Mid-Year Board Update

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By Bob Alt, on behalf of the UUCWC Board

As we’re just over halfway through our fiscal year, it’s a good time to reflect on how we’re progressing toward the goals we set earlier this year. Each year, the Board sets goals aligned with UUCWC’s vision, mission, and values. If you’d like a reminder of our vision and mission, you can find them here: UUCWC Vision and Mission. Our simplified mission statement is Create Community, Celebrate Life, Change the World.

Our goals for the year are:

Create Community

  • We offer creative, meaningful ways to participate in community life, strengthened by mutual care, honest communication, and a spirit of covenantal connection that unites us all. 
  • We actively welcome and are hospitable, while embracing learning and growth to become a truly inclusive community.
  • We build multigenerational, multicultural, in-person and online communities; they are tightly woven together and with the wider whole

Celebrate Life

  • Each of us shares and lives our Unitarian Universalist identity every day. Together, we grow spiritually as individuals and as a congregation.

Change the World

  • We actively engage with the larger community as partners, collaborators, and advocates for justice, guided by their needs and voices.

We have a financial plan for the next 1-3 years to ensure financial stability through realistic goals. So, how are we doing? Our Board, staff, committees, and ministries have been hard at work advancing toward our goals. We won’t be able to list everything here, but we’ll highlight some of the accomplishments to date.

First, we like to acknowledge the amazing work that Reverend Kim, Reverend Lisa, and the staff have been doing in leading UUCWC. They’ve shown leadership, resilience, and flexibility in working through the retirement of Robin Pugh, the Director of Congregational Life, whose position was not backfilled. This has resulted in a shift in roles and responsibilities and, ultimately, incremental work for the staff and many volunteers. However, they continue to tend to the health of our congregation, meet the needs of our members, lead programs, and manage the church’s operations.

These include the Pathways program, Tending the Flame parent group, searching for an assistant minister, managing our Sunday hosts, leading an online vigil for the 225 UU clergy who went to Minneapolis to respond to ICE violence, launching a new Caring Cohort for adults caregivers of aging parents, providing memorial services, leading Sunday services, providing activism training, rolling out the new Realm platform, supporting the Stewardship campaign, engaging in committees (e.g., Aesthetics, Building Safety, Congregational Engagement, Facilities), and ensuring our driveways are plowed. This is a long list, and not nearly complete, but it is provided intentionally to give a glimpse into the broad roles our staff plays. Please take a moment to thank them for their amazing work!

Progress against Creating Community goals

Overall, we’ve taken efforts to strengthen the UUCWC community, both online and offline.

  • Congregational Engagement (Pam Shadzik, Martha Bell) and the team have relentlessly pursued ways to make our community more welcoming. They’ve paired new members with long-term members, implemented lanyards and hosts to identify and welcome visitors, created a visitor/new member coffee hour, and created a Buddy Program to help new volunteers learn our programs faster (started the first Food Ministry).
  • Rev. Kim is leading Pathways, a four-session conversation about faith, UUism, and UUCWC. We have 17 potential new members and one long-term member participating.
  • Rev. Lisa has been hosting 20/30s luncheons to build community among our younger members.
  • The Caring/Pastoral Care Committee (Pat Braender, Linda Vogt) has provided assistance 31 times to congregants in need of meals and rides.
  • The Right Relations Committee (Marianne Alt, Mike Gianella) will initiate a church-wide discussion about adopting a new congregational covenant that reflects our values to strengthen our community.

Celebrating Life

A summary of some of the activities we’ve done to help us grow spiritually as individuals and as a congregation includes the following:

  • Rev. Lisa continues to host Vespers monthly, offering an opportunity to experience a different kind of worship and to nurture your spirit through music, poetry, and candlelight.
  • Worship Committee (Anne Godlasky) trained three new members of the worship team—Jo Wiedman, Colin Robinson, and Susan Mitchell.
  • We’ve incorporated virtual attendee chalice lighting into services.
  • We’ve implemented ongoing discussions after the service to continue the dialogue from the sermon.

Changing the World

Overall, we’re broadening our presence in our surrounding communities; strengthening our image as a congregation with strong, dependable values; and increasing the bonds within our UUCWC community.

  • We hosted the Trans Day of Remembrance again this year.
  • Community Outreach Fund (Holly Bussey) has distributed almost $10k to support social justice ministries and local food charities, when SNAP funding was cut off, the UU Disaster Relief, and Trenton Microloan Collaborative.
  • The Food Ministry (Mike Muccioli, Jaqueline Thomas) held eight food drives, collecting more than 2,800 items to address food insecurity in Mercer and Bucks counties. The Food Ministry also cooked and delivered 13 turkeys for the Interfaith Food Alliance in Morrisville.
  • Volunteers tutored students and provided hot meals through the Homefront program.
  • Community Action (Jenny Ciccolini) has disseminated important information via email about LGBTQ+ social justice action opportunities.
  • Earth & Climate Ministry (Barbara Drew, Al Johnson, Leslie McGeorge) harvested our garden and donated fresh produce to HomeFront, Rolling Hills Harvest, and TASK.

Financial Health

Our final goal is to create a financial plan for the next 1-3 years to ensure financial stability through realistic goals. The Board sponsored a Financial Health Task Force to assist with this work. This task force provided specific recommendations, which the Board is now assessing and incorporating into the 2026/2027 budget, as well as guidance on establishing a 3-year financial plan. Additionally:

  • Endowment (David Schumann) rewrote the bylaws and the way Endowment is administered. Endowment support helped us add chancel accessibility (ramps/railings) and expand the chancel, remodel the downstairs bathroom, replace the water heater, and update the mechanical room to better support maintenance tasks.
  • The Auction Team (Barbara Drew) is hard at work planning for Auction 2026, including a kickoff party on Friday, May 1.
  • Stewardship (Jane Root, Rab Bell) has kicked off the stewardship campaign.

Lastly, let us summarize the areas we’ll focus on for the remainder of the year. They include:

  • Sponsoring a Strategic Plan Implementation Task Force, and using that work to review and use to help us create an updated strategic plan.
  • Initiating work on a comprehensive communications plan.
  • Restarting a committee on digital safety.
  • Continuing to find ways to improve our engagement with our online community and to be even more inclusive and accessible.
  • An initiative by Racial Justice Ministry (Dan Tuft, Kelly Benson) to get a Reparations Speaker Series off the ground.

The congregation has accomplished a lot so far this year.  I’m proud to be part of this amazing community and look forward to the great work that will continue. Thank you to the staff, the leaders of our committees and ministries, and the volunteers who help make this possible!