days by Jonah Tolchin and it's a little bit on the nose but I think you'll forgive me for that. I hope you'll forgive me for that. Dan, let me know if I need to on screen share. Yeah, if you're gonna on screen share that would be great. Okay. Try pushing through. Are you able? Hi Dan. Or should I say Frasier? How's it look? We're still on your screen right now. Oh, we are. Are we? Yeah. All right. Give me a second folks. Sure. Ah, there. It's behind my other screen. Stop share. There we go. Okay. Let me get this video up. Everybody back. I guess I should turn on my video. Let's give people 10 more seconds to get seated. Okay. Let's dig back in. Hope everybody enjoyed their break or the musical interlude. Let's dive into the budget for fiscal year 2021 being proposed by the executive team, the Board of Trustees and the Finance Committee. So first, it's important to note that budget is always our best gas for the future and its fiscal implications. This is an incredibly challenging time to be trying to gauge what the future holds. So this budget does assume that services and the building will be slowly opening in the fall, but we recognize it could be much longer or shorter than this. And this assumption is not based on any decision that has been made officially by FUS, but rather the UUA's recommendation for making annual budgets this year. Overall, I feel we've been conservative with our projections, but that said, we are all open and committed to formally reassessing the budget after the end of the first quarter in October in order to reassess if further modifications should be made. So I'm going to walk us through the major areas to note in the operating budget before we move forward and look at the designated restricted fund and capital fund proposals. Y'all with me? All right. So first, looking at pledge payments line, you can see we've decreased our projected pledge income by $60,000 from last year, which is matching the actual amount of pledge income that we received in the 18-19 fiscal year. So as I mentioned before the break, if we want to maintain our current level of programming, we need to meet our pledge goal. So we are committed to staying very transparent with you all about the status of our pledge campaign until that point. Rentals. So rental income from CSS, Sherisha Mayam, the Meeting House Nursery School and parking are all projected to remain stable with small built-in increases. The meetings and events, however, have been projected to decline by about $3,000. The foundation. So we are very, very grateful for the foundation. Perhaps this year more than ever. You can see that we experienced an increase as a result of their very wise investments. This is my cat Moses. He is here to stay probably. Hold on. Moses, darling boy. We'll see how long that lasts for. So the more significant increases next year are for two of our reimbursable funds, the Wartman and Clay. Both of which have very ambitious programs planned. We hope that you'll join us in enjoying those this next year. Next collections and gifts. So considering the potential for more online virtual services, next year we've decreased projections for our offering by almost $15,000 and decreased our und-pledge donation projection by about $3,500. So these both fall within the collections and gift line. Next up is fundraising. So fundraising efforts, I think Mike might have asked this in the chat. Fundraising efforts will, we have the intention to have them include art fair, a cab array, the Valentine's War Ray and the Select to Neck. Select to connect in spring. All obviously have virtual plan Bs. Art fairs growth is in large part due to the business sponsorships, as I mentioned before. And we hope that you all will support these fund fundraising events in whatever form they may unfold. The program, projected program income from class fees is projected to be about 8K lower than last year in light of the potential virtual landscape. We should all keep in mind that in essence, we now have a half-time adult education position due to the personnel cuts we made two years ago. So we'd love to see this increased to a full-time position again as income allows. But this decrease in staff does impact the amount of programming that we can offer. And then last in terms of looking at income for next year, we continue to take strides towards balancing our operating budget, independent from transfers, from cash reserves. Our designated fund and our capital fund, but we've decreased our fund transfers by $35,000 from $99,000 to $63,000 next year. So definitely a stop in the right direction. Expenses, personnel. So overall, our personnel expenses will increase by about 5K given the annual increase in paying for benefits. The compensation line decreased slightly due to a renegotiation of our contract with our accounting firm. We have not budgeted, unfortunately, for any salary increases this year. This unfortunately will be the third year without a cost of living increase for staff. And we are committed to reassessing this regularly even mid-year to see if circumstances or our financial outlook have changed. But in the meantime, with the national unemployment rates as high as they are, our primary goal as an employer is to keep all staff employed and do our best to provide a myriad of benefits, both tangible and intangible, to support their well-being. The mortgage. So next year's mortgage payments will decrease, as I mentioned, by 107K from last due to the refinance, renegotization, and $1 million paydown that you all enabled. Thank you. Without this generosity, today's conversation would be very different. The building. So our building expenses are increasing in the operating fund in part because we've discontinued