About the Annual Budget Process
UUCC is almost entirely supported financially by its members and friends. There is no central organization that pays our bills. We pay the salaries and benefits for our staff, buy supplies, and pay for the copy paper, printer ink, telephone bill, religious education curricula, art supplies, and our share of the mortgage on the building. Even the small sums taken in from the larger community from concerts and other outreach functions come about only as a result of the intensive work of our staff and the efforts and financial commitments of our volunteers. We are an extraordinarily generous, committed, and capable community of people.
UUCC members and friends make annual pledges – promises – to support UUCC with money in the upcoming year.
Blessed as all of us are with loving connections with, and commitments to, ourselves, our families and other worthy causes, our individual decisions about how much to pledge to UUCC – in other words, how to share the responsibility for ensuring that UUCC survives and thrives as a spiritual community – present deep and theologically rich challenges. The task, undertaken by UUCC’s leadership, of taking the congregation’s monetary offerings and fashioning a budget that addresses the congregation’s purposes and honors our principles offers similar challenges. As generous as our members and friends are in their contributions, we are never in a position to freely spend on everything we want to spend on. The budget process reminds us of our fundamental interconnectedness; and challenges us to open our minds and hearts, act with love and compassion, seek justice and equity, and work constructively for the good of the whole.
Annual pledging is a voluntary activity, and there is no fire-and-brimstone doctrine in Unitarian Universalism to motivate people to pledge. Thus, the budget must be revisited annually, and must take account of current intentions of members and friends to financially support the ongoing operations of the church in the upcoming year.
Contact Budget Leadership to submit questions or comments.
* The OBIC assessment is based on the relative uses of the building made by the respective owning congregations, UUCC and Christ United Methodist Church, and is calculated on the basis of the year preceding the assessment. In 2013, these shares were 82% and 18%, respectively.
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