Please see monthly information below donations section.
UUFP Donations
“Giving is not just about making a donation, it is about making a difference.”
Kathy Calvin, former President & CEO of the UN Foundation: 2013 to 2019
Click the link above to donate/pledge for this fiscal year 7/1/23 t0 to 6/30/24 or to purchase Giant grocery cards. Thank you.
Click here to download your pledge card for 2023-2024, fill it out and save it to your computer. Email your pledge card to treasurer@uupottstown.org. You can also print it, fill it out and bring it to service on Sunday, or mail it to UUFP, 1565 S. Keim St, Pottstown, PA 19465. Thank you.
Donations are accepted throughout the year even though our formal pledge drive period is over.
May 2022: It’s UUFP Pledge Season!
Thank you to those who have pledged financial support for our Fellowship over the past year! We really appreciate your support of UUFP!
This Sunday, 5/1/2022, we will kick off this year’s pledge drive after our service. I hope that you will continue your support by pledging for the next fiscal year, 2022-2023. If you are able to join the kickoff on Sunday, there will be food (potluck – please bring something to share that uses the color “green” in some way large or small!) , fun, and prizes. We’ll have pledge cards there to make things quick and easy.
How much to pledge? We are requesting that you either keep the same pledge as last year or, if possible, increase the amount by 5%. We do understand if you have been economically impacted by the coronavirus and have to adjust your pledge. If this is your first time considering pledging and are looking for how to get started, just contact me and I can provide some suggestions. All are welcome to participate in our ongoing financial support – members and friends!
As a congregation, we have always been generous with our love, our time, our creativity, and our money. While the global pandemic has created some financial challenges for everyone, including UUFP, I want you to know that we are doing well. Although we have had a pause on facility rental income over the past year or so, we’ve also had significant savings on our expenses (much of that was enabled by our previous investment in technology for meeting virtually). That, together with our very strong pledging has kept us financially strong.
So far this fiscal year, pledges are nearly 99% on track for this point in time, which is really outstanding. Let’s keep up the great work! Every amount, every pledge matters! And every pledge brings us closer to our goals and allows us to do just a little bit more good work. As you may realize, having your pledge now enables our fellowship plan our next year – outreach activities in our community, social justice work, facilities improvement, religious education, and more!
It is important for us to know how much we will have for our income so that we can planour programs accordingly.
We are grateful for you!
We are grateful for all that you have done and will do for UUFP!
With much appreciation, Kris Barnthouse
Your generous contribution ensures and sustains everything we do together.
See below “Ways to Contribute” for this month’s finance update.
How To Donate Guide and UUFP Finance Updates – To keep abreast of UUFP’s financial goals and giving programs.
Ways to Contribute
Make summertime giving a breeze by setting up recurring gifts! Many of you support our congregation with your time, talent and financial contributions throughout the year. But since we are unable to be at UUFP due to coronavirus concerns eGiving is an easy way to contribute to UUFP to help us through this unique period.
With eGiving you can set up one time, or regular, recurring donations. You can also pay for Giant cards through eGiving. Click here to donate to UUFP, to pay on your pledge or to pay for your Giant card order. Be sure to let Linda K. know how much you’d like to order for Giant cards. Below is a portion of the online donation form from the VANCO website. Thank you.
Finance Corner: July 2021
We’ve pulled through a very difficult year and are now embarking on a brighter year at UUFP. We’ve ended this past fiscal year in the positive as far as our budget is concerned, by having greater income vs. expenses. This has really helped us weather the pandemic and come out ahead. Thanks to all of you for your generous pledges, virtual Sunday Plate collections, and donations to UUFP and to our Raise the UUFP Roof and Technology Fund. Part of the roof was repaired, and the Technology committee was able to move ahead and install new equipment to get us up to speed in the technology world. Many of our members have been very busy at UUFP during this pandemic!
It’s been my pleasure to serve all of you as Treasurer these past 3 years and now it’s time to
pass the torch to Kris Barnthouse! So welcome Kris. I hope you enjoy your service at UUFP
as much as I have.
At this writing we haven’t held our outdoor services yet but the excitement that we will meet
in-person soon has many of us feeling light footed and fancy free!
Thank you and it will be so good to see you in person in July.