a $10,000 budget for emergency capital projects in the capital fund. That's something that's been there, I don't know, probably about 10 years. We've moved that additional $10,000 to the operating fund. Program expenses are projected to increase. Both the restricted expenses for the Wartman and Clay programs that I mentioned a bit ago are the primary source of this increase as is the $11,000 expenses associated with our ministerial search. So those of you that were on the conversation with Keith Cron heard him outline between an $11,000 and $15,000 budget is recommended for that. Administrative. So administrative expenses do continue to increase annually as especially as we move to more cloud-based software that enable us to thrive in the virtual environment. We are now completely cloud-based. Minang staff can do all of their work from anywhere in the world that is internet from paying the bills to looking at pictures on our server from 25 years ago. We're very grateful for our partnership with our IT firm, Danet, who helps ensure that our work is all done safely and securely. So that sums it up for the operating fund. So I will bring us into the designated and restricted fund proposed budget. Our projected income to the fund is estimated at $18,500 with about $18,000 for the music fund and the partner church program. 2,600 in expenses will are projected to occur directly in this fund for partner church. And then in addition, we anticipate spending and or transferring to the operating fund a total of about $21,000 primarily to support the music fund. I'm sorry, the music program. Okay, so last but not least the capital fund. So in the capital fund, things look much different than last year as we enter the final year of collecting capital campaign donations and spending the last of the capital campaign fund dollars. We propose transferring $45,000 of support to the operating budget to support the mortgage as we have for the last decade. And if we receive the $230,000 in outstanding capital campaign payments, then we'll have just under $400,000 in the unrestricted funds. The remainder of the insurance money we received for the Hale Damage Claim makes up the majority of that cash projection. So we are proceeding very, very cautiously with the use of the remaining insurance funds. So with our mortgage payments made I'm sorry, our mortgage paydown we have less cash on hand than we've had in recent years. And given the uncertainty of this year or the years ahead we've been we propose being very conservative in the use of these remaining funds remaining capital projects include remodeling the glass walkway by the partner truce area doing a number of beautification projects for the atrium and buying a new boiler. We propose deferring most of these projects until we have a better sense of a financial state. So with the exception of a handrail to the pulpit and doing some basic plaster work above the glass walkway to close the gap the gaping hole that remains we suggest that we hold on to these funds to see to see what the a more immediate need might be. So in the meantime, the board of trustees has asked the finance committee to craft a policy about creating and managing a cash reserve fund. So there you have it. Those are the three proposals for budgets for next year. And I at this moment am going to hand things over to Terry. We're nearing the presentation we're nearing the end of the presentation portion. So Terry, do you want to do the honors of walking us through some of the things we hope your fellow members will do over the coming year? Sure. Great. So one, as always, one of the most important things you can do is pledge as Doug and Kelly mentioned, we know the pandemic is affecting all of our households in different ways. And there's a lot of economic uncertainty in general. And for many of us also in our personal finances to the so to the extent that you're able to look ahead, please do make a financial pledge for the 2020-2021 year. If you haven't already done so, pledges allow us to plan and create the foundation for our budget. And as always, if anything changes in your personal situation, our staff and ministers always appreciate knowing this. While we're holding virtual services, it's still possible to contribute to our outreach offerings. So from our FUS website, there is a very prominent link. If you follow this, there is an outreach offering option in the drop down menu that comes up next. And any giving with this designation will be shared 50-50 with that week's featured organization. So please continue to give to that important fund as you're able. So there are a lot of ways to stay engaged virtually. It's changing all the time as we're all figuring out what works best for us as individuals and for our community. So as Monica mentioned earlier, please do plan to virtually attend the fundraisers and whether those are in person or in the virtual backup plan. We were planning the art fair, the Select to Connect and other ongoing fundraisers that provide opportunities to engage with each other as well as financially support our mission. And Kelly gave a helpful summary of all the ways that people are reaching out. So please continue to do that. Please continue to reach out as individuals amongst our membership and make phone calls to make sure people are doing okay. I know there are a couple other specific initiatives underway. There are folks connecting across the generations as pen pals. And there are a lot of things going on in small groups. So please continue to reach out. And if you're not already connected in some way, the staff and lay leaders can help you do so. And finally, I know it's kind of hard to look into future sometimes as our plans and