News: August 6, 2026

Hey everybody, welcome to the Treasurer's Newsletter!

My goal is to share the Finance Committee’s response to the congregation’s concerns and questions.

I don’t have all the answers, and I’m not going to pretend that I do. That’s why the Finance Committee has been doing the investigative work, digging into our numbers, asking questions,looking at our history, and figuring out how we can make First UU’s finances more transparent and easier to understand.

And we aren’t doing this just for fun. Many of you have raised questions and concerns about the financial health of our church, and you deserve clear information about what’s going on. What are our financial challenges? How did we get here? How concerned should we be? And, most importantly, what can we do about it?

That’s what the Finance Committee is working to better understand and communicate.
Don’t shoot the messenger! More transparency may mean hearing some things we don’t particularly like. But having the information allows us to make informed, intentional decisions instead of pretending nothing is going on and hoping for the best.

We have some decisions to make together, and understanding where we are is the first step. 

So, here are the five big questions your Finance Committee is working on right now, along with when we hope to have some answers for you.

1. Where is our money going, and how has that changed?
Project: Cash Flow Communication & Visualization
Lead: Evan | Support: David
Approximate timeline: Initial information this fall, with more detail by the end of 2026

One of our biggest goals is simply making our finances easier to understand.

This team is looking at our financial history and developing ways to show, rather than just tell, what has been happening with church finances. One area of focus is the difference between the recurring income we can reasonably expect, like pledges, and budgets that have sometimes depended on gifts or other revenue that may not happen again the following year.

We also want to give you some useful points of comparison. For example, one finding from our research is that First UU currently budgets a little over $2,500 per certified member. Compared with several other UU congregations we reviewed, that puts us toward the higher end of spending per member.

The goal isn’t to throw a bunch of spreadsheets at you. It’s to give all of us a clearer picture of where we’ve been, where we are now, and what our numbers are actually telling us.

2. How much money should we have available for a rainy day?
Project: Operating Reserve / Buffer Policy
Lead: Yeiglin | Support: Mike
Approximate timeline: Fall 2026

Bills don’t conveniently wait until pledge income comes in.

That’s where an operating reserve, or financial buffer, comes in. It gives the church enough cash on hand to continue paying its regular expenses during months when outgoing cash is greater than incoming cash.

We’re reviewing the church’s operating account and looking at our cash-flow patterns
throughout the year. We want to answer some basic questions: When is our cash position at its lowest? How big are those gaps? How much should we realistically keep available so that paying our normal bills doesn’t become a scramble?

From there, we’ll work toward recommending an appropriate operating reserve for First UU, guidelines for when it should be used, and a realistic plan for building it.

3. Are there places where we can spend less?
Project: Cost Reduction Opportunities
Lead: Scott | Support: Don
Approximate timeline: Initial budget review completed; work is ongoing

This is probably the one nobody particularly enjoys talking about, but we have to talk about it.

The committee has been reviewing our budget and asking what it would look like to bring our ongoing expenses into better alignment with the recurring income we can actually count on.

That means looking across the budget at program costs, personnel costs, and other expenses and asking some difficult questions about what is sustainable.

It does not mean that every potential reduction we identify is a recommendation to cut that program, position, or expense. Part of our job is to show the Board and congregation the financial choices available to us and what those choices would mean.
There are also different ways to approach this. Some activities, for example, could potentially be supported by additional gifts when those funds are available rather than building uncertain revenue into our regular operating budget.

Ultimately, the goal is pretty simple: our regular expenses should be supported by regular income. As our financial capacity grows, so can what we’re able to invest in our church and its mission.

4. What happened with the Capital Campaign money?
Project: Capital Campaign Fund Review
Lead: Joe | Support: David
Approximate timeline: September 2026

This one is pretty straightforward, and an important part of accountability.
As our Capital Campaign pledge period approaches its conclusion, we’re going back to the original campaign and asking two questions:

What money was pledged and actually received? And what work did we actually
complete?

We’ll compare the original Capital Campaign plans with what ultimately happened, explain major differences, and identify projects that may still be outstanding or need to be considered in the future.
Our goal is to have this information available by the end of September, ahead of the conclusion of the current pledge period in October.

If you contributed to the Capital Campaign, you deserve to know what happened with the plan you helped fund.

5. How has our endowment been doing?
Project: Endowment Sizing & Benchmarks
Lead: John | Support: Joe
Approximate timeline: Research substantially complete; additional information
forthcoming

The committee has also been taking a closer look at First UU's endowment, particularly its past financial performance, the rules governing how the funds may be used, and how the endowment has changed over time.

The team also reviewed some general best practices and comparisons related to endowment size, although determining an ideal endowment size was not the primary focus of this project.

This review is intended to give the congregation and Board a clearer understanding of what we have, how it has performed, and what rules guide its use as we think about First UU's long-term financial health.

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So… are we okay?

That’s the million-dollar question. (Hopefully not literally)

The answer is more complicated than either “everything is fine” or “panic!”

First UU has real financial challenges that deserve our attention. Our membership has remained relatively flat over the last few years, while the cost of operating our church continues to grow. We’ve also built budgets that have sometimes depended on income that isn’t guaranteed to recur year after year.

But that’s exactly why we’re doing this work.

There probably isn’t one magic budget cut, one giant donation, or one new member who fixes everything. Financial sustainability will require us to look at expenses, pledging, membership, participation, volunteerism, our reserves, our endowment, and what we collectively want First UU to be able to do.

And there isn’t a date when Finance gets to stamp “FINISHED” on all of this. Financial
stewardship is ongoing.

What we can do is understand our situation, stop relying on hope as a financial strategy, and make thoughtful decisions based on good information.

That’s what your Finance Committee is working toward.

We’ll keep digging, and we’ll keep sharing what we find.

With love (and spreadsheets),
Yeiglin Escalante
Treasurer
First Unitarian Universalist Church of Houston