cellio | Entries tagged with synagogue board

I'm interested in answers from all religions/denominations. (Please identify which you're talking about.)

I grew up going to a Roman Catholic church. Collection baskets were passed at Sunday services -- once for the church and, often, a second time for a special purpose (ranging from helping $disaster victims to buying a pipe organ). Members of the congregation were issued envelopes with an identifying number (not name) on the outside, so you could put cash in and still get a tax receipt at the end of the year. Children in religious school were also issued (small) envelopes; they were also numbered and I assume our coins were tallied with our parents' envelopes, but I never asked. Of course, some people (like visitors) just put cash directly into the basket, too.

This always struck me as dicey; how could an organization with regular expenses like heat and salaries and a building manage finances that way, other than by assuming that this year will be like last year? It occurs to me now that there might have also been a pledge system that I, as a child, never saw, but I'm just guessing here.

One of the things I found really refreshing about synagogues is that they have dues. When I found out about this I did a little happy-dance. Yay, no more guesswork! Join the congregation, get a bill, pay it, and everything's good. Right? (Aside: we couldn't pass a basket at Shabbat services even if we wanted to, because doing business and handling money are forbidden on Shabbat.)

Now that I've been part of congregational life for a while, though, I've realized that that's not the end of it by far. There are still special appeals, of course (we help $disaster victims too, after all), but there are also endowment campaigns, special appeals to supplement dues, fancy fund-raising dinners (with ad books, to draw contributions from non-members/businesses), and a myriad of other fund-raising activities. (I know that some congregations have a building fund with its own rules for member payments; we don't, so I don't really know how this works.) There are also fees for certain activities; the biggie here is religious school, which is a separate payment on top of dues.

My congregation -- and I assume this is true pretty much everywhere -- never turns anybody away for lack of ability to pay dues. We'll negotiate a reduced rate, sometimes quite nominal. Some of the other fund-raising is specifically to offset that. A draw from the endowment each year also offsets some expenses. I don't know if the proportion of our expenses paid for by dues is public information so I won't say, but we try to reduce that proportion by building the endowment -- through fund-raising, of course.

All of this makes me wonder when we risk hitting the point of "fund-raising fatigue" for members (I didn't grow up with this as normal so my perspective is unreliable), and what the mix of dues to fund-raising tends to be like elsewhere, and what other (fiscally-responsible) approaches are out there. What do others do? Are synagogues unique in having dues, or do churches have that too (perhaps packaged differently)? If you're a member of a church, does someone sit down with you and say "we expect you to donate $X this year"?

So, readers who belong to congregations of any sort, how do your congregations pay for expenses?

I sit on a board of trustees and was recently added to the bylaws committee. (Finally somebody listened to me when I said "I write precise technical specifications for a living and I'd like to help".) There are some changes we need to make this year, so the committee was charged with looking at everything. As long as we have to call a membership vote on bylaws changes anyway, the theory goes, we may as well try to address anything else that's posing problems.

I am in my element. :-) But it turns out that there are some "me against everybody else" differences in philosophy, so it's been educational all around. For example:

Me: This "examples" passage is just advice, not law. It doesn't belong.
Them: It's good advice.
Me: There should be no unnecessary words in law. This half-page doesn't accomplish anything.
Them: It's not like the difference between 15 pages and 14 is really going to matter.
Me: !!!

They explained that the intent of the actual law might not be clear; I said if not then we needed to clarify the law. They said people might still need examples; I said we were free to provide supplementary documents if anybody thought it was necessary. (Federalist papers, anybody?) Fundamentally, I believe that law should contain only what is truly necessary, with the result that it is short enough that we can expect stake-holders to read, comprehend, and remember it, and so that we leave to policy what should be covered by policy.

In the end they conceded the specific point of discussion, but I don't think we have achieved understanding. My point wasn't just to win this particular argument but to bring them around to a different way of thinking. So there is more work to be done here.

Some may remember that back when the principality of AEthelmearc was forming, I was one of the ones on the law committee arguing that our laws ought to fit on on 8.5 x 11" piece of paper in a reasonable font size, too. (For the kingdom I was willing to grant a second sheet of paper.) We lost that one, alas.

Seen in a sig file: "Don't sweat the small stuff. Gnomes, for example."

For a mere $26/pound, you can get custom M&Ms printed with your messages. I don't know whether to be amused or disturbed. :-)

This is a great litttle hack. Don't worry if you can't read the text (I can't either); the pictures are the important part.

merle_ reports a distubing level of waste in disposing of counterfeit products and proposes a sensible solution.

