Executive, Board and Finance Committee

Another tidbit picked up at the Large Church Conference:  Unity-Unitarian and Dallas are the two UU congregations who are working closest to Carver (which remember, is not designed for congregational polity churches) and have been doing it for over 10 years.  So, we posed the question, "Where does the Finance Committee fall in a church/Carver system?"

As we know, Hotchkiss (who is not Carver, remember?) keeps the basic organizational chart that we use.  And from reading Carver, we know that all the money dealings reside on the Executive side of the equation, meaning that any committee needed to help out in checking/advising on monetary issues will be an Executive committee (often called a Ministry Team to note that it is part of the Ministry or program side of the church).

As for the Board, it HAS to develop a monitoring policy that assures the Board that if they conduct the monitoring as written, they are confident that they are fulfilling their fiduciary role as a Board.  If everyone on the Board is not secure in that outcome, then the policy is not sufficient.  It is also possible that the Board could appoint its own committee to help with this monitoring (often called a Task Force), though it cannot delegate the fiduciary responsibility that it holds.

So what do Unity and Dallas do?  Unity for sure puts their version of a Finance Committee on the Executive side because they put all money oversight on the Executive side.  That's right, all of it.  Dallas puts all on the Executive side except the Endowment Fund.

The case to be made by Carver is that it's inappropriate to hand over accountability for programming to the Executive but keep the money on the Board side.  Monitoring and assessment should assure the Board that all is well.  I expect Hotchkiss doesn't do this because it makes UUs highly uncomfortable to give over everything to the Executive side.

We have no idea what we're going to do yet, though sooner or later it HAS to be decided.

Large Church Conference--Governance Part 3/Cycle

Ran out of writing time while in Minneapolis.  (The previous blog was written there, but posted today.)  But, I'm back to the project at hand now.....

One of the more enlightening (and daunting) slides that the folks from Unity-Unitarian* used was an oval showing the cycle of governance steps that are make up Policy Governance.  I can't show it as a circle here, but the steps are:

Articulation - identify core values, mission and Ends
     Accomplished by Board and Congregation in collaboration with Executive
Interpretation - transform the wording of the Ends Statements to operational, measurable statements and propose a reasonable way to measure results
     Accomplished by the Executive in collaboration with Board
Planning and Design of Programs/Projects - creatively design ways to produce the Ends
     Accomplished by Executive and all those invited to join this process (staff and volunteers)
Implementation - execute programs and projects that produce Ends,
     Accomplished by Executive and all paid staff and volunteers
Assessment - review results, gain insights, ask new questions that lead to further Articulation (step one)
     Accomplished by Board in collaboration with Executive

We knew (in the backs of our minds) that this was the process, but since we know we're mired in Articulation at the moment (while the congregation is still running effectively), it was a little scary to see how much more we need to tackle.   Since we are acting as if we are doing full Policy Governance as a test, the Executive is planning, designing and implementing programs and projects (most obviously in the adult education area), but with no chance of being able to measure results compared to interpreted Ends (because we didn't do any of the "Interpretation" step this year) we don't actually know how we're doing yet.

So, as chair of the Governance Task Force, I've decided to speed up the Articulation step so that we can at least Interpret one or two Ends before Rev. Ward goes on sabbatical.  Consequently, you should be hearing about our new Ends statements by mid-April (I hope).








*Unity-Unitarian is a UU church in St. Paul, MN that is very much a leader in Policy Governance in congregations.  They and Dallas have been at it the longest, and Unity has been VERY generous in sharing their insights.  They have also created a non-profit consulting business to help other congregations along the Policy Governance path.  I have no doubt that we will be making use of their expertise at some point.

Large Church Conference--Governance Part 2

Today I am attending all four sessions about Policy Governance that are being led by members of Unity-Unitarian Church in St. Paul, MN.  I've been to two of the session so far and here's what I learned:

The point of Policy Governance is to align decision-making with the core intentions of religious life.

Best practices used by congregations that are enjoying success in Policy Governance:

• Get help
• Aim for "good enough" and plan how to get better
• Create a transition plan
• Work to develop trust and patience
• Patience, patience, patience

There are four phases when changing to Policy Governance:

1. Casting the Vision (12-18 months)
2. Building the System (1-2 years)
3. Engaging the System (2-4 years)
4. Living Your Vision (on and on)

UUCA is in Phase 2, having based the initial work on the recently completed Strategic Plan and development of the Mission Statement.

One thing for sure I'm learning is that we are doing pretty darn well!  Our work with our Ends Statements is appropriate, our "trial period" is a great idea, our plan to make bylaw changes at the end of the trial period was widely admired (meaning that we "act" like we're using Policy Governance but whenever there's a conflict, we meet the requirements of the relevant bylaw), we are working harder with more clarity than most other congregations in this phase.  I don't exactly want to brag, but....well, yes I do.  Hurray for us!!!

Large Church Conference--Governance Part 1

Hi!

I'm at the UU Large Church Conference in Minneapolis, MN and the theme of this year's conference (it is held only once every three years) is Governance and Ministry.  I can't decide if that's a lucky coincidence or some kind of punishment.  Oh well.....

Yesterday's presentations were all by Dan Hotchkiss.  Good news was that he was talking very generally about governance issues and not referring to his book at all (because as you know, we were already confused once by the Hotchkiss/Carver similarities).  I didn't pick up a lot of "takeaways" from these sessions (though they were interesting and educational in setting context for our work) but I DID like his notion that all this work on governance has one basic goal; to make our congregations  better servants of our purposes and better models of our principles.

Another idea that I hadn't fully developed for myself was that a church's governance structure should not be about replicating itself, or keeping itself in business, but about designing for tomorrow, moving us toward a deeper engagement with our spiritual selves and the world.

As we struggle in the Governance Task Force and the Board to improve the Governance Document that we borrowed as our starting place and continue to move the system toward Policy Governance, we always need to remember that the point of it all is to lead us closer and closer to the answer to this question:  How has belonging to the Unitarian Universalist Church of Asheville changed your life?