A Living Our Vision Fund is for strategic and visionary opportunities that arise for your congregation.
For UUA General Assembly 2025, Kay Crider & Mark Ewert created a 36-minute video that explains the what, why and how to create a Living Our Vision Fund. Here’s what we covered:
Different than a traditional endowment where the principal remains intact and only the income is used, a Living Our Vision Fund allows you to meet the moment.
This type of fund provides leadership and the congregation the opportunity to be strategic rather than just do business as usual.
Your congregation gets to choose whether you want the fund to be used for strategic opportunities to further your mission, vision and values or whether you also want to allow possible use of the fund for resilience and sustainability under certain circumstances.
In addition, once the fund reaches a certain size, the funds are often invested and can produce income until used for a strategic opportunity.
The video contains examples of congregations and a non-profit who have created such a fund. And after seeing the presentation, some congregations reached out to let us know that they have a strategic fund.
The slides from the presentation and a handout with additional resources are available by clicking on the links. You can also access the video on the UUA’s Leader Lab, which has many excellent resources for lay leaders, religious professionals and congregations.
In these times, support of the work of our congregations, both within and beyond our walls, is essential!
Kay has more than 24 years of successful professional fundraising experience. She is passionate about helping organizations fund their mission with strategic, intentional stewardship. Reach her at kay@stewardshipforus.com.