Staffing Our Future - Part II: More on Transformation and Related Transitions
From Rev. Mara, Christina Fulton and the Personnel Team
Back in March, we shared the first part of a new First UU staffing vision, which was developed this year with the help of our UU regional staff consultants (Sue Phillips and Joe Sullivan), lay Personnel Team (Eileen Blackwood, Stephen Rainville and Alana Shaw) and in conversation with our Board of Trustees. The staffing reorganization will address the unsustainability of our current staff structure AND help us better respond to the emerging ministry needs of our times. (For more background on why we sought help from consultants and why we have been rethinking our staffing structure, check out this related Steeple article: http://www.uusociety.org/images/userfiles/files/Steeple-Winter16.pdf.)
To recap, the heart of the vision is FUUSB hiring a second minister (to start in the fall of 2019). As many of you will remember, our congregation was served by two ministers for more than a decade prior to the interim period preceding Rev. Mara's call. Our new staffing vision brings us back to that two-minister level, but in a new way, tailored to meet the needs of our particular congregation - our size, our mission and our context - and to reflect how we have grown and changed over the last half-decade or so. In the new vision, Rev. Mara will be able to devote more time to worship, social justice, and being the public face of our ministry-all things the congregation expressed a strong desire for its senior minister to focus on when it was searching for a new settled minister. Our new Minister of Congregational Life will support and oversee our spiritual care and religious education programs for all ages. We believe this approach will strengthen our ability to work for love and justice in the world, while also increasing our sense of community and connection within the Society.
Since that announcement, some of you have brought up great questions about both the vision and the process through which it was created. Many of you also have shared your sadness about Martha Dallas' departure in November, which we certainly understand and hold very gently. We have appreciated these opportunities to connect with some of you individually around your questions and are looking forward to our upcoming cottage meetings (more info. below) to engage further. Related, if you have any unanswered questions about our previous communications or what follows, we hope you'll be able to make one of the meetings or be in touch with one of us directly so we can answer them.
In addition to the need for a second minister, our process also helped us identify things about our current structure that have been contributing to the overwhelm of our senior staff. Most significantly, relative to the size of our membership, our current staff configuration has a very large number of part-time and "micro" positions (ranging from a few hours a month to 20 hours a week), but only four full-time employees. With over thirty people on our payroll, we have the related HR and administrative demands (hiring, training, supervision) of a much larger organization, but the full-time staff of a much smaller one. And because our part-time positions tend to turn over more frequently than full-time roles, there is an added load of frequent transitions.
Further, many of our part-time positions lack the hours needed for full participation in the staff team (i.e., attending staff meetings and retreats, sharing overlapping office days and times with other team members) and the life of the congregation (being present on Sunday mornings, attending key community events). All this means that, despite having more than thirty employees, our team often lacks the bandwidth to respond fully to new ministry opportunities and critical community needs as they arise.
It's not unusual for congregations to grow staff teams by adding part-time positions. When there's not enough money to add a whole new full-time staff person, it can be a smart investment to create a part-time role. We did this a few years ago when we added our youth ministry and membership positions. And to be clear, our part-time employees make hugely important contributions to our ministry; each and all have been valued members of the team.
The challenge for us at FUUSB is that, over time, by adding so many part-time and micro positions relative to full-time staff, we have developed an overall structure that is not sustainable, and that limits our ability to do our mission. So in order to address these challenges, the second part of our staffing reorganization will involve consolidation across all staff areas (program, operations and administration), with the goal of having more full-time positions. We believe this new structure will be far more sustainable in the long-run AND leave room for our ministries to grow and our community to thrive.
We will be keeping some part-time positions that have a highly specialized focus (such as music or bookkeeping), but overall, by the fall of 2019, this reorganization will increase our number of full-time employees from 4 to 8, while bringing down our overall staff size from 35 people to around 20. Some "full-time" positions will be 40 hours/week, others will be 32 hours/week, but in keeping with our values and our commitment to fair compensation, all will have full benefits, including health care, paid vacation, sick time, and retirement.