Linda P
Finance Corner: June 2021
Thank you all for pledging your support to UUFP for 2021-22! We had a fun pledge drive and received 84% of what we asked for, so the budget was trimmed a bit, but I think that considering what a year we’ve all been through that this is a nice response. So thank you once again.
You will receive the finalized budget via email or in the mail so you can review it before our Zoom congregational meeting on June 13th. Please feel free to email or call me with any questions. There will also be time during the congregational meeting for questions before we vote on it. But I’m hoping that most questions will be answered before that.
We continue to do well and are only slightly behind in pledges and donations received for this year. We have some outstanding pledge amounts from mid-May to the end of June so please continue to pay your pledges. Amounts received /deposited after the 30th cannot be applied to this year and must be applied to the next fiscal year.
We received less in donations this year due to the lack of Sunday Plate collections, and rentals were decreased because of our building closure due to Covid-19. This is balanced by the fact that our bills are lower too.
A big thank you goes out to each and every one of you for all that you do for UUFP and the many ways you contribute to our programs, services, technological upgrades, and
care of our building.
At this point we are still meeting virtually via Zoom, but will have our 1st outside service on June 27th!
Thank you and see you at UUFP! Linda P.
Finance Corner: May 2021
We’ve all had such a strange year due to the pandemic and unfortunately, it’s not over yet, so I hope you all stay safe and out of harm’s way.
Given that we haven’t had services in person, financially we have made it through most of the year. We’re building our savings back to where it was before the pandemic began, we borrowed money from savings to help toward the end of our last fiscal year and are paying it back this year. We paid for some of the expenses for the upgrades to our technology and for our partial roof repair. Together they cost: ~$11,230. Approximately $6,380 for the roof and $4,850 for technology. Members helped us with ~ $4,500 of this so we had to take the remainder out of our UUFP accounts. In total we borrowed $3,000 from savings and used money each month from our checking account to cover these bills. We currently owe our savings account ~$2,300 to be back where we were in March of 2020 before we borrowed any money from our savings account. So, things are working out nicely. Thank you.
UUFP Bake off and Pledge Drive
It was a chilly, rainy day and those who wore boots should be commended on their preparedness. A good time was had by all, however, at our first outdoor event in over a year! (except for the clean-up parties). Thanks to everyone who came out and especially Linda P for planning this event.
Congratulations to the winners of the bake off! The desserts were scrumptious and the company much appreciated.
Looking forward to seeing more of our friends in the future!
Pledge Drive: 4/11 to 4/25/21
We started our pledge drive 4/11/21 and at this writing on 4/12/21, we are 2/3 of the way to meeting our goal, thanks to our members and friends! We met between the raindrops for our outdoor coffee hour on the 11th of April to start the pledge drive.
We had a dessert bake-off contest, and our winners were:
• Lorien for 1st place for delicious cheesecake topped with fruit
• Laurie for 2nd place for wonderful cranberry shortbread cookies
• Mary for 3rd place for delightful kalua chocolate truffles!!
We all enjoyed this event immensely!
Please review the pledge information that was sent to you and if you haven’t sent in your pledge yet please do so. We are running the drive for 2 weeks, the pledge drive ends on 4/25/21, so that we can adjust our budget to fit our income before our June congregational meeting. Our pledge drive is when we begin to think about the budget for next year, we ask all of UUFP members and friends to look ahead to the next church year and make a generous commitment toward the cost of growing and supporting our spiritual home. Our congregation is supported primarily through the financial stewardship of its members. We do understand if you have been negatively impacted by the pandemic and know that you need to take care of yourself first. All contributions to UUFP matter, please see what you can offer to help us as we move through the remainder of the pandemic with the anticipation of when we can meet again for inside services and events. I’d like to thank each of you for all that you do for UUFP and the many ways you contribute to our programs, services, and care of our building. At this point we are still meeting virtually via Zoom, and we hope that sometime this year we will be able to meet in person inside of UUFP and have fun rebuilding our in-person connections to each other.
Thank you, Linda
Please join us on April 11th @ 12:30 PM for an OUTSIDE Coffee Hour!
Please join us on April 11th @ 12:30 PM for an OUTSIDE Coffee Hour! We will meet along the side of the building near the playground and the picnic table. The picnic table is reserved for all of our delicious desserts!
