Office of the Bishop and Support Offices

Program and Budget

Office of the Bishop

The core of this section remains unchanged from the 2009 level. Money remains available in this section of the budget to fund new emerging initiatives that were unknown and unfunded at the time of approving this budget. Keeping some money in this line item gives Diocesan Council and the Bishop financial resources to fund such initiatives without having to pull money away from other ministries or effectively creating a deficit budget by introducing an unbudgeted expense. The reduction in money for reimbursing deans presupposes that the proposed canonical changes in the deanery system will pass, reducing the number of number of deans from ten to eight. There are also changes that are minor with some funding being supplied by special funds as opposed to coming from the Operating Fund Income.

Finance Office

The total of $31,800 for the Finance Office represents a $7,000 decrease from the 2009 budget.

The budget consists of administrative expenses and financial resource costs of $4,400 maintenance costs for the accounting software of $4,000, bank fees of $300, archive expenses of $700, payroll preparation costs of $2,400, and the fee for the Diocesan audit of $20,000. These costs are substantially the same as in 2009, except for the audit fee, which was reduced by $7,000, based on engaging a smaller, more local firm to perform the 2009 audit.

The primary focus of the Finance Office is the SERVE component of the mission statement. In this capacity, finance administers the Joint Investment Fund for the Trustees of the Diocese (investments of about $31 million and 248 Diocesan and parish accounts); the health and dental insurance programs (offered by The Medical Trust, part of the Church Pension Group) for 95 lay and clergy employees and their families; the Capital Loans and Grants program; maintains records of all gifs and grants to ECSF, the Trinity Commons Books & Gifts, and other gifts; provides training for parish treasurers and bookkeepers in accounting and internal controls; coordinates the CPA audits of the Diocese and the Joint Investment Fund, as well as the Diocesan audit team (for parish audits) and committee and CPA audits of parishes; works with parishes in meeting their canonical requirements for reporting in the areas of assessments, insurance, lay pensions, and parochial reports; and provides accounting, payroll, financial reporting and budgeting for all diocesan operations (Council, Trustees, Cedar Hills, Trinity Commons Books & Gifts, ECSF, the Church Home and Holy Cross Fund).

Development Office

The Development Office exists to promote service to God in our care for our church and in thanksgiving for all that has been given to us by God; to promote sacrificial giving as a spiritual surrender of self to God; and to encourage the people of the diocese to own more fully our identities as stewards of God’s kingdom.

The Bishop’s Annual Appeal

Meeting the Challenge of Challenging Times

The Bishop’s Annual Appeal, in its fifth year, provides necessary resources for leadership development, servant hood, youth mission, and Episcopal Community Services (ECS). The Appeal encourages annual giving to ECS and is effectively broadening parochial and diocesan opportunities to serve by providing financial resources for strategic priorities of benefit to the entire diocese.

2008 Appeal. The total 2008 campaign contributions exceeded $267,000. Your generosity provided Episcopal Community Services with $100,000 for direct funding of services to those in need across the Diocese of Ohio. In addition, over $138,000 has been allocated for initiatives to provide opportunities to grow, give, and serve, such as the diocesan youth mission trips to send young people to serve within the diocese and around the country; internships for seminarians and recently ordained clergy; and college and university campus ministry to form and inspire a new generation of servant leaders.

2009 Appeal. At the end of September, 89% of the 2009 campaign goal of $267,500 has been realized with 80 congregations participating thus far in the campaign. With need ever increasing during these challenging times, there is room to do more. Your participation in The Bishop’s Annual Appeal, this year and every year, is invited, encouraged, and important to grow our resource for service and mission.

Giving as Spiritual Surrender

The Development Office serves as a link to a full spectrum of local, diocesan, and national stewardship and development resources to serve the programs and parishes of the diocese; to help coordinate productive partnerships between parishes; and to provide the financial resources to facilitate collaboration or initiation of new programs.

Planned giving offers a unique opportunity to give back to the church all that it has given to us. A planned gift to the Diocese of Ohio is especially meaningful because these gifts provide long-term support to strengthen the diocese’s ability to meet future challenges and ministry opportunities. With your help, The Diocese of Ohio supports planned giving efforts to build Diocesan Endowment through The Sterling Newell Endowment Society, a diocesan gift society established to honor those providing lasting financial witness to the mission of the Diocese, and through local parish endowment strategies such as Charitable Gift Annuities.