The key changes we envision, which will happen over the same transition period as our related process to add a second minister (summer 2017 through summer 2019), include:
*Creating a full-time Society Administrator position (to begin this July 2017), which will include the duties of our current Communications Coordinator and Receptionist positions, as well as take some tasks from the overly full plates of our Director of Operations and Facilities Manager. This position will allow us to better meet the administrative needs of all of our ministries, finally utilize our new data base to its full potential, and increase our weekday office hours.
*Growing our half-time Membership Coordinator position into a larger Director of Community Engagement position (to begin summer 2018), which will expand the work we are doing to help people find pathways to service and belonging in the Society, help the larger community know about our ministries, and nurture congregational generosity through stewardship.
*Creating a Children and Family Ministry Coordinator position (to begin sometime in 2018 or 2019), which will include the duties of our current RE Assistant and Child Care Coordinator, as well as the administrative tasks currently on the DRE plate. The Coordinator will build on and expand our support for RE teachers and families with young children.
*Growing our quarter-time Youth Ministry Coordinator position into a larger Youth and Young Adult Ministry Coordinator, which will serve our high school youth, campus ministry, and young adults in the congregation (to begin summer 2018). More hours will allow us to build on the fabulous momentum we're experiencing right now in youth ministry, as well as better support UU college students in Burlington (there were over forty incoming freshman at UVM last year who identified as UU!) and folks in early adulthood in our congregation.
*Creating a full-time Custodian position (to begin summer 2018), which will combine the duties of our part-time caretaker and evening/weekend security staff positions.
Like any significant reorganization, these changes will bring more transition to our staff team: Annemarie Granillo, our Communications Coordinator, and Dinny Carreiro, our Receptionist, will be departing at the end of this program year in June, with their duties to be filled by a new Society Administrator. Annemarie and Dinny have served our Society ably for two and one years respectively, and we thank them very much for their service. Both have told us that they see the wisdom of the plan, and believe it will address some of the challenges they've experienced due to the part-time nature of their roles.
We will have an opportunity to thank Annemarie and Dinny and wish them well on their journeys before the year is out. And, in particular, we want to thank Annemarie for bringing our congregational communications to a new level during her time here. After these and Martha's departure in November, other transitions stemming from the reorganization will not take place until next summer or beyond.
Ending staff positions is always difficult, and especially so in a congregation, where we come to know and care for staff as members of our community and develop close relationships in the course of our work. We want to assure you that we have created this plan only after careful consideration, and because we have concluded it's the best way to serve our FUUSB mission in the congregation's next chapter. And, as has been the case with Martha's transition, we are committed to supporting departing staff members generously and appropriately, in keeping with our UU values. All staff whose positions are ending are being provided with as much notice as possible (in some cases, more than a year) and are welcomed to apply for any positions created at FUUSB at any time, should they feel a call based on their skills and interest.
Once again, we know this is A LOT of information to absorb and process. And while this communication is already very long, we have not been able to touch on all the details of the reorganization and our specific rationales behind each of the changes. We expect you will have many questions, and we very much look forward to engaging with them this month and beyond! Look for more information soon about our plans to "Fund the Vision," which will involve growing our budget significantly over three years to support these changes.
We warmly invite you to attend one of four cottage meetings this month, which will be hosted by Rev. Mara, Christina, and members of our Board and Personnel Team to explore this vision more deeply, consider the roles of our Board, staff, and the congregation in the transition, and answer specific questions. The dates of the meetings are:
Sunday, May 14 @ 12:30 p.m.
Saturday, May 20 @ 9:00 a.m.
Sunday, May 21 @12:30 p.m.
Tuesday, May 30 @ 5:30 p.m.
Childcare will be provided, please contact Erika at childcare@uusociety.org reserve your spot.
If none of these work for you, we encourage you to set up an individual time to talk with any of us via email or calling the FUUSB office. In addition, we will be sharing more about the staffing plan and its relationship to our congregation's vision at Annual Meeting, so there will be another opportunity next month to delve in!
We thank you for your generosity of spirit, curiosity and dedication, as we move forward with this staffing reorganization plan, in the service of our mission and vision. We look forward to exploring this vision - and the ministry we believe it will make possible - with you in the weeks ahead!