I received email from someone at my synagogue today saying "thanks for serving on the nominating committee (for the board); our first meeting will be...". I'm on the nominating committee? Ok -- happy to do it, but I think someone forgot to make a phone call. :-) (I've been on the nominating committee twice before, so I know how it's worked in the past. I actually consider this to be a pretty important position, because the congregation just votes in the nominees unless something goes Really Wrong, which I haven't seen.)

I've had two glimpses into the inner workings of (some) synagogue leadership this week.

I'm a member of this year's nominating committee. This year we're also nominating the executive committee (last year was just board members). The executive committee consists of the president and three VPs (with an obvious line of succession), and also a treasurer, financial secretary, secretary, and a couple assistants. My understanding had been that getting onto the VP track leads to eventually being president, but that the other positions are not tied into that.

At this week's meeting of the nominating committee, though, the chair said something like "so-and-so (currently on the exec committee) is interested in keeping his current job but isn't interested in moving up the ranks" (so he was willing to step aside). That's when I learned that, actually, it's assumed that once you're on the executive committee you'll eventually move up to a VP and thence to president. How odd.

Our committee suggested that it's more important to have people who are both competent and interested holding positions like treasurer, and if such people don't have other aspirations that's fine with us. Two past presidents of the congregation thought this was right too, so it's obviously not a hard-and-fast rule. But still -- the skills that make one a good treasurer aren't obviously related to those that make one a good secretary or a good president. I'm still planning to insert myself into the budget committee, mind, but now I know that I probably shouldn't let them eventually make me treasurer. :-)

This morning at breakfast after minyan there was some discussion of that congregation's current rabbinic search. (Their rabbi gave notice a few weeks ago.) One of the minyanaires who (I gather) is on their board or executive committee had copies of a survey the Rabbinic Assembly asked the congregation to fill out. (The RA matches available rabbis with congregations.) She was soliciting feedback from the people there. I asked to look at the questions because I'm curious, though it would be wrong for me to contribute answers. (I'm not a member of that congregation. I'm just this person who shows up and now leads services.)

There were some interesting questions, including many that I wouldn't have thought to ask. (Obviously they have many more clues about this than I do. :-) ) They asked about congregational customs in a number of areas, including the role of women. (This is a Conservative congregation, so not automatically egalitarian.) They asked about attitudes toward intermarriages, conversions, and (I think) gays. They asked what activities in the last year the congregation is most proud of, what things the congregation does not want the rabbi to change, and what things the congregation does want the rabbi to change. They asked what the most recent major decision regarding worship was and how it was made, and what major decision the congregation expects to be next. These are all good questions -- in addition to providing raw data they give the potential rabbi a feel for what the congregation is like even before a phone screen happens.

I was amused by one question: "After leading services, what are the three most important jobs of the rabbi?". This is interesting because of the built-in assumption. Actually, at many congregations the rabbi doesn't lead services, or does so only for Shabbat and Yom Tov (that's the case at this one). And if a congregation has more than one rabbi, I gather that it's fairly common for leading services to fall primarily to one. I know a congregational rabbi who never leads services (except in an emergency); she was hired to oversee the religious school, not to lead worship, and she likes it that way.

I was chosen for the nominating committee (to choose board members) for my synagogue tonight, for the second year in a row. I'm pleasantly surprised. (I didn't think repeats would be seriously considered, though I knew I had been nominated and they didn't eliminate me then.)

The committee consists of three board members, three non-board congregants, and a few direct appointments. Last year I was chosen as a board member; this year I was chosen as a congregant. To complete the trifecta, next year I need to be directly appointed by someone. :-) (Nah. Not gonna happen.)

I seem to have a reputation there as thoughtful, analytical, and all those other good things you want in leaders. Nifty. It's so easy to go into a new organization and screw up by not knowing the history, politics, and unwritten rules. This time around that didn't happen to me.

This article on synagogue leadership is nominally aimed at synagogue presidents, but I find it has a lot of good advice for leaders in general -- and a fair bit of it applies to other volunteer-run organizations too. Thanks to

cahwyguy for the pointer.

A few ramblings inspired by the article...

