December 2023 Splinters
The Board held its last meeting of the 2023-year on December 27th. We thanked outgoing board members, Rob Mack (Treasurer) and Margo Smith (appointed to fill vacancy) and welcome newly elected members, Callen Latz, Cindy Lemkuhle, Michael McClellan, Ralph Putnam, Laura Ray, and Chris Clampitt (incoming Treasurer). Michael McClellan was re-elected secretary of the church. Election for president-elect was tabled. We also discussed our own compliance with Board Governance Process (Board self-evaluation) in the areas of Individual effectiveness, Board effectiveness, and Board mechanics. This may have been the first time a Board of Trustees from UU Lansing has ever conducted a formal self-evaluation. However, it is an important aspect of our shared governance policies to identify areas of board functioning that are working well and those that may need improvement. Areas we identified that need improvement include being better prepared for meetings, better understanding of policy governance for new board members; and spending more time on planning for the future. The board has mainly been focused on current issues as we have worked on governance practices.
As we reflect on 2023, we continued to build on the milestones in our multi-year project to modernize UU Lansing’s governance.
We conducted a baseline congregational survey on the Ends (an “understanding” survey).
We established written governance policies for Congregational committees.
We approved a complaint process for when disagreements and complaints with the Board’s governing policies occur: 1.10 of the UU Lansing Board Policy Document:
We posted a guide for how congregational members can attend a board meeting to be posted on the website.
We moved our Annual meeting of the Congregation to November (based on our newly approved By-Laws), where we presented 1) slates of candidates for all appropriate positions on the Board of Trustees, the Treasurer, and Congregational Committees and 2) the church’s annual financial plan for 2024.
We completed the first full year of monitoring assessments of Rev. Neal’s limitation policies (there are 8 Limitation policies in our shared-leadership governance). As part of these policies, we accepted Rev. Neal’s Operational Policies on Gift Acceptance; Living Our Values Team (which includes a process for feedback on congregational relationships and congregational operations); and an updated policy on membership removal.
We reviewed the cumulative summary of monitoring assessments which comprised Rev. Neal’s year-end performance appraisal.
We established a perpetual calendar for assessing policy compliance to help the board stay aligned with its governance system into the future.
We will have another Congregational meeting on Sunday, February 4, 2024, to vote on approval of the slate of General Assembly and Regional Assembly delegates and to present findings from the April 2023 congregational survey on how we, as a congregation and church, are meeting the Ends to achieve the goals that we set for ourselves in 2021.
If you have any questions regarding Splinters from the Board or the work of your Board, please reach out to us. We look forward to future engagement on these and other topics.
Tom Nicholas, President
president@uulansing.org