 Good afternoon everyone and welcome We're gonna begin with an opening reading from Richard Gilbert who was Kelly's childhood minister, right? One of them him and Alina Chapin. Yeah It's called what we share Let us celebrate the common rituals that make us kin The poignancy of welcome and farewell The anguish of defeat the tender touching of those who call us friend the exuberant joy of birth The empty space in our heart when a loved one died The ultimate loneliness that each knows the warm embrace of comrades who welcome us to the celebration of life Let us also celebrate the questions that persist and Perplex and do not yield to our need for answers The shining moments when the subslance across our dim meaning path meandering path and illuminates the way the strange and anxious excitement of moving to new places to call home the Fragments of frustration when our best efforts yield pitiful results The helplessness we feel in a world that sometimes presents only problems The high joy when some small victory for humanity is one and we have helped it happen In all our moments of doubt and despair of problem and pain Let us remember the common lot shared by our human kin in all our times of truth and triumph of faith and fortitude Let us celebrate what we share We are after all In this together Well, good morning everybody Thank you for being here My name is Jenny Conroy and I'm the president of the board of trustees and I really appreciate everyone Being here to have this conversation with us, especially on this extremely chilly and snowy day We're and I'm sure a lot of us would like to be cuddled up at home I know I would so really appreciate everyone being here today to have this conversation with us as I said My name is Jenny. We have a few more members of the board here joy and Emily and Emily And at the future Town halls will have other board members as well, and I think we also have some finance committee members here Where's Anne and Chuck, but there's Anne and Chuck, okay, well, we got a big big crew so just I think we're just missing Ed But he'll be in one of the future town halls So the reason we are here today. I want to just first go over Let me actually let me just do a little housekeeping first and then we'll go over our purpose So if you look at our agenda We are going to be spending some time talking about You know what's been going on over the past several years how we got to where we are right now and Where we're going and then Kelly and Kelly will be going over our proposed staff restructuring And we'll talk about our next steps and then have some time for questions So we really want to have a good conversation and have questions We'd like to see if we can hold those until kind of get the whole context and we'll be developing an FAQ as well from some of the questions today so that we can share those with the congregation as we go through this process and This is also recorded this first portion is going to be recorded for folks who can't attend But it will end before the discussion But just so you know we'll have that part recorded so the information can be shared So the purpose of why we are here today is to share more about our financial position and To start this conversation in January. We won't be voting as a congregation on the budget until May But we were having these town halls to talk about our financial position and our proposed solutions for that And then we'll have a financial forum in February as well And then we'll be voting on the budget for the next fiscal year in May The finance committee and the board have prepared some information for you to kind of say how did we get here? So that you understand the full financial picture So we'll be talking to you through that in a moment here and again the financial forum will be going to leave Even deeper will be in February So our purpose again today is to share our our proposed restructuring have a conversation Answer questions and to really be Clear about where we are and where we want to go in the future. Okay, so if you want to advance the first slide here So why we are here at our May 2023 parish meeting when we approve the budget as a congregation If you recall at that time we said we're in we're kind of in a We're sounding the alarm. We're kind of in a challenging position right now at that time in the last budget We used some government funding and used pretty much all of our reserves To retain all of our staff at that time without a pay raise So if you recall we retained all our staff But we were not able to give them any pay raise at a time when as you know the inflation was pretty high So At this point, we don't have cash reserves anymore. We did dip into those last Last year and in previous years and we'll talk about that in a little more detail And we also don't have that pandemic era funding. We have about a two hundred thousand dollar shortfall for our budget two hundred thousand dollars to try to retain our budget from last year and Looking at all the places we can cut It's still a staff is still our largest part of the budget by far And so that's why we're in this position of having to resize our staff at this time We feel and be able to pay them fairly and have that a Better size staff for where we are right now and then position if you ask for the future and be able to grow from there So if you've talked to family and friends, maybe you know that we are not unique among UU churches Or any churches really and in some ways we are in a fairly Fairly fortunate position as compared to some places. I know my parents church They've had a completely sell their building and they don't even they are meeting somewhere else right now So in a lot of ways we're in a fairly fortunate situation, but not not unique And we have together I think it's really important for us to remember we have weathered some challenging years in many different ways that we'll talk about and We haven't had to lay off staff We've made it through