I recently ended a three-year term on my synagogue's board of trustees. There were certainly some stressful moments, and a couple times I thought of quitting because my way of doing things seemed to clash too much with theirs, but I decided I could do more good by sticking it out and, overall, it turned out to be a positive experience. I'm not at all interested in the executive track that ends at synagogue president, and I'm not going back to the board any time soon, but there are other ways to contribute. (In particular, I'm still a committee chair, and I have the sh'liach k'hilah program ahead of me.) Overall I'd say we're pretty functional, ahead of the curve.

(Aside: that board seat is directly responsible for my ~bi-weekly study sessions with my rabbi. For that alone it would have been worth it!)

One of the points that Rabbi Thal brings out, and I definitely saw this, is the question of when to let things die (so that other things can grow in their place). Few things have more ego-stake than pet projects and special-interest groups. The topic of a recent brotherhood discussion was something like "men: an endangered species" -- but what they really meant was men participating in brotherhoods. I wonder if they considered the possibility that men (and women!) no longer need gender-segregated organizations in order to be at all involved in their synagogues? I for one cannot see myself ever being part of the sisterhood; I define my participation by what I do, not who I am.

I'm glad that in the area of worship we are adapting and experimenting -- everything from new music to new opportunities for lay leadership in the informal minyan to adding mome special-interest events that seem to be going well (e.g. a monthly service aimed at families with small kids). Often change comes very slowly, but that's good -- because while you don't want to stagnate, you also don't want to be changing things out from under people. Gradual is best.

It can be challenging for larger congregations to remain cohesive. It's easy when everyone knows everyone else, but we don't have that. Even if everyone did come most weeks, rather than just on the high holy days, it would be hard to get to know everyone. There's always a tension between encouraging and supporting the subset who show up and reaching out to the rest. It's a hard balance to strike.

Hey, CMU's new robotic receptionist (complete with personality) has made national news. It (she?) sounds like a neat project. I like that they are giving the robot a personality of sorts; an article in the local paper talked about her recent date with a vacuum cleaner, for example.

Friday night after services three different people who had been at the board meeting asked if I'm a lawyer. :-) One commented that another board member and I had been really going at it over that bit of wording; I explained that we are both CS types. (That board member and I were both at Transarc/IBM at the same time, as it turns out, though we did not work together on the same project.) Now I didn't perceive any actual hostility in that exchange; I think he understands this type of arguing. But I wonder if others, besides the person who talked to me, got an incorrect impression.

Saturday morning I read torah (and did the associated stuff, leading part of the service and giving a short talk). Afterwards I received the by-now-usual praise from various people. I think I have convinced one of them that I have no special background and he can do this too if he wants to; he said he would think about it and let me know next week if I can assign him a week.

Several people, over the last couple of years, have told me that I inspire them, either with learning or with participation. I find this flattering, but I'd rather they show me, not tell me. Is there some way I can move from "making people feel good" to "actually inspiring people to do"?

I didn't read the entire aliya this week (which is acceptable under our current practice), because I didn't have enough time to learn the whole thing. (I stepped in to fill a gap in the schedule.) I had promised myself that next time I would read the entire aliya; parts are assigned through mid-April, so this is not a problem. Heh. In looking at the schedule, it looks like I'm reading Tazria-Metzora. I guess I'm being punished for taking the easy path this time by getting the leprosy portion next time. :-)

My copy of Trope Trainer (software) came on Friday. I haven't installed it yet, but I'm going to fire it up soon. Looks like a good package, recommended by my rabbi, and I caught a sale.

Yesterday I heard two songs (one from a psalm) from a group with the unlikely name "Ooolites" (or perhaps technically "Malcolm Dalglish and the..."). Very skilled singers (no vibrato! do you know how hard that is?!), nice harmonies, pleasant sound. They seem to have two albums. I don't know how representative these two tracks are of the albums, but I think I'm going to have to find out.

From Slashdot by way of siderea: the "why your anti-spam proposal won't work" form letter.

At last night's board meeting I had a wording quibble (a matter of precision and clarity) over a proposed bylaws change. One of the other board members suggested that I was being overly picky because I'm a technical writer. Hello? This is a matter of law. Law should be precise and clear. I happen to be in a profession that emphasizes that; this is an asset. (We have a couple lawyers on the board; I'm surprised one of them didn't speak up.) Sheesh -- amateurs. :-)

Speaking of law, I'm reading from Mishpatim tomorrow morning -- the "eye for eye, tooth for tooth" section. We are used to thinking of this as being harsh (sharia, anyone? no thanks), which is why the rabbis reinterpreted it to monetary damages. But with that interpretation, I wonder if this is actually lenient. Consider civil damages today in the US, where payments sometimes seem to be way out of proportion to actual damage, and are wildly inconsistent. And we distinguish based on who the victim is; the torah does not.

