President's Message
Message for May 2012
Each year UUCOV reports to UUA the number of members in our congregation. The official number reported this year, as of January 30, 2012 was 169. This represents steady growth in each of the years of UUCOV's short existence.
I thought it might be interesting to look a little more closely at the length of time individuals have held membership at UUCOV; here is what I learned. Of our current membership, 24.8% joined the congregation in the earliest years, that is, from 1998 through 2002. Another 23.7% became members in the period from 2003 through 2006. The years 2007 and 2008 found tremendous growth given that 24.3% of our current membership joined in just those two years. From 2009 to the present time we gained 26.5% of our current membership. What does this show?
President's March Message
This is the last message that I, as your President, will be posting in the Connection. I had another message in mind but I it has been put in the background by the news of the retirement of our minister, Don Beaudreault.
Don came to UUCOV at a time when we were in transition. Our congregation was ably guided by Rev. Suzanne Nazian who helped us form a sense of community by building on the vision of the founders of UUCOV. She was a great pastoral minister and she was the perfect person for what we needed at the time. When she left, we felt that we needed someone to help us address the complexities of a growing congregation. We needed someone with experience to help us transition from a pastoral church to a program church. Don Beaudreault was selected as our interim minister. He possessed all the skills and experience that we believed were needed to help us make the transition. We liked him so much that we decided to make him our consulting minister.
November Message
By the time this is published it will be November and many will have returned from their summer homes or summer vacation. My wife and I returned on October 9th and attended UUCOV for the first time on Oct 17th. It is great to be back and it is great to see all of you again.
There are 2 areas that I want to focus on today, but before I do I want to point out that several of our congregants have been ill or have had surgery. Please be sure to remember them with a card or a phone call. We wish them a speedy recovery and we hope to see all of them back at UUCOV very soon.
Congregational Finances:
At the Board meeting on Tuesday, October 11th, the Board engaged in a lengthy and thorough discussion about our finances. Besides the Treasurer's report we discussed fundraising, pledges, the pledge campaign, rentals and UUCOV's investments. In general our finances are healthy and pledges are coming in at faster rate than during a similar period last year. There are a couple of bumps in the road that we discussed and one of them is the fact that we do not have anyone to coordinate fundraising. This is important because fundraising constitutes $20,000 in projected revenue in our budget.
I do not want to go into detail here as there simply is not enough space. The Board, however, will be hosting a forum on November 6th at which time we will have a lengthy discussion about our finances. In order to ensure good attendance I would like to hold the forum after the service.
February 2012 Message
2013 Pledge Campaign
Well, it's that fun time of the year when we come up with all kinds of creative ways to separate you from your money. It is pledge campaign and fund-raising time.
This year, UUCOV has set an ambitious goal of trying to raise $274,600 to fund its operations. Besides paying our mortgage, salaries and utilities, there are some other needs that we cannot ignore. First of all, we must fund our capital reserve accounts so that we can replace our roofs, repair our roads or install new air conditioners when we have to. If we don't put money into this fund over a period of years, then we will have to find the money all at once. Secondly, UUCOV needs a Business Administrator. Our treasurer currently spends about 20 hours a week on UUCOV's finances. This is too much to ask of a volunteer. We need someone to do the job that will be responsible for the day-to-day work of managing our finances. Thirdly, we are asking for funds to raise the salaries of our employees, especially our minister. We know that our current minister will not be here forever, and we want to ensure that when we do need a new minister that the salary will be competitive.
2012 Fundraising
Although we are in the middle of the 2013 pledge campaign, we still are raising money to fund our 2012 budget. As I mentioned at the Board Forum in November, there is a possibility that UUCOV might run a deficit for the year. This is due to our having to increase the hours of our Children's RE Director and our falling behind in our fundraising activities.
There are, however, three great events being planned that will help us meet our 2012 funding target. The first 3 letters of the word fundraising is FUN and 3 fun events are in the works.
Welcome Back to UUCOV
People are "trickling back" to UUCOV after a summer of traveling and spending time at their second home up north. I hope that everyone had a safe healthy and restful summer. I for one took some time to do some good reading. I recommend that anyone who is a history buff, read the book, 1861:The Civil War Awakening, by Adam Goodheart. The sections on Louis Starr King, the Unitarian minister for whom the UU seminary is named, are fascinating.
BOARD ACTIVITY
Although some of us were away for the summer, Board activity did not stop; the Board met in June, July and September. We discussed many topics, and we adopted some modest goals for the year. The full list will be published in the Board minutes which will be posted on the bulletin board outside the sanctuary, but I want to call your attention to two of the major goals.