Communications Office

The 2008 report to Diocesan Convention discussed three initiatives for the Communications Office during 2009. These were:

1. Redesign of the Website

2. Redesign of ChurchLife!

3. Update of our database

We also developed an “elevator speech” for the diocese to help with advertising and to provide a common identity among our parishes. An “elevator speech” allows us to tell others quickly and succinctly who we are and what we believe as Episcopalians.

With the help of Diocesan Council and the Communications Committee, we came up with the following wording:

We have faith in God. We treasure our ancient heritage with its rich liturgy, and we actively explore new ways to express our Christian faith.

We reach out to others. We work as the body of Jesus Christ in the world, advocating for peace and justice as we serve God’s diverse creation.

We seek change in ourselves and in the world. We welcome questions and conversations about hard issues, believing that the Holy Spirit transforms us in our struggles. We are not always of one mind, but we are firmly tied together by God’s love and our shared commitment to Jesus Christ.

Everyone is invited. All are welcome.

We are the Episcopal Church in northern Ohio.

We continue to offer website development for parishes that either need a website or need their website updated. Our part-time technology consultant, Bill Joseph, New Life, Uniontown, is available to any parish to help with website advice or development.

The Communications Office was the recipient of five Polly Bond Awards in 2009 (based on 2008 work), which are awards given out by the Episcopal Communicators for excellence in journalism, design, advertising, and publicity.

ChurchLife!

With the spring issue of ChurchLife! (the first in 2009), we introduced our new design and format for the quarterly magazine. The initial impetus for the change was financial. We were able to save over $9,000 from 2008 by going to an 8.5” x 11” format with a glossy cover and high-quality newsprint inside, all of it four color. It has also allowed us to be more flexible in size, since we can easily increase or decrease the number of pages as needed. Kristin Crites, assistant in the Office of Communications and graphic designer, developed the magazine’s “look”. The total budget for ChurchLife!, including printing, postage, mailing list management, and freelance photography and writing assistance is $44,065, compared with over $53,000 in past years.

Diocesan Website

The redesign is underway with the help of two outside consultants. We are creating two websites—one for visitors and parishioners within our diocese, which will be an updated and more easily navigable website. Our consultants are working with the “look” of the website to make the design more contemporary, something we don’t have the expertise to accomplish in-house, while Kristin Crites, Bill Joseph, and I work on the structure and navigation. We have enlisted all staff members in helping to design the information for their own offices. The website will continue to use the CMS open source templates from Joomla that we have had for several years, but we are upgrading to the latest version of Joomla.

We are also designing a second website that is designed to appeal to a much younger, unchurched audience. Based on our research of two years ago, we found that younger audiences do not respond well to traditional church websites, frequently consider themselves “spiritual but not religious,” and have many questions they would like answered but are afraid or uncertain of the answers they would get in a traditional church. Most of all, they are looking for authenticity and honesty from the people of whom they ask questions. We want them to feel that their questions are welcome, whatever they may be. This website will be “edgier,” will include some facebook-like quizzes to help them find a direction in their spiritual life, and will help connect them with other seekers. In addition to our research, we have enlisted the help of Pastor Joe Kovitch, who runs the Lutheran-Episcopal campus ministry at Cleveland State University and Case Western Reserve University, and some of the students with whom he works, to design the questions and quizzes. Although this website will be sponsored by the Episcopal Diocese of Ohio, it will not have a specifically Episcopal message. Its purpose is to engage young people in thinking about their spiritual journeys and bringing them into a life lived with God at its center.

Videoconferencing

We have completed one year with MegaMeeting, a web-based videoconferencing provider, so that committees and commissions of the diocese can meet remotely, and we have provided live coverage of Diocesan Convention and regional meetings. We also provided equipment to eight parishes around the diocese, so that no one would have to drive longer than one hour to attend certain meetings. The eight parishes are: St. Stephen’s, Steubenville; St. John’s, Youngstown; Grace, Mansfield; St. Paul’s, Canton; Trinity Cathedral; Grace, Sandusky; Trinity, Toledo; and St. Mark’s, Sidney. Anyone with a camera and headphones on his or her computer can also join in MegaMeeting. After one year of working with MegaMeeting, we still have uneven results. We are currently considering a second, dedicated T1 line to help with the lag time between speaking and hearing, which can make meetings difficult.

