A Beginning
by Harry Purkhiser
Welcome to the Board of Trustees' new blog. Our goal here is to foster deeper and more satisfying levels of communication with our church family and the wider community with regards to the governance of the Unitarian-Universalist Church of Nashua (UUCN). We hope each member of the congregation will do two things: read each blog entry in its entirety, and ask additional questions so we can answer to the whole church. You may address your questions to the president here.
Our first entry is a short history and summary of our current form of governance.
Policy Governance Came To Nashua
Several years ago, the Executive Board managed the church’s affairs as a traditional Operations Board, directly involved with our many programs and overseeing the performance of committees and taskforces charged with implementing the church's strategic plans. While this approach had served us well for many years, UUCN was evolving. Just as with your computer's operating system, from time to time it is helpful to upgrade to gain greater efficiency. To foster a more dynamic church we adopted a more dynamic governance process to attract strong leadership and inspire openness, creativity, caring and trust. Policy-Based Governance promotes an engaged congregation, a forward-focused Board, and an efficient volunteer and professional staff to lay the foundation necessary to remain a beacon of liberal religion in our community. In 2010, the congregation approved changes to our bylaws that permitted the board to govern in this fashion.
Key Features of Policy-Based Governance
The congregation continues as the source of our mission, priorities, and inspiration. The Board of Trustees is charged with the following:
Articulate the outcomes that the church wants to achieve (Ends)
(In other words, where should we be heading?)
Set broad policies that limit the Executive Director (our Minister) staff, and lay leaders to practices that are legal, prudent, and ethical (Limitations)
(In other words, how can we best guide the church and its leaders?)
Monitor adherence to those policies (Linkages).
(In other words, are we getting to where we were headed?)
The Board became more focused on the future of the church, looking for creative ways to further the goals and ideals of UUCN and the wider community.
The Executive Director’s role is to manage the staff, committees, and volunteers in the work to accomplish the mission and achieve the ends of the church. Our Minister functions as our Executive Director, working with staff and lay leaders to create, lead and support activities and programs in their respective areas. They work in a collaborative manner to put plans in motion to achieve the desired outcomes. Staff, committee chairs, and activity leaders share collaborative responsibility to accomplish the desired goals of the congregation.
How the Board's role changed
The Board governs by creating, deliberating, and approving policies -- not micro-managing or rubber-stamping. It develops policies, or Ends statements, to define the mission of our church based on a wide variety of sources, including input from the congregation, consideration of our bylaws, review of best practices and continued contact with other congregations and organizations. The Board sets limitations on how outcomes and goals may be pursued. These policies set legal and prudent boundaries, encourage communication, and establish the required monitoring to assess and update practices. The goal is to provide the right amount of structure and to free up the boundless creativity of our members, while utilizing the talents of the most knowledgeable congregants to work with our talented volunteer and professional staff. Rather than micro-manage the specifics of how the Executive Director, the staff, and committees go about achieving the desired outcomes, the Board receives regular updates to monitor progress and provides feedback to maintain a balanced level of oversight.
Disentangling Board members from day-to-day management issues allows them freedom to do more "big picture" thinking, to act as leaders of the church as opposed to managers -- a benefit not just to the Board but to the congregation as a whole. The ultimate authority within the church continues to be held by the congregation, which elects the Board of Trustees. In turn, the Board has the responsibility for ensuring that the Church is fulfilling the mission and vision established by the congregation, while volunteer and professional staff plan and implement activities and programs that reflect our mission and vision.
Who actually runs our Church under Policy-Based Governance?
On a day-to-day basis the church is run by the Minister as the Executive Director. Key aspects of church operations are monitored on a regular basis, with required reporting to the Board of Trustees. The Minister supervises our professional staff, including the Music Director, the Director of Lifespan Religious Education, our Church Administrator, our Membership/Volunteer Coordinator, and our Sexton.
Why is all this important now?
Because in the next blog entry, we are going to respond to questions and comments we heard during our first Deep Listening session held on January 25.
Here’s how we processed that input from you. We listened to what you had to say and took detailed notes. Indeed, the reason we did not respond at the time was so we could focus on listening. At our February Board meeting we sorted your comments into two categories: one for comments dealing with the role of the Board, and another for issues more appropriate to the role of our Executive Director
Our responses to the comments dealing with governance are shown below. Janet will produce a similar response to your operational concerns and comments. Be assured that although we have separated the responses in this way, we have all reviewed each other’s responses to ensure that we are all responding in the most appropriate way to each of your comments.
You can find our church bylaws at http://www.uunashua.org/gov/bylaws.pdf
And the Board of Trustees Policies are at http://www.uunashua.org/gov/GoverningPolicies.pdf
-- Connecting with our Stakeholders