Numerical Indicators

I’m Lost, But I’m Making Record Time

I heard the quote in the title of this blog as a young pilot many years ago. A World War II pilot radioed that report in –he had no idea where he was, but he was making great progress somewhere. As a stewardship consultant working with our congregations, I sometimes feel as though that quote is with us. Numbers can seem dry, but they can tell important stories about our our communities. It’s hard to know where you are going if you don’t know where you are.

There are statistics that I believe leaders should know if they are to understand their congregations. 18 data points and 1 more to ignore. I know what you are thinking “18! Is he nuts? Who has all that data and what would we do with it, anyway?” Bear with me – this is a conversation worth having.

The first 10 of these data points almost every congregation has readily accessible. Not enough leaders and members consult them sometimes, but they are easy to generate. The next 7 take a little effort to generate, but the returns can be impressive for congregations of just about every size.

In the interest of brevity, this blog will only list the 19 – you can read the expanded version on the Stewardship for Us blog that provides key aspects on each data point, for those interested in knowing more and seeing how these work to make a whole picture. The only data point discussed here is one to be ignored.

Membership
Sunday attendance, RE Attendance (Adult and children’s RE).
Percentage of budget provided by pledges.
“Average cost per household” to run your church.
Percentage of members pledging, if your bylaws do not ask that of all members.
Mean (average) and Median (1/2 of pledges are larger, ½ are less) pledge.
Number of households that have a pledge/contribution waiver.
Percentage of households/members that are not pledging, only making a Contribution of Record (COR); mean and median COR.
Percentage of pledging friends; mean and median of these commitments
Pledges that have not increased or have decreased over the past 2 years
Number of pledging units self-declared as Fair Share donors
What is the Quartile distribution (see last month’s Stewardship for Us blog)
How many are new pledgers (first 2 years)? Mean and median of new pledges?
Families active in RE and their distribution among pledges and COR population?
Where is your Board in Fair Share Giving and quartile distribution?
Percentage increase/decrease in total pledges/mean/median on last 3-5 years?
When was the last time you employed Visiting Stewards, with good training?
NO-How much of a pledge goes to “UUA dues?” This pops up often, and its harmful. We do not pay “dues;” clubs and fraternities do that. We make contributions to resource the work the Regions and the UUA do in our name. Congregations sometimes ask that a pledge be at least at the level of their per member contribution to the UUA. This makes our contributions to the UUA into an outside burden. Being a member of this association is an integral part of being a UU – don’t treat it as something outside our community. Encouraging pledges at this low level also assures that whatever funds are contributed do not support the congregation locally in any way.

_______________________________

Bill Clontz, Stewardship Consultant with the Stewardship for Us Team. has been a stewardship consultant supporting the UUA for over five years. He brings over forty years in leadership development and coaching, organizational effectiveness, and strategic planning to this work. He has over 25 years of active participation in UU church leadership and stewardship and 15 years of business development and portfolio management as a corporate officer, including working with nonprofits and nongovernmental organizations. Bill has served in his own congregation in a wide range of positions and he is a regular presenter at UU Regional conferences and the UUA Annual General Assembly. His focus as a stewardship consultant over the last five years has been empowering congregations to have successful stewardship environments, leadership development, and the growth of our movement.

Posted by:
Tandi Rogers

December 3rd, 2015

Numerical Indicators, Organizational Maturity, Spiritual Vitality

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By The Numbers: Religious Education Growth Trends

Last week we looked at the numbers reported in February 2015, a snap shot of this past year. “Who are we now?”

Our UU congregations are created by 180,617 adult members and 56,429 enrolled children and youth across the United States for a total of 237,046 UU people. 23.8% of our communities are children and youth.

This week we look at growth trends in Religious Education Enrollment. I’ve also included Public School trends from the National Center for Education Statistics. They currently have statistics publicly published through 2012.

Tip: If you have trouble seeing the numbers, try clicking on the graph/picture and enlarge it on your screen.

And now a look at our regions (note that UUA and US Public School regions are different)…

Next week we’ll go deeper into the growth by region and size of congregation.

________________________

Rev. Tandi Rogers loves numbers because they help us see ourselves more clearly and break down assumptions.

Posted by:
Tandi Rogers

November 15th, 2015

Numerical Indicators

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By the Numbers: Religious Education Snap Shot

Happy Friday! It’s time for some numbers. This is the beginning of a series on Religious Education Enrollment. These are self-reporting numbers by UU congregations in the United States representing the number of children and youth enrolled in their religious education programs.

This week we’re looking the numbers reported in February 2015, a snap shot of this past year. “Who are we now?”

