Happy Holidays!
The Stewardship for Us team sends to all our UU friends best wishes for the New Year.
May your stewardship programs provide the resources your congregations and our UUA need, while engaging your members in meaningful commitment.
We are pleased to offer you a short video to express our appreciation for the work you are doing, to share helpful trends we have observed this year, and to offer our favorite tips to get your stewardship program off to a great start in 2018.
Invest 5 minutes in a better stewardship program; enjoy the video.
https://tinyurl.com/S4Us-Message
See you in the New Year.
Stewardship Consultant Barry Finkelstein has been a Unitarian Universalist congregational stewardship consultant since the Fall of 2007 and has worked with over 50 congregations on annual budget drives, capital campaigns, and strategic planning. Reach Barry at Team@stewardshipforus.com
Thanks for your ongoing work, all of you! Question: We at UUCA know that we don’t want to be in the business of giving tax advice, especially in these messy times. But any thoughts on how best to convey the message that your gift is not just good for you spiritually and for your your congregation practically, but might also have tax benefits for you? And/or that changes in tax laws don’t change the need for us to support our congregations?
Great question, Diane.
As you might imagine, this is a line of conversation we hear a LOT about in recent weeks. If we could ask your indulgence just a bit on time, we are about to post a blog on this specific question, which gives us a bit more space than a reply does.
You have touched on important points in your comments:
(1) For many people, in many ways they may still get a tax advantage with giving, and
(2) As nice as a tax benefit can be, upon examination not many of us actually choose to give or not give on that basis. Giving to our congregations is, I would submit, different from our other charitable giving. This is a community in which we are deeply involved on many levels and which represent the broadest possible realization of our values.
Watch this space for more to follow!
— Bill Clontz, S4Us