We have also used MegaMeeting to broadcast Tuesdays@12 (formerly Tuesday@10), which are one-hour web classes provided mainly by diocesan staff for anyone who can join in. Part of the hour is set aside for questions, in which participants can type in their questions and comments. These broadcasts are also made available by podcast on the website.

Database

The Communications Office has overseen an update of our database from FileMaker 6 to FileMaker 10. All computers are now equipped with the new version, and we are currently running both versions of Filemaker until we are sure the bugs are worked out.

Advertising

We continue to offer advertising for special events for parishes and provide designs for them when needed. Feel free to ask us about any advertising you would like to do. We are in the process of designing advertising for the Episcopal Church in the Diocese of Ohio, which can be used by individual parishes starting with Advent this year and continuing throughout 2010.

Kristin Crites, administrative assistant and graphic designer in the Office of Communications, continues to do the design work for this office and for others on request. Martha Wright, Director of Communications, is available to speak to any parish, vestry, or group in the diocese about parish communications.

The budget for the Communications Office for 2010 is 5% less than it was for 2009. Last year we reduced the cost of printing and mailing ChurchLife! and we reduced the cost of printing the Diocesan Journal by posting it on the Website, rather than printing a copy for each parish. For the coming year, we reduced by 5% the budget for advertising. No other changes were made to the budget from 2009.

Personnel, Travel, Office Equipment and Supplies

Personnel

Expenses for Personnel in 2010 are $19,400 (1.3%) lower than the 2009 budget. The decrease has four major components: the elimination of part-time help line of $7,000, decrease in worker’s compensation of $3,900, decrease in the retiree health supplement of $6,500, and reduction of the reserve for sabbaticals of $2,000. Summer internships for high school and college students are funded from the Bishop’s Annual Appeal. Worker’s compensation costs have decreased due to participation in a group program through the Ohio Council of Churches.

Over 11% percent ($178,340) of the $1,503,680 is funded by reimbursement from diocesan trusts administered by diocesan staff, providing accounting and grant making services.

The budget includes funding for Bishop Hollingsworth, 7 full-time program staff positions, 7 full-time support staff positions, a part-time planned giving consultant, three part-time assisting bishops and two part-time positions in the archives. There is no increase in the number of positions in the 2010 budget.

Personnel expenses are 43.6% of the Diocesan budget in 2010, as compared to 41.9% of the 2009 budget. The ratio of personnel expenses to the total budget is lower than the same ratio for many large and small parishes, which report a ratio of 50-60% or more. Many service organizations also report a higher ratio.

The total provides for salary, pension, health and dental insurance, workers compensation insurance, and long-term disability and life insurance for lay employees approximately equivalent to that provided to clergy. It also provides for training, continuing education, and sabbatical assistance for lay and clergy and continues payment of a supplement that assists retired diocesan employees in meeting their rising expenses for health insurance costs.

Travel

The 2010 budget for travel expenses represents reimbursement for all business-related travel expenses of the Diocesan staff. The $76,000 represents a $4,000 decrease from 2009, which includes a reduction in the mileage reimbursement for lay volunteers, which is estimated at $3,000, and an additional $1,000 reduction in staff travel reimbursements.

Office Equipment and Supplies

Office expenses, including our share of the operating expenses of Trinity Commons, are $278,844 in 2010, a decrease of $1,706 from 2009. The operating costs of Trinity Commons increase by two percent ($4,544) and are offset by a $1,250 reduction in telephone expenses, and a $5,000 reduction in the reserve for capital improvements for Trinity Commons. Since none of the existing reserve has been spent, additions to the reserve were not deemed necessary in 2010. All other items remain at their 2009 levels.

Office equipment and supplies are $11,100 in the 2010 budget. This amount is $7,000 lower than the 2009 level, primarily from reduction to the computer replacement reserve. The budget includes funding for postage, copies, computer software, supplies and network maintenance; and office supplies and stationery. In 2010, all of these costs are funded from the operating budget.