Twice within the past couple weeks I've been approached by people on the streets selling raffle tickets. Both conversations began with "would you like to buy a raffle ticket?" and "what for?"; then they diverged. One said "for Hillel Academy"; the other said "for a $5000 drawing". (The latter was from a veterans' group.) I knew intellectually that Judaism (and hence, Jewish culture) approaches charity differently from the world at large (or at least its US instantiation), but it's been a while since the difference has been that obvious. In the Jewish world (at least the parts I've seen), the cause is the important thing. In fact, the word usually translated as "charity" -- "tzedakah" -- doesn't really mean that; it's closer to "justice". I actually haven't even looked to see what the prize is for the Hillel raffle ticket I bought. In the broader culture, though, you have to sell the prize; it's assumed, I guess, that people won't just buy a ticket to support a good cause and you have to make it worth their while. Which partially explains the deluge of mailing labels, calendars, stuffed animals, umbrellas, and such that appear in my mailbox (and serve as anti-motivators).

I particularly like this take on the rainbow meme, shamelessly stolen from xiphias:


My God says "Justice, justice shall you pursue", wants people to work toward a fair and equitable world, and believes in love, honor, and respect. Sorry about yours.

Question to me this morning: people scheduled my rabbi to be in two places at once this Shabbat; can I learn three verses of this week's parsha before Saturday morning? Sadly, I suspect the answer is "no", even if I get to pick the verses. (I think sometime this year the time will come when the answer would be "yes".) This illustrates a problem we're going to need to address, though -- people get sick, after all, and we don't have people who can read nearly-cold (yet). So either we cultivate some or we admit that there might be weeks when we don't have a torah service. I wonder what other congregations do when their torah readers are suddenly unavailable. (We ended up deciding to punt this week. We'll read the portion from a chumash, without the torah service proper.)

Some members of the worship commitee saw my subversive side for the first time last night. (I thought everyone knew already. :-) ) Once a week we have a weekday service (evening). We just don't have support for every day, but this is an attempt to do something. The folks who set this up chose a night when there's often other stuff going on in the building that dove-tail with this (7:30 service and 8:00 meetings), but it hasn't worked. We rarely have a minyan. Someone lamented the fact that even board members tend not to come a little early on meeting night, even though as leaders of the congregation they really ought to do so at least occasionally (IMO).

Board meetings are preceeded by a mailing (minutes, agenda, financial statements). This mailing has a cover sheet that specifies the meeting time (among other details). So, I said, change that cover sheet: "service 7:30 chapel; business meeting 8:00 library". See how many people will just show up to the first place/time listed. :-) (I think, actually, that we are going to do this.)

Some days the commute is a not-unpleasant drive. Other days it is a cross between Dodgeball and 20 Questions. Sheesh.

There was a board meeting last night. One of the new members seems to have my tendency to ask detailed questions about financial statements. Good; there needs to be a friendly nit-picker there after my term expires in a year. :-) (I can't tell yet if he has my uncanny knack of spotting math anomolies without trying.)

I am now officially the tech lead of my project at work.

I got email a couple days ago from someone who's looking for a congregation and a rabbi and found me via a mailing list. She sounded enthusiastic when I told her about mine, so she's joining me for services and Shabbat dinner tonight. I'm looking forward to meeting her and playing host.

I owe some people interview questions (and answers), but it's not going to happen until after Shabbat. Sorry for the delay. I'm not ignoring you -- just busy.

Thursday night David gave me a tape of the Torah reading I'm going to do in a few months. It doesn't look/sound too hard, though I still want to learn rather than derive the trope interpretation. I had asked him to chant it twice, once using the names of the tropes and then once with the actual words, but he didn't do the former. (That seems to be a standard teaching method.) So I'll have to hit him up for that next time I see him.

At the end of the tape he recorded his phone number and email address (in case I had questions), and then ended with the word "b'has'lecha". I infer from both ccontext and the fact that I recognize "lecha" that this means something vaguely like "take care", but it's probably going to bug me until I find out for sure. Gotta remember to ask Dani. (Unless one of my Hebrew-enabled friends speaks up first.)