I break down the congregations by 7 different sizes, because I primarily prepare analysis for Congregational Life. I’m a practitioner supporting the work of other practitioners. We recognize that each size category has special needs and characteristics.

Next week I will dig deeper into the size differences by region. This is where similarities and differences are teased out. And after that I’ll begin to shed light on growth trends of Religious Education Enrollment. Stay tuned…

________________________

Rev. Tandi Rogers loves numbers because they help us see ourselves more clearly and break down assumptions.

Posted by:
Tandi Rogers

November 6th, 2015

Numerical Indicators

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Emerging Ministries: 4 critical formation areas for Emerging Ministries

One piece of my job is working with new Unitarian Universalist emerging ministries. There are many ways of becoming a Unitarian Universalist group, including becoming one of the newly formed Covenanting Communities. See

It is an honor and a privilege to work with these folks. Prior to my coming on the the Southern Region’s congregational Life staff, I was a creating a new congregation in upstate New York.

As with any ministry, there is so much work at hand. It is my job to help emerging ministries to focus. I have four areas that are critical in their formation.

The first is spiritual depth. Because there is so much work facing these folks, their own spiritual life will diminish unless they are intentional about tending to it. This involves self-care. I encourage all them to be diligent about their own daily spiritual practices, and pay attention to balancing family and friends, their work, and their congregational commitment. But beyond self-care is going deeper into the Unitarian Universalist faith. If they are going to create a Unitarian Universalist, covenantal faith community, they must know what that means in a deep way. As leaders, they must grow in depth in order for the community to grow in size. They, therefore, must live with each other in a covenantal way.

The second is Unitarian Universalism. In order to be able to grow this wonderful faith, we must understand our theology and heritage. We have values that have stood the test of time. We must know what those are and how others have sacrificed for them in order of us to have the privileges that we enjoy. We have a life saving and giving faith. We must be able to understand that relationships and how we behave (covenant) affects how we interact with the world. Our world is hurting and broken. We must know ourselves so that we can be in relationship with others who are different from us in order to search for wholeness.

The third is purpose. It is critical for new groups to have a sense of coming together for something larger than themselves. It is so easy to create the “church for me.” So many people get seduced into thinking that this is their opportunity to create the congregation that they have always wanted with the kind of worship that they like, etc. This is the thinking that will kill it. There must be a sense of creating a space for those that we have not thought about yet. I like to think that when the martians find us they will say, it’s those UUs that have it going on! But we must be creating something special for others, not ourselves. Having a purpose beyond themselves must stay central. I ask things like how are you changing the world? And I expect real answers.

And, lastly, generosity. While each of the others leads nicely into the next one, generosity needs to be the lens through which they view everything else. Questions I might ask are: How are you being generous with yourselves? How are you being generous with Unitarian Universalism? How are you being generous with your local community, and how is that helping to define your purpose? Many well established congregations ask me how they can become generous. That is much harder to do later, but at the beginning you can tend to generosity and feed it. If you become a generous people from the beginning, it becomes part of your culture and your values.

These are the things that I hope to get into a groups’ DNA as they are forming. If they can get these four things right, what could be more joyous? Really, in one form or another, isn’t this what we want for all of our congregations? How are you doing in these four areas? Let me know. Please add your news in the comment section.

______________________

Kathy McGowan, Congregational Life Staff, is one of seven field staff on the Southern Region team. She lives in the triangle area of North Carolina with her son and two cats. She has been a Unitarian Universalist since the mid-eighties and has a deep love of this faith tradition. In addition to her work with new and emerging congregations, she focuses on intercultural sensitivity and is the primary contact for the congregations in Virginia and North Carolina in the Southern Region of the UUA. She is excited to be coaching groups on how to live out their Unitarian Universalist faith in a deep and covenantal way. KMcGowan@uua.org

Posted by:
Tandi Rogers

November 3rd, 2015

Uncategorized

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By the Numbers: where’s the growth?

Last week I posted the global growth numbers. This week let’s look at UU membership growth trends by congregational size breakdown…

(Edited to explain size catagories) In the following graphs I use 7 different catagories instead of the traditional 4 or 5. The reason is that congregations behave differently and have different needs depending on their size (and other variables.) The primary audience I prepare data analysis for are practitioners in the field, mostly Congregational Life staff. And those front-line growth experts that serve and support our congregations use the following size catagories:

Fellowship/Tiny (0-60)

Small Pastoral Congregations (61-160)

Midsize Pastoral Congregations (161-300)

Awkward/Transition Congregations (301-400)

Program Congregations (401-600)

Large Program Congregations (601-800)

Corporate Congregations (800+)

Yes, you read that correctly. There is a category I call “Awkward” — it’s the hardest size to breakthrough. A couple years ago I asked leaders of congregation in that 301-400 bracket if the name was offensive. Most laughed and said, “no, it’s actually pretty accurate.” There is a Facebook group for the two smallest categories called “Small & Mighty.” There are just somethings that only congregational leaders in your size category will understand. It’s good to compare notes, share ideas, learn from the challenges and celebrate the blessings.