situations seem to change day to day. But this is important to stay hopeful and keep dreaming about what we can do together as a congregation. So employing imagination and hope for the future is sacred work. It's a task that we are well equipped for by our participation in this spiritual community. So grounded in all that you have come to appreciate at FUS, let's take a few minutes to reflect on our hopes for the future. So we have an exercise that, given our virtual setup, I think we're just going to do this individually. So we'll take a few moments to reflect to ourselves. You can write something down if you'd like of either on your computer or the pen and paper or if you are with others in the room with you, reflect amongst yourselves. But let's take just a couple of minutes to use our imaginations to look further into the future. If FUS had unlimited funds and resources what would you want our community to look like? I'm going to go on mute as we just sit with this for a few minutes. I'll gather us back together in about two minutes. All right, everyone. I hope that wasn't nearly enough time to contain all the dreaming. Thank you for indulging us as we continue to dream together and create a space that that meets all of our needs and the needs of our larger community. All right, that concludes the presentation portion. So I think we're going to Terri Creel, I think we'll do some Q and A now. We'll do our best to answer any questions you may have. I've had just a very minimal amount of time to look at the questions. Does anyone have? Terri, do you want to shout any out or Creel that were immediate? One question that came up earlier in the chat. Wondering if the ministerial search has had any effect or the ministerial transition has had any effect on our finances? Good question. We did budget for the moving expense that's associated with bringing a new individual a new minister interim minister here. I believe that was about $5,000. We matched what we the same thing that we budgeted last year I should say two years ago. In terms of thinking about pledges or income I'll say very transparently no, it hasn't impacted how we think about or how we've budgeted for our income. I think we are already being very conservative with the pledge income. So the only area that we are you're marking for that the interim minister is in those expenses the moving expenses. And I think we've I think we've this has come up before I don't know if that was meant to that question was from Steve Goldberg so feel free to unmute yourself as well. And I think just on the finances in general as well you know I think that you know is it correct that you know what we're seeing is kind of continued trends that have begun prior to the prior to Michael Shuler's retirement so that's still still accurate would you say? Yeah, yeah, I hope you all many of you would have been president at last year's financial forum we showed a really I think impactful graph that demonstrated just the last eight years just a slow and steady decline in terms of pledges and pledge payments. I personally hold a great amount of optimism. I think in two years things will look hopefully different. I think interim periods aren't designed to be easy and I think our financial sometimes reflect that but I'd like to believe that as we get settled we might see an uptick in pledges and income in general. Thank you. Another question that came in from Gail Bliss says it seems lucky that last year we asked for multi-year pledges so how much of this year's pledging was were sustaining gifts pledged in 2019? That's a really good question. I don't have those numbers in front of me but maybe Cheryl do you remember or even Steve do you remember how many of our our current pledges are from sustainers? If I'm remembering correctly it's something like 40% of people are sustaining pledgers but I don't remember the exact dollar amount to date. Anybody have that? Yeah, I just looked at quickly at the the database and it looks like it's about half of what we have in pledges right now so about 50% in the dollars is attributed to sustainers. That's impactful. Yeah. Yeah, thank you everyone. Thank you, thank you for the many of you that have decided to be sustaining pledgers. It does make things easier for us. And one other comment so from Sam and Elizabeth they noted the email this week from Susan Frederick Gray the U.A. president. So Monique I don't know if you or maybe Kelly or Doug wanted to just speak to speak to that and what are you know what our reaction to that is and in terms of our plans for the full year? Yeah. Doug, do you feel comfortable speaking at all to that? What I'll just start by saying is there's still a deep level of discernment going on. We're really looking forward to gathering together with two other congregations and an advisory team to gather together a couple of public health and physicians as well as our administrators and ministers to think through what the best course of action is. I mean obviously I think we need to stay nimble because things will likely continue to change but I think partnering around a plan of action is going to be a key part of the next couple of weeks for us. Doug or Kelly anything to chime into that? All I would say is that we're really trying to utilize the resources that we have available to us to think about the future and to prioritize again the safety of our community and so the the biggest thing that has come forward that is a part of Susan Frederick Gray's conversation around that is that we have learned by what we know about COVID and how how it has passed that one of the highest risk scenarios would be gathering a large group of people in an indoor setting and asking them to spend a fair