( Shabbat report )

They're donig something new at Friday-night services: all the board members have name tags now, to make it easier to give new folks (or anyone else) people to go talk to. It's a good idea, though it did feel a bit like we had been tagged and released. :-) I spent a chunk of the oneg talking to someone who was there for the first time (he approached me because of the name tag). He's a gentile who's either dating or married to a Jew (couldn't tell which), and this was his first time in a synagogue. He said he found it fascinating and he asked me for recommendations for books about the basics of Judaism. I'd say he picked the right board member. :-) I gave him a few recommendations off the top of my head, and promised to compile a list for him and invite him and his SO over for dinner or something. He seemed to be agreeable to this. (Ok, when exactly did I start doing kiruv (outreach)?)

Saturday was a local SCA event, and a friend from New York was crashing at our house. He was aiming to get here around 10pm. At 10:25 we got a phone call; he'd been forced onto a detour around some construction I'd forgotten about, and wanted to know where he was and how to fix it. So we gave him directions and told him we'd see him in about 20 minutes. At 11:15 we got another phone call; he was in a completely unexpected part of town. We gave him directions and he repeated them back to us. Then at 11:55 we got another call, this time from an employee at a McDonald's that he had found (again, in an unexpected part of town). So Dani went and got him. Over the course of the weekend we determined by observation that he is "dyslexic" (not the right word as he doesn't have reading problems, but he gets left and right mixed up). I wish I'd known that earlier.

The event was lots of fun. Fianna did a good job with running it. Two local people received writs of summons for peerages (one Pelican and one Laurel), both to be given at Ice Dragon in March, and Dani received the grant-level arts award. (Yeah, other people got stuff too... :-) ) The feast was quite tasty and vegetarian-friendly, though the lack of a posted menu made it hard for me to pace myself. (I didn't know what else was coming, so didn't know whether to fill up on noodles and spinach or wait for more food. My fault for not asking.) We went to the post-revel at Robert and Kathy's and I had my first encounter with a fabulous honey liqueur that I don't know the name of. I will have to go hunting for it. We got home much later than we had planned and crashed.

This morning after our guest left Dani and I went to Ralph and Lori's to play a game called "Tribes". You are playing a group of primitives; each player can be a hunter, a gatherer, or a crafter (crafters make tools that enhance hunting and gathering). The individual object is to have the largest number of children surviving to adulthood (different competitions for men and women); there are incentives to work together as a tribe. I ended up playing a male hunter; next time we play I'd like to try a female gatherer to get the other perspective. We also ended up playing a fairly communistic game, though it started out as more market-driven and I was slow to pick up on the change. This meant that I was playing "greedily" forlonger than other people were; I had hoarded enough food early on (mostly through smart play, I think) to feed my kids through one bad season, but we ended up with a single pool and I felt a little bad about the hoarding after the fact. Then we had a really bad streak of luck and used up all of our food, and most of the kids died. We didn't play quite to the end because someone had to leave, but we had a mostly-good game and I'd definitely like to try again.

Sunday dinner was the usual tasty and enjoyable experience.

Current Mood: tired

Thanksgiving dinner with my family was good. My nephew (Zachary) is still loud, self-centered, and generally obnoxious, but he has mellowed a bit. He is now merely an obnoxious pain in the ass, rather than an unbearable obnoxious pain in the ass. Kim (my neice) seemed to be more sociable than she has been the last few visits, which is good. I can't believe she's a junior in high school already.

My parents had a painting that Kim did not too long ago. She is a really good artist, at least when copying. She did an oil painting from a photo that looked *very* nice.

Dinner was quite tasty, as usual. There was some maternal angst because the turkey was taking "too long"; she thought the timer should have popped up an hour or so before it did. We checked with a meat thermometer and the timer was right; it just takes a while to cook a large bird.

D&D Tuesday night was fun. We didn't make much "plot progress", but we made "character progress" and it was fun to play through some of the interactions. I think I'm getting a better feel for how to play my character.

I'm headed out tomorrow morning for the con. On the Mark only has one performance this year (not our usual two), and it's Friday night. So we'll be able to relax the rest of the weekend. Clam Chowder will have its usual fabulous Saturday-night performance, I presume. Yaakov will be there this year (he wasn't last year), and I'm looking forward to chatting with him. He said we'd talk about the synagogue board thing; he's a past shul president, so he's familiar with the inner workings of at least one type of synagogue. (I had sent him mail and he suggested talking in person.) Maybe he can advise me.

Monica

how does your congregation raise money?

law and philosophy

short takes

synagogue leadership behind the scenes

congregational board

synagogue leadership

Shabbat (mostly)

short (and medium) takes

congregational doings

short takes

weekend so far

weekend

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