This is a ten year span we’re looking at. Here’s the raw data:

Fellowship/Tiny: -12.6% (13,991-12,223)

Small Pastoral Congregations: -2% (36,729-36,007)

Midsize Pastoral Congregations: -3.3% (43,894-42,451)

Awkward/Transition Congregations: -6.5% (19,907-18,609)

Program Congregations: 4% (17,578-18,286)

Large Program Congregations: 11.3% (11,205-12,471)

Corporate Congregations: 20.7% (13,726-16,565)

Now watch what happens when we look at a three year span:

Here’s the raw data:

Fellowship/Tiny: Small Pastoral Congregations: (13,170 – 12,223)

Midsize Pastoral Congregations: (43,059 – 42,451)

Awkward/Transition Congregations: (19,188 -18,609)

Program Congregations: (17,855 – 18,286)

Large Program Congregations: (12,241 – 12,471)

Corporate Congregations: (18,283 – 16,565)

Don’t panic about our largest congregations. The majority of them got real about what it means to be a member of their congregation and “cleaned the membership books.” I see this as a strong sign of organizational maturity.

These two graphs really hit home what a difference the time span you’re looking at can make.

______________________________

Rev. Tandi Rogers spends about an eighth of her job researching and analyzing data on behalf of the UUA Board, Leadership Council, and Congregational Life staff. She also serves on the Faith Communities Today interfaith consortium of religious data geeks.

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Tandi Rogers

October 16th, 2015

Numerical Indicators

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By The Numbers: but are we growing?

it’s Friday! Time to snack on data. I’ve been deluged with the question — But are we growing?!

Now, dear ones, you know that there are many indicators to growth. Impact is really the growth I’m most interested in. We’re working at fine tuning some data collection at the UUA to better measure impact. Until then, we classically measure by membership.

Most other traditions count Average Sunday Attendance, but for us that’s still soft data. Why? Because we’re still getting the hang of it. About ten years ago Religious Education Enrollment was also soft. Today, it’s much more reliable. In a couple years I think the majority of our congregations will be sending a solid count of everyone in the building on Sunday (or your other main day of all-gathered worship–whatever worship means to your community.)

So, are we growing?

Don’t get distracted with the squiggly line – On a larger scale it looks like a flat line growing by 1% over 15 years.

Interesting fact — Currently we have 1043 active congregations world-wide. 2% of our member congregation and 2% of our adult membership are abroad.

This represents active congregations for the year indicated belonging to US regions and CLF.

Religious Education is dropping significantly. And this is a ministry we are known to do well. Your Congregational Life staff and the Liberal Religious Educators Association are alarmed, too and trying to figure out what this means for us. When I was with my research counterparts in August we were all wringing our hands about the decline in children and youth. It’s everywhere.

The yearbook with the above data only comes out every-so-often. This is the most current data we have available.

I see opportunity. Many folks are leaving main-line Protestant traditions because of their behind-the-times stance on gay marriage and other liberal issues. We’ve got that. In spades. My question is how welcoming will we be to folks coming from other religions who don’t want to leave all their religious language and practices at the door? Will we make room? Will we be open to be transformed ourselves by expanded community and increased diversity in beliefs? May we make it so!

_________________________

Posted by:
Tandi Rogers

October 9th, 2015

Numerical Indicators

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What if membership was a spectrum?

Created by Carey McDonald, UUA Outreach Director, Lori Emison Clair, Consultant, and Marie Blohowiak, Congregational Life Coordinator and UUAMP Vice President — Created by Carey McDonald, UUA Outreach Director, Lori Emison Clair, Consultant, and Marie Luna, Director of Congregational Life and UUAMP Vice President

As Unitarian Universalists, we have a traditionally operated under a model of church that doesn’t acknowledge the changing social norms about religion. Historically, we’ve only kept track of one aspect of involvement in church life, “membership”, which typically means signing a congregation’s membership book and making an annual pledge. But in reality, people interact with faith communities in dozens of different ways beyond the traditional notion of membership, often deepening and stepping back over the course of their lives. If we truly believe that everyone in our faith movement matters, whether they are official members or not, it is clear we need to re-conceive what it means to be connected to Unitarian Universalism.

We created a spectrum to help congregations see that there are distinct levels of belonging to our faith communities. Together, as leaders in the UU Association of Membership Professionals and as UUA staff working on outreach, we offered a workshop at 2015 General Assembly about how to engage the whole spectrum.