some very challenging years and have really retained But at this time we feel that we need to make a change and there are all signs of really good positive signs of growth and Resurgence, so we'll talk about those two So We have the shortfall of about two hundred thousand dollars We don't have those reserves and we feel that we are in this position now where we have the necessary cuts to staffing So we're gonna spend a little time Emily Smith and I are gonna spend a little time saying how do we get here before we go Into the staff restructuring so if you want to advance So a lot of this doesn't come as a surprise to any of you But there's been just a refresh here. We've had some very challenging and unique years. We had a pandemic We went to virtual services Which means, you know, we're not passing the basket at that time. We had some people step away during the pandemic We also had to cancel events during the pandemic. All those are ways that we raise money So, you know historic time of having this pandemic Followed by an economic recession, of course. We all we all felt that Then we have ongoing high expenses our atrium building that We built came after record growth. It's beautiful. We are so glad we have this this is a six million dollar building came after record growth In 2006 this is ongoing expense for us as well as our historic building. So we have high expenses that stay with us and that record inflation That we've experienced now starting to slow down a little bit But we've had that record inflation that we're dealing with so we have ongoing high expenses and and the challenge of the pandemic and then of course we have a ministerial Transition that we've been going through that's another challenge. We had our long-term Minister Michael Shuler's retirement We had three years of interim ministers and now we're moving into our co-minister. We're Co-minister model. We're building on that But we had that transition time and a lot of challenges up and down for three years and At the same time we had some long-term Pledge members pass away or step away at that time So all these there's all these factors that we've had both that we experience uniquely and that everyone experience that have put Us here to where we are right now and Emily Smith is going to come and talk about some of the other factors Yeah, so we want to go to the next slide So another factor in our current financial situation is declining membership and pledges as Jenny was mentioning We are certainly not alone in this situation A cross-organized religion that there's been a decline in participation One statistic on this is that between 2013 and 2021 Catholic mass attendance was down 40% and 61 of the 102 parishes polled regularly operated without a dub or with a deficit We also know that there are many other Unitarian Universalist congregations in similar places also Experiencing declining pledges and membership So just overall reinforcing the message that we're not alone in this situation Next slide For some specifics on our membership and pledges over time We polled some numbers from 2008, which is the year that this atrium addition to the building opened and from today Which is a representation of our last complete financial year and what we're seeing so far in this financial year So in 2008 we had 1475 members We had 847 pledges totaling just over a million dollars and that works out to an average pledge of about $1,275 Today we have 1040 members, which is about a 30% decline from 2008 We have 457 Individual pledges, which total about $950,000 and Although those three numbers are all lower than they were in 2008 It's worth noting that the average pledge today is significantly higher than in 2008. It's now just over $2,000 So we're gonna talk a little more about Some hopeful signs that we're seeing in the midst of our difficult situation But I do think that higher average pledge is one of them To me the story that that statistic suggests is that the people who are here are Committed to this place and to this congregation, and I think that's helpful to keep in mind Next slide So over the last several years, we've had a discrepancy between our income and our expenses So far we've been able to Make up the difference with a couple different stopgap measures One of them is that over three years we got about $500,000 in government assistance in the form of the payment protection program and employee retention credits These funds are no longer available to us We have also for over or for about a decade now Used cash reserves to help us balance our budget At our last parish meeting we voted to do this again For this financial year using about a hundred seventy five thousand dollars of our cash reserves was what was projected we would need That's the that was the majority of the remainder of our cash reserves at the end of this financial year We expect to be to have a less than a hundred thousand dollars remaining So it's not really something we can pull from again We had hoped that using cash reserves in this way could be a bridge to financial stability without them But unfortunately that just has not proven out One more slide So the bottom line Thinking about the stopgaps we've used so far is that that they just aren't there anymore We have come to a place where our stopgaps are our reserves our relief funds have been used up And our expenses still exceed our income Which puts us to a point of needing to cut expenses for next year in order to avoid debt Thank you, you've got one more slide Thank You Emily and I think it is important to note You know we were very resourceful and it was that we use those pandemic funds Do exactly what they were designed to do was to retain staff and not have to lay people off at such a hard time So very resourceful, which is wonderful that we were able to To take all those measures and I want before we move on I want to make sure that everyone knows it, you know this That no we're not no one's happy