No lunch will be provided so remember to eat a healthy lunch before arriving. We will have a dessert Bake-Off contest, after a short pledge drive talk, and are offering 1st, 2nd and 3rd place prizes. Please make your favorite dessert and wrap or cut it into individual size portions to make it easy to serve and also to reduce our clean up time. There will be lots of catching up since the last time we saw each other, both on personal levels as well as to catch up with the latest news from UUFP.
Please BYOCD&GC! That is: please bring your own chair, dessert, great conversation!
See you on the 11th!
Pledging for 2021-22 April 11-25, 2021
Thank you for continuing to send in your pledge’s to support UUFP. Your continued pledges, Sunday Plate Collections, Giant Card purchases and donations all help us as members and friends of UUFP live up to our mission and vision throughout the year. This year was different since it was mostly virtual, but we did do somethings in person.
Our pledge drive for this year will be in person!!! We will have an outside coffee hour on April 11th after service, for a combined dessert bake-off and pledge drive kick-off! So, look through your cookbooks and start planning your special treat. See the bulletin at the end of this article for more details.
We do understand that some of you may be experiencing financial hardship due to the pandemic and understand your need to make sure you are taken care of first. However, whatever you can contribute to UUFP goes a long way toward helping us live our mission by being active in our local community. For those of you who can pledge please consider a stretch goal. A stretch goal is personal and is whatever you feel you can afford. Please consider adding an additional 5%-10%. This would be an additional $25-50/ year for a $500 pledge. We appreciate whatever you can offer to UUFP and are grateful for you and the many things
you do for us as members and friends of UUFP.
Please let me know if you can contribute to UUFP by filling out a pledge card and send it to me via email or regular mail by April 25th. Send your email to: treasurer@uupottstown.
org or use my email that is in the directory. My phone # is also in the directory if you prefer to contact me over the phone. If you mail your pledge card to UUFP, our bookkeeper will pass it onto me. Our UUFP address is: UUFP, 1565 S. Keim St, Pottstown, PA 19465.
• • • • • •
Each fiscal year we develop a new budget that includes committee’s wish list of new things they’d like to do in the coming year and what they’d like to continue to expand.
Here are some highlights from 2020-2021 that we were able to do even though we were unable to meet in person:
• Experience thoughtful Ministry through virtual Vespers and Sunday services with Rev’s Kerry and Dave
• Connect with isolated members with phone calls
and cards
• Kept our connection with the Pottstown Cluster
through personal donations
• Participated in a Pottstown clothing drive
• Expanded our Fair Districts participation
• Donated 100% of our Sunday Plate collection, for
three weeks, to the UUA Texas Disaster Relief
• Upgraded our technology for our services and virtual presence
• Repaired part of our roof
• We did have 2 in-person bonfires that were a huge
success!
Text To Donate
One of the things that was added to our website this year is a click to donate button on our website and a text to donate program. Both have helped us make it easier to donate to
UUFP for those who like to use the technology. We continue to accept BillPay and checks that are mailed to UUFP.
Please review the pledge information in the Sojourner, located under the Member Resources tab > Document Libraries, and return your the pledge card that is enclosed with the April newsletter, by mail or email by April 25th. Thank you.
Please call or email me with any questions.
Thank you,
Linda P.
treasurer@uupottstown.org
February 2021 Finance Corner
Times are tough and just like most non-profits UUFP is hurting too.
Total income is down 30.7% compared to total income (for the first ½ of this FY) per our 2020-21 budget. At this point in time our pledges and donations are down $3,725.
Our expenses are also down, but not as much as our income. We are down by 4.5% compared to YTD (year-to-date) expected expenses, per 2020-21 budget.
So, we are operating with a deficit. However… There’s always however! Due to our “Raise the UUFP Roof! Campaign,” we are $3200 over what we projected we would receive (at this point in time) for fundraising. We project $5000 for the year and have received $4800 to date. Silver linings can always be seen if you look for them.
We still need to fundraise; we still need your wonderful pledges and donations to be able to run UUFP and keep money in the bank for those rainy days. Our rainy days were literal this year as we had to repair half of our roof. Our roof repair has kept our new technology equipment dry and safe! Now we need to prepare to repair the other half of the roof so we can offer a dry place to all of you, to our yoga friends and to those who choose to rent from us, so that we all can enjoy our beautiful building and grounds. Yes, we still do get a few rental inquiries, but up until now they haven’t been acted on due to Covid-19.
