The Ends Monitoring Survey Committee — consisting of UUCC members Jenny Afkinich, Laurie Coltri (Consultant), Lorien Haavik (Board Liaison), Sherry Peruzzi, Gregory Seidman, and Jacquie Weinberg — are very happy to present the 2025 Final Report Summary of the UUCC Ends-Monitoring Survey Committee. The Final Report will be ready in early June.
We want to thank each congregant who took the time to respond to the survey and provide useful comments. Overall, you feel that UUCC is on the right track and with your continued input and support we will continue to move in the right direction.
2025 Report Summary
The purpose of the Ends-Monitoring Survey is to assess the extent to which UUCC’s congregants believe the congregation is achieving its identified Ends. This year’s congregational participation in the survey and ratings by congregants were very similar to last year, with small improvements in the ratings of Ends 4, 5, and 7 (see below). Though many congregants did not respond to the survey, the 103 who did were a reasonably diverse cross-section of the population. Also, in both years, more engaged congregants gave higher ratings than less active. Several comments requested more community building efforts, particularly social events, and direct individual outreach (that doesn’t involve asking for money) to keep people involved and engaged. Additional data and aggregate summaries of these comments [1] will be available in the complete Report, which will be published in June.
Of particular note, UUCC recorded an increase in Institutional success on End 4 moving from 3.4 in 2024 to 3.8 in 2025 in year over year ratings (see above). One possible reason for this change is the timing of the survey, January 1st through February 14, 2025. During that period the nation prepared for the return of President Trump and then witnessed his actions in the first few weeks in office. The responding congregants may have experienced an ever-increasing threat to justice in the outside world and brought those feelings to the forefront while completing the survey. We theorize that due to the continuing increasing levels of unrest in the country and our community the results might be different if the survey was conducted today.
And secondly it may be that in 2025 we asked broader marginalization questions making them more salient to the respondents. The overall survey stayed the same, but three types of changes were made to demographic questions in the 2025 survey. First, some demographic questions were modified to force a single response. The “Check all that apply to you” in 2024 was changed to “My lived experience is primarily as a person of this [racial/ethnic heritage, gender identity, sexual orientation]” in 2025. This change was to increase the chances that answers are relevant to possible conditions of marginalization. Secondly, in 2025 multi-choice checkboxes were added allowing for “other conditions or traits of possible marginalization” including disability, neurodivergence, immigration background/status, body size, religious minority, and primary language. Lastly, a question was added to assess the degree to which UUCC offers respite from oppression to marginalized congregants.
Based on this last question, it was noted that those who reported experiencing marginalization in the larger world tended to report experiencing marginalization at an equal or lesser level at UUCC, with only 3 exceptions. Several comments indicated that this is an End where UUCC has improved but that the work to build a diverse, multicultural Beloved Community where BIPOC*, LGBTQ+**, and other marginalized communities find respite from racism and other oppressions will never be complete.
Since the Ends-Monitoring Survey Committee is now a standing committee, we continue to document our lessons learned and improvements we hope to make in the coming years. Based on comments in the 2024 survey, we drafted confidentiality pledges that anyone who could access the data signed. We made this known on the survey to allow responders to feel that their responses were private and confidential. We will continue to tweak this process to make it more comfortable and useful to those taking the survey and those who have access to the responses.
In reading the comments at the end of the survey we found a reason to smile. Mixed in with specific requests and comments that UUCC is moving in a positive direction, almost half of those who left a comment thanked the Board of Trustees and the Ends-Monitoring Survey Committee for administering the survey.
[1] Verbatim comments will not appear in the published report, to preserve confidentiality. The Board will receive verbatim comments.
* BIPOC = Black, Indigenous, and other People of Color. ** LGBTQ+ = lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer/questioning + other sexualities and non-binary gender
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