CMM 2022-06-12

Minutes of Meeting for Worship with Concern for Business

Concord (NH) Monthly Meeting of

the Religious Society of Friends

Sixth Month 12^th, 2022

Thirteen Friends gathered both in person and by Zoom connection and entered into quiet worship. We accepted the minutes of Fifth Month [1] as corrected.

We opened with a brief period of Worship.

06.01  Nominating Committee:  We approve Nominating Committee’s request to add Lucy as a member of the Ministry and Counsel Committee.

06.02  Finance Committee:  For our fiscal year ending May 31, 2022, we exceeded our goal for contributions by 5% and underspent in the program area, partly due to COVID constraints.  A net gain of $2,271 was moved automatically into the General Fund.  We are encouraged to re-title the “Profit and Loss vs. Actual” report as “Results of Operations.”  We will be paying down our mortgage to $0 in three years.  We are in a very healthy financial condition.

We have a reserve remaining from our initial building fund, and we will draw that down to help cover the costs of the new sound abatement panels.

Finance Committee asks for a session after the next business meeting to discuss if we are comfortable investing our excess funds.

06.03  Brokerage Account:  We approve opening a brokerage account at TD Ameritrade to receive gifts of securities.  David Woolpert (Finance Committee Clerk) and Christopher Haigh (Treasurer) are the authorized signers and decision makers for this account.

06.04  Outreach Committee shared a revised welcoming and affirming statement:

We believe that the Divine Spirit is present in every person, and everyone is equal and precious before God. We are an open and affirming community. We welcome people of all ages, colors, cultures, ethnicities, gender identities, sexual orientations, abilities, financial means, and religious or wisdom traditions. We celebrate diversity and seek to embody what we hope to see in the world--a just and loving humanity in which all people are free to be themselves fully and without fear.

We are reminded that our meeting’s practice regarding membership for people of other faith traditions differs from what we find in New England Yearly Meeting’s Faith and Practice [2].  The committee is asked to explain why there is not an explicit statement of affirming gay marriage.  We hear that some religious groups make statements of welcome and acceptance but actually have a hidden agenda to change the people who begin attending those churches.  As a result, members of the LGBTQ+ community may be wary of certain phrasing.  A statement affirming gay marriage could make us sound more sincere to some members of the LGBTQ+ community.  Does the statement that “we are an open and affirming community” need to be included if we add a statement about affirming relationships?  One friend recommends the following addition is recommended: “We commit ourselves to giving full support to all in their interpersonal relationships.  Loving marriage commitments are honored and upheld for all.”

Outreach Committee will take this statement back for further seasoning, and invites other interested Friends to attend their meetings.

06.05  Ministry and Counsel:  The Memorial Meeting for our Friend Thomas Hedberg will be this coming Saturday at 11:00 a.m. at the meetinghouse, followed by a potluck lunch at the home of Thomas and Lynda in Canterbury Center.

After a brief time of quiet worship, Meeting adjourned, purposing to meet again on the Second Sunday of the Seventh Month.

NB. The Income & Expenses Sheet was created with two decimal points, which were removed for readability, the cents being unimportant to the overall understanding.  This can have the effect of throwing off any given sum by a dollar due to compounded rounding.  —  Prepared by Greg Heath and Chris Haigh.

Finance Committee Report [14]

To: Concord Friends Meeting

From: Finance Committee

Re: Changes to our Balance Sheet

Date: June 12, 2022

The Finance Committee would like the Meeting to know that we have made changes to the presentation of our Balance Sheet to bring us closer to what is known as GAAP or Generally Accepted Accounting Principles [15].  As you read along you may find it helpful to have a copy of this new presentation handy and the new Balance Sheet is attached to this document.

First, a short primer on the Balance Sheet.

Equity means what we are worth, often referred to as Net Assets.  There is a simple formula on the Balance Sheet.  Because it is always true, we say we are “in balance.”

