October 2022 Board Meeting Highlights

The Board of Trustees met on Tuesday, October 11 at 6:30pm on Zoom. Minutes from the meeting will be posted here on the UUCC website after they have been approved at the November Board meeting.

The following is an informal recap of topics discussed at the October 11 meeting.

Last Tuesday, October 11, the UUCC Board of Trustees met for their monthly meeting.

Spiritual Practice

The Board meetings always start with a spiritual practice, and this year’s spiritual practice is centered around a discussion of Mistakes and Miracles — Congregations on the Road to Multiculturalism by Nancy Palmer Jones and Karin Lin. This book is also UUA’s common read for this year.

This month’s discussion focused on how we measure and manage our financial and human resources to further our development of beloved community. Board members agreed that attendance is only a partial measure of value. The relative cost and value of the activity needs to be considered and the outcomes achieved. A small event with lasting impacts on the participants is worthwhile regardless of low attendance. Another common theme was nurturing our relationship with the Owen Brown community. Board members agreed that we need to live our faith and values and recognize that in a faith community, attendance and other measurable data points are often secondary to what people express and experience. We need to have the discipline to be deliberate about how we allocate every dollar asking — does this expenditure support our values?

OBIC Overview

UUCC Treasurer, Kevin Mercer, provided a brief history of the Owen Brown Interfaith Center (OBIC) highlighting how the ownership share has evolved as UUCC has expanded the space. The initial ownership split was ~50/50 between UUCC and Christ United Methodist Church — due to the expansions, the ownership split has shift to ~90/10 with UUCC owning the larger share. UUCC pays two assessments: one for operating costs, and another as a reserve for replacement needs. OBIC rentals for other faith community services, wedding, graduations and other events do not fully cover the building operating costs and declined during the pandemic. Kevin concluded his overview by inviting the Board to consider inviting other faith communities that currently rent OBIC to join us in OBIC ownership.

Vision, Mission, and Congregational Covenant Enabling Action Group

Lindsay Thompson and John Guy, along with Board members Jenny and Kevin, presented an overview of the group’s work and recommendation to engage with Laura Park from Unity Consulting to develop a plan and process for us to update our Congregational Values, Mission, and Ends.

Unity Consulting has worked with a number of Unitarian Universalist congregations, including recent work with All Souls in DC, to engage the congregation around updating their values, mission, and ends statements. The proposed schedule is ambitious and has us planning and completing congregational interviews by early spring, with the Board synthesizing the congregational input into a Values, Mission, and Ends statement by April. This would be followed by review and contemplation by the congregation over the summer and a congregational vote in the fall of 2023.

The Board needs to play an integral part throughout the process and the work will require our exclusive focus for the rest of this year. Board members agreed that because this work is foundational to all other actions and enabling group ideas — it needs to come first and requires dedicated focus.

The Board unanimously approved a motion to move forward with the Values, Mission, Ends work and to engage with Unity Consulting (for $7,500 plus travel costs) to facilitate the work.

Financial Review

Our UUCC Executive Director, Valerie Hsu, has been speaking with area CPAs to about the cost and process of conducting an independent financial review of UUCC’s FY2021-2022, and the cost is estimated to be up to $2,000. UUCC’s last compiled financial report was for FY2018.

This year’s pledges have now exceeded what was budgeted for by nearly $8,000. The Board agreed that $1000 of these surplus funds should be allocated, as needed, to a financial review of UUCC finances for Fiscal Year 2021-22.

The next Board meeting will be Tuesday, November 8, from 6:30 to 8:30pm via Zoom. All are welcome to attend and observe.