amount of time together and speak together and sing together so there are some clear evidence that wedding gatherings funeral gatherings worship gatherings really it doesn't I mean it has nothing to do with the of course the style of the gathering but that getting a lot of people into a room together is is a very high risk scenario so that's true and we will continue to think about what that means down the down the road but that's really what inspired her comments is just that reality that we've discovered and so it we you know it sort of leaves us to just think very carefully and to look at what happens in the future I mean the the vaccine possibility is really a major component of what would allow us to change that but but we also realize that there may over time be other ways that we can be creative but what that looks like right now we still don't know I also and personally I also interpreted as you know just encouragement to think long term as opposed to you know thinking that quote normal will be just around the corner it's where you know we're all hearing such different things you know different different parts of our government are giving different guidance and you know just to continue to really you know really think in terms of what if we continue most of our activities virtually for many months into the future yeah so I think we can go over to those were the only ones that were that accumulated during the session so we can go to maybe looking at hand raising at Creel's mentioning I think Mark Schultz's line has their hand raised that's on purpose is that a question hello yeah you know I I didn't hear in during the financial analysis what the current remaining mortgage balance actually is so it's wonderful in this time of low interest rate that we we were able to do this save some money and help with our cash flow but then what what is left we have just a $3 million left so we paid down from four million to three million okay yeah I'll plant the seed here the best practice that I understand around fundraising and in particular capital campaigns is that you should flex that muscle approximately every seven years so I think I hope that in a little less than seven years we can all look forward to another capital campaign where we might be able to pay that off in in its entirety there are two questions come in about programming one maybe if there's anyone who could expand at all on what the virtual fundraising will look like especially virtual cabaret and also what about programming for children anything anything specifically planned like what what that would look like in FUS I think you'll have to stay tuned for more information about CRE unless Kelly wants to chime in same for fundraising if you want to be a part of the creation of that you should reach out to us because I think it's still a it's still a blank canvas there's certainly a lot of ideas circulating but there's an opportunity for you to leave your mark if you are interested in that arena Kelly any thoughts about CRE and what it may or may not look like in the fall we just don't know at this point Leslie sending out emails weekly to families and so much depends on what the school districts decide to do if school districts are virtual education only that's going to really impact what we decide to do here if schools are back in person that too will change things so we're just you know we're in a really uncomfortable holding pattern right now waiting to just see what other large organizations are doing with summer activities and then also planning for the fall I would say from a from a board planning perspective you know I'm I'm hoping maybe we can do more in the summer than we normally do we aren't all disappearing to vacation destinations you know visiting family so you know whatever we're doing it's going to be from our home base so you know so maybe our church life in general can can you know continue some of the I'm thinking about some of the smaller things you know some of the board hosted conversations things like that no reason to wait till fall really when everything's changing there was also another question that's kind of a board thing you know someone asked how the pandemic will affect the third year of transition we are actively actively recruiting our next interim minister for the next year other than the fact that the pandemic brings uncertainty to everything it's it is continuing as planned so we will have we will we do have very good candidates the hiring process is whirlwind it happens in the course of about three weeks because the Keith Cron and the transitions office help move that process along because there's just not time for a lengthy search so we will know hopefully have a match of who our candidate is less than a week from now it looks like Gail Bliss has her hand raised to Gail did you have a question I do I don't have an answer but last I think it was last week at the coffee hour we were talking about how the usual suspects seem to be the people who are showing up and I'd like everybody to think about how we can reach out to the digitally less connected Mark Schultz often makes a really lovely plug at this moment but WMUU you might tell your friends that don't have internet but do have radio that they can listen to services on Sunday there's one at nine and one at 11 there's there's typically I can't remember the order but last week service and then the week prior and and also assuming they have telephones you can encourage them to call into meetings like this you don't need a you don't need a computer in order to see all of these shining faces you can hear it shine through the telephone the challenge is knowing that it's there to shine yeah which is why I'm asking everybody