5 Year Plan Update

FoothillsUnitarianChurch

1815 Yorktown Avenue

Fort Collins, CO80526

Phone/Fax: 970-493-5906

5 Year Plan Update

May 18, 2008

Approved 5 Year Goals
2008-2009 Proposed Action Plans
Communications Team Report
Life Span RE Team Report
Membership Team Report
Physical Site Team Report
Social Action Team Report

FoothillsUnitarianChurch

5 Year Goals

Adopted May 20, 2007

A. Actively plan to accommodate the needs of our members.

Meet the variety of worship and pastoral care needs by achieving the UUA ministerial staffing guidelines.
Develop an integrated Life Span Faith Development Program with appropriate staffing.
Complete a physical site plan by May 2008 to address:
more consistent and energy-efficient heating and cooling
utilizing technology to improve sound and visual support
more efficient space utilization, and
identifying alternatives for providing additional space, as necessary.
Implement a more effective organizational structure by 2009.
Develop a plan to adequately and successfully welcome and integrate potential, new and established members into the life of the church by 2008.
Develop a plan by 2008 to improve the effectiveness of communications within our church community.
Enhance congregational stewardship by developing new funding strategies by 2009.

B. Become a recognized leader in the Fort Collins and UUA communities.

Develop a process in 2008 by which the congregation can focus its efforts to have a greater impact on community issues.
Take a leadership role in raising community awareness and addressing social justice issues.
Develop a communications outreach plan to communicate more effectively with the Fort Collins community.
Implement a program to encourage greater participation in UUA/MDD activities and events.

Foothills Unitarian Church 5 Year Plan

2008-2009 Proposed Action Plans

Communications Team:

Establish a Communications Committee with appropriate task groups to address PR, Intercom, website, and proofreading/editorial review. Provide coordination with other committees regarding communication issues and needs.
Update the website.
Place an IDEA BOX in the lobby and put process in place to review and respond to input.
Increase radio advertising (i.e., KUNC, KRFC).
Reduce number of inserts in the Intercom to same time and money.

Life Span RE Team:

Conduct regular meetings of RE staff and volunteer RE coordinators to provide continuity of programming and transitions between life stages.
Form a team of volunteers to coordinate childcare for all major church activities and events
Explore the expansion of our OWL (Our Whole Life) programs to include high school and adults.
Form a team of volunteer drivers to provide transportation to evening RE programs.
Provide ministerial presence and support for youth and young adult programs as staffing allows.
Provide more ministerial resources for life transitions and small group ministry.
Conduct a survey to identify the needs of youth, young adults, and adults.
Form a group for post high school/college aged young adults (18-24) and recruit a volunteer coordinator.
Continue to support a group for older young adults (~28-35) and recruit a volunteer coordinator.

Membership Team

Enhance the welcome for all who attend Sunday services, especially those who are first-time or repeat visitors.
Expand efforts to help potential new members to more fully explore membership; coordinate and link the UU history and principles class and the preparation for membership class.
Follow up immediately with new members with regard to pledging, integration, and volunteerism.
Begin the task, in cooperation with other committees and teams, of finding out exactly who our friends and members are and how their relationship with the church could be enhanced.

Physical Plant Team:

Gain congregational consensus on the priorities for long-term facilities needs.
Better understand the scope of work and potential solutions prior to hiring an architect.
Further explore all potential solutions, including better utilization of the current facility, and incremental expansion, among others.
Better understand what the congregation is willing to financially commit to an expansion program.

Organizational Structure Team:

Working with the staff and committees, develop a more efficient and effective committee structure to be presented to the congregation for approval in 2009.
The model to be recommended by the structure team will resemble that used by JUC and other large congregations with committees joined under "cluster" headingswith thecluster or Councilgranted budget and authority to act after reaching consensus within their council. We would recommend more use of "task force" teams rather than sitting committees for specific tasks such as church expansion and the like.

Social Action Team:

Create an interim Social Action Council to implement and test the process for establishing social action teams/projects.
Query the congregation for current and potential future social action projects and establish one or more action teams to work on projects beginning this year.
Explore social issues as areas for social witness by the congregation.

Stewardship and Ministerial Resource Teams:

Form Action Planning Teams and develop proposals for next year.

Communications Task Force Report

Members

Keith Hupperts – Chair

Alex Barnett

Carole Van Gorder

Julie Estlick

Kerri South

Cherry Sokoloski

Kimm Batavia

Overview

The communication task force was organized as part of the results of the 5 year planning team’s initial group meetings held in homes and at church. One aspect of improvement identified during those meetings was in regards to church communications. Comments from the meetings fell into two broad categories intra-church communications and external communications.

