The Funding Team is a behind-the-scenes team that advises on many of the financial decisions that our Board, and our Center, take.  It’s not a showy or exciting team, but remains a critically important team — one that pays attention to our continued financial well-being, and supports us in encouraging Our Board to take necessary actions to make sure we stay in-the-black and able to focus on teaching the principles of the Science of Mind philosophy to all and facilitating each individual to have a greater quality of life as they implement these tools and ideas.

Tasks of the Funding Team:

• The Funding Team drafts the budget for each calendar year. In previous years, the Funding Team has recommended a growth agenda, which required greater attendance and higher contributions from participants and then provided additional services.  After much discussion, our projected 2020 budget has been based on current contributions.
• It also makes recommendations about ways to encourage prosperity consciousness, whether through a Pledge Program and/or through educational curricula like Prosperity Plus III or home study groups like Art of Abundance, and also to assess our present level of prosperity consciousness, using monthly board financial reports and the quarterly range reports.
• It also makes recommendations for Fundraising activities that benefit programs in and for our Center. Our Funding Team initiated the creation of our Facility Fund in 2009 when we realized we had a need to accumulate specific funds dedicated to the purpose of owning property in Tucson.
• Our current activity of soliciting prospective local charities that support self-determined living is part of the Stewardship aspect of the Funding Team’s function. This team will take the suggested local charities and high-grade them for the ones that most clearly match our intention. They will count the ballots cast on January 5th when the attendees present that day will vote on our 2020 charity.

This team has made a recommendation that would be considered quite unusual inside other Centers for Spiritual Living. We have recommended that we do not have an annual pledge campaign at this time. Other Centers use the pledge program to encourage participants to decide their annual contributions, and then commit to giving that amount over the next year.  Having a pledge campaign theoretically allows the Funding Team to determine the probable funds available for use in the coming year. It has been our experience that pledge campaigns frequently do not provide accurate information for planning and budgeting. Instead we trust the Law and acknowledge that each individual contributes financially as they choose.  We also know that as everyone grows and deepens in their understanding of their own relationship with their own abundant life, their contributions grow accordingly.

If you have a few hours each month, and strong interest in engaging around the financial well-being of our Center, you are invited to talk with either of us about joining this team.

— Dick Laird with Rev Janis