to think about the less digitally connected because I can call the people I know aren't connected but I don't know everybody who's not connected great point yeah thank you other questions Monica it looks like three other people have raised their hands Mark Schultz his hand is raised Laurie Schwartz has a hand raised and perhaps the other one was Gail so Laurie can we start with you and then we'll go to Mark sure my question is I'm wondering if we as a society could consider going to Gail's question about how to reach out is I found the meetings the virtual coffee hour with people expanding outside of our current congregation or our current society to be especially joyful while going back to the to our our main group as well sometimes so I'm wondering because we're not limited by geography in the same way that we were our way of growing pledges our way of growing ourselves is to expand our circle of people that we include so I wondered about us having some shared you know congregational services where we go to coffee hours together with groups and organizations that we might not otherwise or that might be interested in us so that people you know check us out become a part of us whether they become a part of us once in a while or all the time and the same for us you know not to to lose people but to grow the the global world that Barack Obama and others have been speaking to well I was wondering we did see a presence of of Reeve and Prairie initially and and now they're not taking part with us and I'm just curious what happened will we see them again or maybe there was a delay for them getting their virtual offering up and running but I enjoyed that and can anybody answer that question sure I can chime in real quick we we are planning to continue the the partnership the part of the understanding was that worship is a way of sort of fostering your your sense of community within your community as well and so we alternate between those depending on the programming of the worship and also the needs of the other congregations so so they they have their own gatherings it took them a while to get them started but next week's service is intentionally planned by all three congregations and the service after that the generation service will have representation from each of the congregation so it hasn't stopped it's just that we we have been aware that we're trying to both allow us to share our resources and also to to let the other congregations continue to foster their sense of strength as their own community so both and I have one additional quick plug for the coffee hour many who have not attended might think it's just a room with with 30 people but we're able to do breakout groups that has really been fun so so Doug will set us up with 10 minutes randomly sorted so gee you meet some new people you see some old friends and we have a lot of sharing and and bringing people up to speed on their lives and it's that's been a really nice part of it and I bet a lot of people are thinking they don't realize that the breakout group is is an important part of this and then once we come back together after the breakout group well then there's some additional sharing that comes from the topics that the breakout groups had so it's it's a varied time together in terms of who you interact with I'll give a little plug for next week's coffee hour the stewardship ministry team is hoping to have a Q&A so that we could answer questions on the work we're doing behind the scenes this is Rachel another question from Rachel there you go Rachel go ahead typical more of a comment so I'm also involved I've been running the zoom worship services at Reeve some member of both places and I know that we have seen people coming to the coffee hour that people that had moved away but like one couple they moved to Rochester and their church they couldn't get their zoom to work this morning so they knew they could have on our service so I think there's a lot of value in reaching out to people who might have moved out of town because FUS has tremendous resources has great streaming services and you know not every church is able to do this right now and FUS has these great resources and I think it's a great time to reach out to people who have especially if they've moved pretty recently it might feel more comfortable to come back to the people they know do the coffee hour there and maybe see some pledges out of that so we've definitely seen that from running the Reeve services we had like 60 people this morning it was crazy and we had no trouble getting Corm for our congregational meetings it's a gross day outside so anyway so we're seeing some benefits there so I'm hoping that FUS sees some of that too Does anyone else have a virtual hand raised? I don't think so I don't see anyone else Any other final questions before we do a closing reading? Doug? A closing reading is taken from Unitarian Minister Theresa Soto In this community we hold hope close we don't always know what comes next but that cannot dissuade us we don't always know just what to do but that will not mean that we are lost in the wilderness we rely on the certainty beneath the foundation of our values and ethics we are the people who return to love like a north star into the truth that is greater together than we are alone our hope does not live in some glimmer of an indistinct future rather we know the way to the world of which we dream and by covenant in the movement forward of one right action in the next we know that one day we will arrive home thanks everyone for our time together today so good to see you join us on May 31st we'll see you at the first meeting if not sooner thank you Monica Doug and Kelly thank you thank you bye everyone bye