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.