So the long a short of it… We love you!!!!! And it looks like you love UUFP!!!! A perfect match.
Thank you, for keeping UUFP in the forefront of your mind, thank you for working hard to keep us together as a wonderful, caring group of people who desperately want to meet in person when it’s safe. (That was a long sentence!)
Finance Corner: Quarterly Report December 2020
UUFP members and friends are enjoying our virtual services and coffee hour offered each Sunday. Through Sunday offerings and through the dedication of our members and friends we continue to receive pledges and are also receiving contributions toward our new fundraiser “Raising the
UUFP Roof!”
Our fundraiser is to help cover expenses for our much-needed new roof repair and upgraded technology to help improve our ability to provide virtual services and events, to move us into the 21st century with our technology and to provide a dry and physically safe place for us to
meet in the near future.
We are under budget with our pledges and donations by ~ $1600.00 this month and are under budget for our regular expenses by ~$1000. However, we have had to pay for our roof repair, of which 50% is repaired and paid for and have also paid for our upgraded technology. Both combined
have increased our expenses, outside of our expected budget, by ~$18, 000 ($12,000+ for the roof and ~$5000 for technology). To date we have raised $4150 toward our campaign to fund these expenses. We have paid $6300 for
the roof and $4800 toward technology. So, we have had to dig into our saving to cover these needed expenses.
Please be mindful of your pledges and donations to UUFP. We are extremely appreciative of any amount you can contribute to help keep UUFP moving forward and able to provide services, whether virtual or eventually in person, and to keep us all connected as a community. The goal of being able to live stream our services is important to keep us connected as we enter yet another upswing in the pandemic.
I hope that you all stay safe from this virus, and I know that each of you are wishing the same for all of our members and friends.
Miranda and I are putting together several fund raisers, that will hopefully bring in funds toward our continued roof repair and go toward the expenses of our upgraded technology, and most importantly that will connect us in fun ways. So, keep your eyes open for these announcements.
Joy, our bookkeeper, will send out letters via email, for your donations and pledges, for the year 2020, in January 2021. If you want your letter mailed please send an email to Joy at office@uupottstown.org or send a note to UUFP, 1565 S. Keim Street, Pottstown, PA, 19465. Thank you.
Thank you, Have a wonderful holiday season, Linda P.
Pledges
Each year, members and friends of our congregation make an annual pledge of support. This pledge supports the operation of the fellowship during the coming fiscal year, which starts on July 1st and ends the following June 30th. Our operations budget pays the salaries of our staff, funds our religious education programs, and our social justice and outreach programs. It also helps us maintain our building and pay the bills.
The annual pledge campaign is held in the Spring of each year. Members & friends who have recently joined or are beginning to pledge during a different time of the year, may still do so to help support the programs and operations of UUFP. In either case, you can make a pledge online, by clicking this “Donate to Support UUFP” link.
You are also welcome to make a pledge by mail by sending your pledge directly to the fellowship, or by using your banks BillPay. If you’d like to make a pledge in person, please speak with Linda Pallay our treasurer.
Making a payment to UUFP of any kind, whether in fulfillment of a pledge, a contribution to an Outreach program, to our Giant grocery card program or any other type of donation, can be done on this Finance page or you can click the yellow button on the front page to donate online. You can also donate via text from your cell phone. Text: 844-972-2418. The first time you make a text donation, you will receive a one time response with a link to register. When donating put the amount in the comment section and if desired the type of donation: pledge, donation, giant cards, sanctuary windows upgrade, etc. You will receive a text and email confirmation of your donation.
Offering
Weekly donations help support our programs and expenses. Usually given when we meet in person however they are also accepted through all of our payment methods; online, text and through the mail.
Payment Frequency
Your payment can be a single payment each time you donate or you can set up recurring payments. The recurring payments offer weekly, monthly, quarterly or a one time payment with the online, text and BillPay methods.
Thank you for supporting UUFP. Your generous support enables us to provide quality programming at UUFP, pay our staff and contribute to outreach programs. It also helps keep our fellowship running to enable us to meet every Sunday for services and fellowship.
Linda P.