2009 Canvass Brochure

Click picture to view the brochure (3.5 mb .pdf)

Mid-Winter Party Thank You
On Saturday evening, February 21, over 50 parishioners enjoyed a wonderful party at the house of Pat and Phil Hurzeler. Thanks go first to Pat and Phil who were generous in their hospitality. Thanks go as well to Leanna Sorcor, Cynthia Williams, Anne & Forrest Speck, Florence Mercer, Sarah Spaulding, and Jay Ianini. A good time was had by all.

Parish Friends
Many thanks go out to Parish Friends who have visited, sent cards, and taken meals to parishioners. They are happy to help a person in need. Parish Friends are

Ruth Allen	Jennifer Day	Ann & Lark Madden	Pat Skibbee
Marj Babcock	Mike Dorsey	Sandy Manley	Janet Sutherland
Pat Bashford	Vicki Dyer	Brent Mitchell	Linda Tulley
Linda Buddenhagen	Coddie Fraser	Ann Poirier	Anne Verret Speck
	Robin Lawson	Susan Ricker

Youth Leaders
Anyone who works effectively with teenagers is someone who is able to walk a fine line between being a person that the youth can relate to and being able to maintain very clear boundaries. It takes a special kind of person to build and maintain healthy relationships with adolescents. We are fortunate to have a number of these people here at the FRS.

Becky Dill, Ken Okaya, and Kelly McNamee are our senior high youth advisors. Every other Sunday morning, they give up their worship time to be with up to 20 high school youth. Over the years, Becky, Ken and Kelly have helped inspire a passion for social justice in our youth through their own interests. They have also helped the youth create wonderful worship services for the entire FRS community, held church overnights, and gone on field trips to justice-related movies, rallies, and speakers. Most importantly, they have provided an invaluable, caring adult presence in the lives of our teenagers. Thank you, Becky, Ken, and Kelly!

Soup Sunday
The Soup Sunday on March 1 brought in $431.00 to the FRS's Mind-the-gap deficit reduction coffers. Thanks to the Roberts family again for their fine selection of soups and sourdough rolls. The next Soup Sunday will be on April 5.

The Jean C. Wilson Concert Series
We in the fundraising and administrative parts of the church have a general theory that the more the public comes into our space for community events, the more alive and useful we become to our larger community, the more relevant we become to different parts of our community, and ultimately the more civically functional and effective we become. So our stewardship of our internal community can broaden and spread throughout the Newburyport area when the public gets to use and benefit from our space and our efforts through events such as Amnesty International meetings, the FINCH Coffehouse, Pennies for Poverty events, the Jazz Vespers, the Literary Festival events, our own Great Debate, and the Wilson Music Series.

The last concert of the Jean C. Wilson Music Series was held March 8. We thank those who made these concerts possible:

• the donors, who gave so generously
• Claudia Keyian and Carol Feingold, who did our publicity
• Anne Staffeld, who edited the programs, and Vicki Dyer, who produced the programs
• John Mercer for putting the series information up on the FRSUU website
• the men who moved the piano and Mark Snelling, who tuned it
• the artists, who gave of themselves unstintingly

Earlier this year, the Parish Committee authorized a raffle, among many approaches approved to raise the funds needed to cover the difference between the projected income foreseen at last year's annual meeting and the projected spending for this fiscal year. Specifically, we are selling $20.00 tickets, from the sales of which one winner will be chosen to receive a Vespa LX 50 motor scooter. Tickets have been on sale for the last two weeks at coffee hour after church. Yet, we need not only buyers for such tickets, but also sellers. Would you be willing to sell ten or more tickets? If so, call John Mercer at (978) 465-0602, x404. The winner will be drawn at the FRS Auction on Saturday, May 9.

The most obvious act of stewardship that the First Religious Society undertakes is that of the Trustees. They consist of three officers of the church, each elected to a three-year term; the treasurer; the chair of the Parish Committee; and the minister who serves as an ex-officio member. The Trustees manage all funds and securities in the church's endowment. You may not know that the FRS has an endowment because the Trustees do most of their work through an investment advisor and are therefore less visible than other groups of the church. They meet quarterly to assess the status of the funds and the overall performance of the fund manager.
Most churches rely on more than members' yearly pledges to survive; they also receive gifts to invest over a long term. These investments create a foundation of assets that bear interest, which in turn generates more income. From the interest income the church can fund some of its necessary operating costs. For example, this year we foresee that the performance of our endowment will generate 12% of our income, about $66,000. Like all investments over the last six months, the FRS endowment has suffered. Just before the markets began to shift in September, our endowment had a net worth of about $1.8 million. Our losses are about par with other investments, at 37%. Our net worth at the end of February was approximately $1.17million. Our endowment, which has been in place for a few hundred years, has no doubt seen other down turns and recoveries, and we have full confidence that time will again fortify this institutional holding, ensuring our stability for many more hundreds of years.

The First Religious Society raises two thirds of its funds for operations through the yearly every-member canvass, a key element of the stewardship of this church. You may already have received a letter suggesting a pledge for the upcoming fiscal year, which begins on July 1, 2009, and ends on June 30, 2010. If you did receive such a letter, you should read the brochure it contains thoroughly, and you will be receiving a call from a canvasser, who will be trying to arrange a face-to-face meeting with you. Please be kind to this volunteer by being responsive to his or her request for a meeting. The canvassers take on this role because they are committed stewards of this church; they are taking care. Also, they enjoy getting to know their fellow parishioners better. They are not sales people or fund raisers, but instead are in community with you and seeking to deepen that community. Their call is not a fund raising call, but a frank invitation into stewardship of the First Religious Society.