• What we are worth (equity – the section at the bottom)
• Equals
• What we own (assets such as cash in the bank and property – in the top section)
• Less
• What we owe (liabilities such as our mortgage loan – in the middle)

Why we are making this change.

Our intention is to make our financial position more transparent, making clear

• what is our money and completely unrestricted;
• what is our money that we have decided to restrict for given purposes, and further could decide to use or reassign for other purposes; and,
• what has been given to the Meeting for specific purposes and has been restricted by the donor.

The correct way to show these funds is in the equity section of the Balance Sheet.  In the past we have accounted for the above needs in a muddy manner, reflecting special projects on the Balance Sheet as liabilities, essentially owing the money to ourselves or owing the money for the donor restricted purposes.  Now, with these changes made, the liabilities section of the balance sheet is a true reflection of what we owe to others and only that.  All the rest has been moved into the equity section at the bottom.

The equity section.

The equities are divided into two parts.

1. The general fund, which is unrestricted.
2. Other funds that are temporarily restricted.

If we had an endowment where only the income from it could be spent, the principal would be permanently restricted.  That would be a third type of equity, but for now we do not have permanent funds.  The temporarily restricted funds will be expended eventually unlike an endowment.

Within the temporarily restricted funds we have two types of funds

1. Those that are designated by the donors.  An active current example is the Asylum Seekers Support Fund. In accepting the donations we are accepting the obligation to spend the donated funds only for the designated purpose.  And,
2. The Meeting itself has designated other funds as temporarily restricted.  An example is the Blended Meeting Fund.  The Meeting set aside $1,500 for technology and other expenses associated with making it possible for people to participate in Meeting activities online as well as in person.  $183 remains in that fund.  What is special here is that because the Meeting decided how to restrict these funds it could restrict them for another purpose or remove any restriction through an act of the Meeting for Business.

The General Fund, Unrestricted Net Assets.

All of the above leads us to a question that jumps out at us when we look at the General Fund.  Why is there a negative number in the General Fund – Other line?  What does it mean?

First let’s look at that section.  It begins with a Land and Building Fund.  This is simply equal to the book value of our land and building as reflected above in the assets section.  We can’t spend it, but we could borrow against it and then spend the borrowed money.  Essentially it is unrestricted but tied up and the Finance Committee has pulled it out in order to highlight what remains in the General Fund.  As of May 31, 2022 that remainder is a negative amount, ($8,134).

Again, what does it mean?  It means that if the three lenders who hold our mortgage had to be paid off immediately (something not allowed by the mortgage agreement), and every temporarily restricted fund had to be spent out fully all at once, and we could get access to all of our assets other than fixed assets (something not allowed by our loans to the NH Community Loan Fund), we would come up short by $8,134.  In short, it’s a complicated, but not meaningless, number.

A further important point is that as we pay our mortgage down this “General Fund – Other” number gets higher, that is to say it becomes less negative.  Our mortgage, now $9,700, will be paid off in three years.  We pay it off through the normal course of our budget year. It is reasonable to expect that our negative $8,134 will be gone in three years if our income equals our expenses.  It will be gone sooner if our income exceeds our expenses.

We hope is explanation of our changes to the Balance Sheet is useful to you.  We encourage you to reach out to the Finance Committee if you have any questions.

Outreach Committee Report to Business Meeting – Sixth Month 2022 [16]

We met at the end of May to craft a revised welcoming and affirming statement for submission to the June Meeting for Business.  Its changes reflect both feedback and our unfolding group discernment.

Here is our revised submission to the Meeting:

We believe that the Divine Spirit is present in every person, and everyone is equal and precious before God. We are an open and affirming community. We welcome people of all ages, colors, cultures, ethnicities, gender identities, sexual orientations, abilities, financial means, and religious or wisdom traditions. We celebrate diversity and seek to embody what we hope to see in the world—a just and loving humanity in which all people are free to be themselves fully and without fear.

- Kathi Connors, committee co-clerk