about this, but it's not a Time to panic. There are such wonderful signs of what's going on in our congregation And so we wanted to highlight just a few of them and I certainly have noticed this so many new visitors You know coming and see it with their different with their name tags on and so we have had 347 visitors book signatures since July We have had 14 new members sign the book since July and four more are pending and Our new UU classes we had 20 members in October so that was a very large class and then we have another session coming up in February and On our online services, so we still we're back here together in person, but we still have our online services We have a hundred seventy two views per week of our online services plus 280 attendant attendees in person a week and then for our December holiday all of our services in December. We had a total of 2748 attendees so we have a lot of Energy and if you're here this morning with the kids in the RE programs We have a lot of energy, but a lot of the growth from that lags a little bit You know if you have new members you're not asking them to to make huge donations right away So some of that lags a little bit, so we feel that at this time we need to Restructure to position ourselves for growth, so I think there's a lot of hope and energy. This isn't You know a time to think they're constricting, but it is a time to be Realistic and make smart choices for FUS. So with that I'll give it to Kelly and Kelly Thanks, Jenny. So as has been alluded to and we don't want to bury the lead any further In order to have a staffing structure that matches what our Consistent annual income is both pledges and then the other income sources that we have on a regular basis That's things like her the rental Income that we get from parking and from the two Partners that we share our building with those those are the consistent sources of revenue right unlike the sort of one time Sources of money we were talking about having depleted in order to have a staff that actually fits within that Foundation this the relatively secure income streams we have Kelly and I spent a lot of time thinking about Okay, what are the basic needs that we need to fulfill that are? core obligations of the congregation and How can we fulfill them within our means and then where there was any? Flexibility or room for judgment How can we match that as best we can though and we can't match it perfectly to the Personalities that we already have because we have a staff that we highly value We're grateful for everyone who works here, and we want to find a way to where possible Go forward with them as you know as much as possible where they want to yeah, so that's what we're gonna show you now Yeah, we wanted to say that how we got here is that we started back in August With our new mission and vision statements, and we took all the current titles and all the current people out of the equation and said What is the staffing structure? We need to meet our mission and our vision We did a lot of consultation with our regional staff Also with colleagues who are in very similar situations We have many many colleagues who are in the same boat that we are One that we talked to you as part of a consortium of large Similar size to ours congregations in the DC area. There's five of them All five of them are in this position Some of them have Endowments historic endowments that they are just going to pull from much like our cash reserves We don't have that and the others are changing their staffing structures when the largest amount of Expense comes from personnel That's where it's got to come from We found almost $50,000 that we are pulling from administrative and program budgets and The other hundred and fifty six ish had to come from personnel So here's where we are So looking on the screen you'll see that we are the The plan we have presented to the board and formed a consensus with them about Maintains co-ministry we did start this conversation between us with the question Do we think that that continues to be the right model for F us? It was not an easy Thing to reckon with and to sit together and think okay Do we think that this is this is the way that actually in the best interest of the institution? I would say that given the fact that the congregation has so recently voted to embark on this model and the fact that Relative to our number of members We are in we are among the congregations in the Unitarian Universalist Association with the highest ratio of Members to ministers right that's so it's not unusual to find a two-minister congregation if you have 500 people we are a two-minister congregation with about a thousand people so Given that we felt pretty secure and saying okay at least for now Continuing with co-ministry we believe makes sense so given that the next level down the org chart is a set of five Director level positions some of these are Title changes some of them are not some of them are not some of them are more familiar to you as existing titles The intention is that this is a team of five people at the same Organizational level and who will be compensated the same for their time although it is important to highlight three of these positions are full-time two of the positions are halftime the next level are the critical support and Practical organizational roles again some of these are familiar or maybe familiar to you to you things like we have a facilities manager We need to continue to have a facilities manager That's essential to a congregation that owns a campus as expansive as ours and not for nothing That campus is a major revenue Generator for us and so it needs to be seen to if for no other reason than to maintain that I mean there are other reasons right but also You can't chimp you can't you cannot scrimp on that and expect to still have the revenue generated by it There is one new position a wholly new position on this list and that is the office assistant position to