The Communications Task Force was organized to:

review the comments from the congregants
add additional communications items to the listing
prepare a plan to begin addressing these items over the course of the next five years

Process

The team met in January to discuss the comments from the congregation and comments from community members. This discussion was also a brainstorming session to attempt to identify as many communications issues as possible and opportunities to address those issues. The first meeting resulted in a large set of issues, and actions that could address the issues.

A task force survey was developed to allow team members to prioritize the possible actions that could be taken. We reviewed the expected impact of the change, when the change should be performed in the five year cycle, the ability for the church or a committee to realize the change, and an order of magnitude of the costs.

The team met again in mid-March to discuss the results of the survey and prepare the proposals detailed below.

Proposed Actions

Year 1

Number / Description
1 / Establish a Communications Committee:
The role of this committee will be to provide direction in setting communications policy, as well as organize and execute the actions detailed in this report over the next 5 years.
The task force did not feel that it was appropriate to make numerous recommendations without also providing a framework and organization to ensure that the actions were performed.
It is expected that this committee would have sub-committees to address specific areas of communications. For instance, a sub-committee for the web page, a sub-committee to perform editorial reviews of publications, etc.
There is also the possibility of combining some of existing committees to create the Communications Committee or perhaps providing communications coordination to other committees. Denominational Connections, Public Relations, InterCom, Campus Outreach, and others may all benefit from a coordinated FUUC-wide communications strategy while also maintaining their distinct identities.
Most task force members are willing to continue working together, along with members from other existing committees to improve our communications.
2 / Website updates:
Create a Website sub-committee to define the content to be placed on the website and ensure that information on the website is up to date and refreshed on a regular basis.
We recommend that a team of people be responsible for reviving the website, both in appearance and in content.
Our understanding is that an upgrade of the website appearance is underway. However, the content of the website has yet to be fully defined. We recommend that during year 1 the website should undergo a significant update including:

up-to-date content
appearance improvement
the current InterCom
a calendar of upcoming events
other church news (potentially information from the various committees, board meeting minutes (or a synopsis), caring committee announcements, joys and concerns)

As part of the update a plan for the ongoing maintenance and content management will need to be defined. A primary goal of the website refurbishing must also be to create a site that allows the administrators to easily post new materials. The plan will need to address training the people who will be responsible for updating information on the website. This is currently expected to be performed by office staff.
As part of the website upgrade, we recommend that the congregation try to make more use of electronic content. We should encourage people to utilize the website, and or their email accounts to receive documents such as the InterCom, the Adult Enrichment catalog, & Intercom inserts. This approach is greener and cheaper.
3 / Document proofreaders:
Simple punctuation and typographical errors are often able to be corrected with a quick review prior to publishing. Therefore, we recommend the establishment of a group of people to proofread documents such as InterCom, Orders of Services, and other documents published by the church.
This group would typically need to provide a quick review of the document for any typographical, punctuation, and other simple corrections. It would not be expected that the reviewers would need to perform editorial changes to the documents. Reviews need not take much time – 5 or 10 minutes. A quick response to the request would be required as deadlines for printing often do not provide much more than a few hours for review.
4 / InterCom inserts:
Reduce the number of inserts in the InterCom. Inserts often add to the costs of the mailing, require additional effort for the InterCom team, since they have to collate the inserts into the newsletter, (often at the last minute) and require additional paper.
Instead of inserts, the task force recommends the use of the church news section of the website.
We understand that some inserts may still be necessary. However, we recommend that if the number of inserts will increase mailing costs we prioritize which inserts are essential. This means some may not be included.
5 / Idea box:
Some people have requested an idea box to be placed in the lobby area. We agree that this is a good idea and recommend that an idea box be created. This may be an actual box, or just a notebook.
We also realize that with an idea box there is a certain level of responsibility to act on the comments and ideas. At a minimum, the person submitting the idea or request needs to be acknowledged and the idea needs to be forwarded to the appropriate person for discussion and action. The congregation must also realize that the act of submitting an idea may not result in the idea being implemented.
We feel that the initial review and contact can be coordinated by the office staff and that follow-up contacts should be the responsibility of the party best able to address the idea (potentially church staff or committee members).
6 / Advertising:
The team feels that we should think about more and/or better advertising of our presence. We currently advertise in the Coloradoan and the Loveland papers on a weekly basis and in the yellow pages ad. However, none of the team members were aware of the advertisements in the paper, so we need to review the ad and assess its effectiveness.
One form of advertisement that all task force members agreed upon was to become ‘Day Sponsors’ on KUNC and KRFC. Cost for a day sponsorship on KUNC is $360/day.
We recommend selecting one day, a week or two prior to a significant church event, (perhaps a concert, Halloween pumpkin carving night, new member Sunday) to advertise ourselves. We may also want to review advertisements that the UUA has done and make use of some of their newer materials.

