Budgets Illuminate Mission Priorities
Episcopal News Service. December 3, 1987 [87234]
PRINCETON, N.J. (DPS Dec. 3) -- The Executive Council has approved a program development budget for 1988 of $36,330,780 and proposed a budget of $38,235,593 for the first year of the 1989-1991 triennial. Both budgets reflect the intent of the Council and Presiding Bishop Edmond Browning to let the funding processes of the Church redefined by the emerging priorities of its mission. The current budget stands at $34 million.
The budgets are also based on retaining the apportionment formula in use and holding the amount sought from the dioceses at four per cent of net disposable budget income. This means that in 1988, Council learned, there is only about $300,000 in "new" money for what had been called program and what is now divided into "program" and "partnership."
The new designations are one of the most obvious changes in the proposals from the budget proposals of the past decade. The budget is broken into three board categories of Mission Operations, The Office of the Presiding Bishop, and Mission Support reflecting the operational structure of the Church Center. This year, percentages assigned to each category are spelled out as are the percentages expected to be derived from each source of income.
The greatest single source of income remains the diocesan apportionments which are budgeted at $26,167,780 for 1988 and account for 73 percent of the income. Against this is the Mission Operations budget of $27,936,000 of which nearly $21 million -- three-quarters -- goes to support the program and partnership with the Presiding Bishop's Office budget - which supports the work of the Office for Pastoral Development, the Churches in Europe and the Office of the Bishop to the Armed Forces and chaplaincies, as well as the staff, travel and ministries of Bishop Browning -- 80 percent of the budget total is used directly to fund the staff, support costs, and programs and partnerships of the Church.
In explaining the proposals at a Council hearing at the Chauncey Conference Center here, Treasurer Ellen Cooke pointed to the basic assumptions that govern the budget. These include the assumption that the apportionment formula and the percentage asked under that formula will remain steady for both years and that increases in the support and Presiding Bishop segments of the budget would be increased by no more than five percent from 1988 to 1989. She added that the designations of program and partnership had been agreed to by the Operations Management Team during more than 100 hours of meetings in which those executives from each unit tried to bring the budget line items into accord with the needs of the Mission Imperatives.
Program items are those on which the staff of the World Mission, National Mission, Education, Women in Mission, Communication and Stewardship units are directly involved and work. Partnership means funds turned over to another group or council such as National Council of Churches support, Anglican partnership grants and development projects.
Cooke also told Council that the new budget reflected a strong effort on the part of senior staff to bring salaries and wages -- especially those at the lowest level -- up closer to competitive standards and included an energetic one-time program for modernizing the electronic systems of the Church Center and its field operations. The proposal also includes the full incorporation of the Presiding Bishop's Fund for World Relief into the Mission Operations budget in accordance with a plan approved by Council last year. Gifts to the Fund will be viewed as restricted income and not applied to the general budget.
Although all programs of the Church remain in effect under one category or another, there is a new sense of commonality linking them. The mission operations executives have spent days reviewing each project in light of the Mission Imperatives of Council and the goals and objectives the staff established under them. This same group agreed among themselves that any additional or new monies that emerge will be applied to priority projects in communication, witness (which includes advocacy and service), nurture and continuity, and partnerships which have already been designated and which meet the common Imperatives.