focus on both communications and The administration of our important databases an institution that has a thousand members and many times that in terms of Individual people that are connected to us in one way or another Needs someone who is in charge of handling all of that information flow Yeah, so those of you that have been here a while The refrain I've been hearing for the past week from folks is this has been a long time in coming This has been a long time in coming. This is the moment when we have to do a very hard thing It's not a crisis. We're not standing before you to say it is time to sell a building Or it is time to rent this out to something else This isn't a crisis, but this is a point of difficulty and we need to make difficult decisions You know how we've dealt with this in the past Five six more years of no cost of living of staff saying what do you mean cost of living? we don't get that here of Waiting for someone to retire or waiting for someone to leave their job and we just don't replace them So this is our moment when we look at the organization and we say what is the structure to serve us now? How do we live within our means? This is sustainable. It is Stabilizing and it sets us up for continued growth So really what we want you to take away today is that while this is a very hard thing Yes This is the thing that needs to be done in order to Set us up to keep moving forward We can't keep doing the thing of just chipping away at it a little bit here and there We also hope that you will take away well, what can I do about this? There are always those financial pieces of considering your pledge and Considering what this place means to you and as Karen Gustafson used to say What does it mean to you in terms of dollars and then give a little bit more? Encouraging others to pledge if this place matters to you Contact Cheryl and say I'll do a testimonial during the annual campaign Right, I'm willing to speak and What we're hoping people will do is what Alyssa and her family did last year to say what the place means and then to say So I'm gonna give this much more Cheryl is going to be recreating the stewardship ministry team if Being involved in fundraising the pledge campaign if you're comfortable talking to folks about money and we know not everybody is if You're comfortable talk with Cheryl and be a part of that stewardship ministry team Janet is recreating the membership ministry team and it's gonna be across the board So if you say I really want to talk to those first-time visitors And I want to see what brings them here and I want to try to get them involved if you say I actually want to talk to our longtime members. What keeps you here? What's kept you here for 10 20 30 years? I want to talk to those people in the middle that are at about three to five years and Though that's often a time where if they haven't engaged they're gonna walk away. I want to grab those people You might be thinking I was a coming-of-age parent and I actually stayed after coming of age Most of my friends did not so I want to work with those parents of middle schoolers and ninth graders and try to keep them Wherever your interest is in membership Get in touch with Janet and tell her how you want to help so Cheryl for stewardship Cheryl if you want to increase your pledge Janet for anything involving membership, and let's check other things. We wanted to highlight I mentioned before you know our former system of No cost of living or not worrying about the UUA salary guidelines All of the staff up here will be compensated at the 24 25 UUA salary guideline of a level D Congregation it's getting into the weeds a little bit level D is up to 800 members The UUA made guidelines for congregations up to that number and then said if you're bigger than that add 20% we are not at the add 20% to that But we are at that level D and when we first looked at those numbers We said there's no way we're gonna get there in the next ten years And we got there by doing this and that's huge And then staff who were already at that level Will receive a 2% cost of living increase in the coming year Someone emailed the board email and asked about ministers and cost of living noting that for many many years Michael didn't take cost of living increases, so let's be clear We are not included in any increase for the coming year. Yeah, that's everybody else. It's everybody else We know we're the highest paid employees you got we are not questioning that we know the numbers We are also the ones making these decisions and we want to make sure that we do not benefit from this in any way. Yeah I think is that our I think that was our main List we wanted to okay. Yes This is perhaps familiar to some of you to be of use by Marge Piercy The people I love the best jump into work head first Without dallying in the shallows and swim off with sure strokes almost out of sight They seem to become natives of that element the black sleek heads of seals bouncing like half submerged balls I love people who harness themselves an ox to a heavy cart Who pull like water buffalo with massive patients? Who strain in the mud and the muck to move things forward who do what has to be done again and again? I Want to be with people who submerge in the task Who go into the fields to harvest and work in a row and pass the bags along Who are not parlor generals and field deserters? But move in a common rhythm when the food must come in or the fire be put out The work of the world is common as mud Botched it smears the hands crumbles to dust But the thing worth doing well done has a shape that satisfies clean and evident Greek amphoras for wine or oil Hopi vases that held corn are put in museums, but you know they were made to be used The pitcher cries for water to carry and a person for work that is real Thanks for being here today. Thank you for your questions They will form the FAQ that will go up on our website and it's really good to see you all Thank you friends