Year 2

Number / Description
7 / Branding:
Begin to establish a ‘brand’ for our church that will help it be easily recognized at any event that the church hosts or participates in. This may mean colorizing the ‘Horsetooth logo’ chalice, or replacing it with a new logo.
The ‘logo search’ could be a competition within the church community; asking church members to develop logos and having the congregation select the favorite. This logo would then be used as part of all of our documents, signage, website, etc.
8 / Signage:
Work with the ‘Buildings and Grounds’ committee to begin planning for new Drake Street signage. We would prefer to get a new sign that we can advertise upcoming events such as sermon topics, concerts, community forums and more.
We believe that this sign may be expensive, so we would propose to fund it through a special funding drive, canvassing for a donor that would want to know what their money was being spent on, or by making multi-year funding requests to the endowment committee & the board of trustees and receive a portion of the funding each year.
9 / Additional marketing:
Before we pursue additional advertisement opportunities other than KUNC we recommend that FUUC contact the UUA to receive any information that they have in regards to marketing a UU church. We see FUUC making use of the UUA ads published in Time Magazine and republishing them in the Coloradoan.
10 / Additional website updates:
After, or in conjunction with, completing the content management aspects of year 1 to ensure that information is current and useful. Start to prepare to offer additional services and information online.
Over the course of the remaining 3 years:

Develop the ability to offer the taped services online, starting with audio and potentially offering video in the future (with permissions from the minister to publish any copyrighted materials)
Provide a secure ‘login only’ area to publish member information such as the Church Directory, a Services Directory
Host, or provide links to online community building tools such as member blogs, with the goal of making portions of the website an interactive forum to promote the sharing of ideas

11 / Information from the Board:
Review reporting of board decisions and ensure that congregation is getting adequate information. If changes are required, look into better reporting methods.
12 / Community Events:
Sponsor a booth at community events such as New West Fest, Pride in the Park and the Sustainable Living Fair.
Have a FUUC banner created that can be used at these events with the new/improved logo on it. Organize staffing for the both, have FUUC & UUA handouts available, as well as, small give-aways to generate booth interest.

Year 3

Number / Description
13 / Long term advertising plan:
Put into place an advertising plan based upon information & materials provided by UUA and input from the team and congregation.
14 / Host additional community events:
Organize and host more community events such as the uranium mining forum. This will require solicitation of ideas from the congregation, potentially using the congregation to ‘recruit’ speakers. Perhaps this can become a Speaker Series with community members, CSU Professors, and others coming to talk about a variety of topics.
15 / External communication:
Establish a policy, and review process, for documents that are published by FUUC, or FUUC affiliated groups, which are to be distributed outside of the church community.
16 / Coloradoan:
Establish a relationship with Coloradoan staff, and present general interest story ideas to them. (Day of the Dead celebration, community garden, whatever)
17 / Continuous website updates:
Since technology is ever-changing, we feel website improvement will need to be a continuous improvement project. We can utilize this tool both internally and externally to improve communication within the church and broader community.

Year 4 & 5

Continue moving forward with all aspects of the communication plan based upon current progress, assessment of new needs, and success of changes to date.

Look at the possibility of having a Communications Coordinator on staff – either as a paid part-time position or on a volunteer basis to assist in communications activities internally and externally.

Life Span Religious Education 5 Year Planning Team Report

Preface: Exploring religious truth, meaning and experience is central to Unitarian Universalist faith, and faith development is central to our liberal religious education. In communities and as individuals we seek lives of meaning anchored by values and a commitment to promote principles of justice, love, trust, safety, tolerance and encouragement. We want to deepen in spirit and nurture our souls; we strive to contribute to and shape the wider world for the greater good. We recognize that we are part of an interdependent web of life.

FoothillsUnitarianChurch would like to incorporate well integrated Unitarian Universalist religious education curricula which are designed to support the needs of individuals at all stages of growth and faith maturity. Curricula are available for developing and deepening our faith; understanding our Unitarian Universalist heritage and identity; exploring Jewish and Christian heritage, from which we draw our roots; studying world religions and their traditions; learning about multi-culturalism and the ways in which we can develop anti-oppressive anti-racist identities in our selves and others; and social justice, which undergirds our philosophy of how our faith is lived out in the world.

RE Life Stages: For purposes of better understanding the varying needs of our congregation, the team used the following life span categories. Of particular help was the use of the terms Explorers, Pioneers and Settlers presented at the UUA Large Church Meeting. It attempts to align young adults more by life stage or maturity level rather than a specific age. We felt this was significantly better than trying to address “Young Adults”, ages 18-35, as a single group. Similarly, we broke out Adults into categories based upon feedback from the neighborhood meetings. While the programming may appeal to multiple groups, there appear to be some unique needs in some life stages which we need to better understand.