Spring/Summer 2022 Splinters

Your Board of Trustees has been busy trying to advance the best interests of UU Lansing. These efforts span a wide spectrum, from recommending the Regional and General Assembly delegate registration fees be paid from the Church’s reserve account, to holding our Annual Congregation Meeting in April, where slates of candidates for various Board and Committee positions were approved.

A significant amount of time has been devoted to implementing our Board policies and to the review of our Constitution and Bylaws. After adopting our Board Policy on shared-leadership governance in February of this year, your Board began setting up a thoughtful implementation of our governance strategy. We started with a “Making it Happen” retreat in April to:

· Set up a process for responding to Rev. Neal’s policy interpretations (there are eight Limitation policies and five Ends policies in our shared-leadership governance) to ensure the Board understands what its policies will mean operationally and how the Board will know there is compliance with its policies. For instance, under the policy of financial planning, the Senior Minister must establish, maintain, and communicate an appropriate gift acceptance policy for both unrestricted and restricted gifts that includes provisions for donor-designated purposes and allows for the acceptance or rejection of gifts.

· Establish a calendar for receiving and reviewing policy interpretations. We are on schedule to finish this process by the end of February.

· Establish a perpetual calendar for assessing policy compliance to help the Board stay aligned with its governance system into the future.

Review of Rev. Neals’ interpretations of Ends policies and limitations policies has started. We have reviewed the first two Ends interpretations and the two Financial interpretations. We are on schedule to finish this process by the end of February 2023.

In addition to reviewing policy interpretations, the Board has been carefully reviewing, discussing, and approving the proposed revised bylaws, article by article. We formally approved the proposed revisions to the Bylaws at our August meeting. We intend to make these proposed revisions available to the congregation for review, with an invitation to provide written feedback, and an invitation to attend one or both townhall-style meetings prior to a congregational meeting in November, when the Bylaws revisions will be put to a vote. This meeting will be in person.

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.

Deb Feltz, President

Tom Nicholas, President-Elect