Curious Individual

These are the people who know us and are in sync with our values, but not involved in our programs or ministries. Some examples would include those who participate in community activities related to a UU group, follow UUs on social media, share UU content, read UU books, see and/or support UU social justice actions.

Welcomed Visitor

Those who are involved with UU programs or ministries at a basic or fluid level, and may or may not identify as UU, are at this stage. They may attend events hosted by UU congregations, go to Sunday services occasionally or participate in UU community-oriented ministries and programs (e.g. day care, lecture series). Sometimes they have a friend or family member who serves as a tie to the congregation.

Succeeding in the first two stages (outreach)

Pay attention to how you show up virtually (website, social media, Yelp/Google/search functions, news media), so you look as beautiful from the outside as you do from the inside.
Create multiple entry points that don’t revolve around Sunday morning (get creative! Get passionate!) AND pay attention to visitor experience at all of these entry points.
One transition between welcomed visitor and connected friend is the traditional “pathway to membership,” but support is needed for all transitions.

Connected Friend

After attending services several times, those who attend a one time or low commitment activity outside of services have become a connected individual. This gives them better opportunities to meet people and start building relationships. Having several easy opportunities, like a Circle Dinner, one time small group, helping set up at an event or serving coffee give new folks a way to meet others without making a big commitment.

Engaged Individual

When a person gets involved in a regular activity, such as an affinity group, small group ministry, religious education teacher or serving on a committee, they have engaged with the community. All of these programs require ownership in one way or another, an expectations of regular participation and, in many cases, opportunities to share spiritual journeys with each other.

Integrated Leader

At the final stage in the spectrum, individuals emerge as leaders. We have found that as someone steps into the role of a leader they are more than simply engaged with a community, but they are also integrated. And by being integrated they are changing the community. They put their own personal twist on the programs they lead and that is a deeper level in involvement then just showing up, even on a regular basis. You become an integrated leader when you are willing to put your efforts into making the community better. Some examples would be a committee chair, small group leader or religious professional.

Succeeding along the spectrum (welcoming and membership development)

Make sure facilitators and leaders of groups know how to welcome newcomers at each stage as people enter the spectrum at different points.
Have training in place for leaders to ensure they have healthy boundaries and motives consistent with the mission of your congregation.
Have a tracking system in place to know where people fall on the spectrum. This will be an invaluable resource for recruiting for programs and volunteer opportunities, discovering emerging leaders, as well as those who need assistance in connecting.
We need to understand that there will be people who move both directions on the spectrum, and even leave our path. We want to support them in their journey and leave room for them to comfortably return should their path bring them back.

Looking at these stages calls us to pay attention to how we help people move from one stage to another. Again, most of us will move up and down the spectrum over time, but transitions between stages will always be important for religious leaders to support (the transition of “bridging” from youth to young adulthood is a great example). We hope this model will inspire UUs to think differently about their faith, from outreach to curious individuals all the way to spiritual enrichment for our integrated leaders. It can even include non-congregational groups, conferences or ministries. Embrace the full spectrum!

Additional Resources

Notes from 2015 General Assembly Workshop

Unitarian Universalist Association of Membership Professionals

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Created by Carey McDonald, UUA Outreach Director, Lori Emison Clair, Consultant, and Marie Luna, Director of Congregational Life and UUAMP Vice President

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Carey McDonald

October 6th, 2015

Organizational Maturity, Spiritual Vitality, Uncategorized

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By the Numbers: another serving of pie

Last week I introduced some numbers from a high balcony. Let’s break down those numbers into regions.

And now membership by regions…

Is this what you expected? Anything surprise you?

Next week I’ll show you some growth trends…

____________________________

Posted by:
Tandi Rogers

October 2nd, 2015

Numerical Indicators

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Improving your User Experience (UX), online and in person (Part 3)

In this day and age, peoples’ experience with our UU congregations and groups typically begins online. They engage with our websites, Facebook pages, and Twitter feeds, and the feelings and conclusions they develop will lead them towards, or away from, engaging in our communities. I blogged here this summer about the rising field of User Experience (UX): how it can reveal to us the unintentional signals we send to newcomers and how we can learn a lot from our new users.

If we’re going to do effective outreach online, we some insight into the experience of the large and slightly mysterious pool of people we call prospective visitors. Who are they? What do they want? And how do we design our websites for their positive UX?

Creating personas can help. It’s an imaginative exercise, one that helps us “insiders” see things from a different viewpoint.

For a General Assembly 2015 workshop on websites, I developed two personas and “looked” at two congregations’ websites through their lenses (with their blessing, of course!)

First persona: James from East Tennessee. James is a white male high school student, age 17, who identifies as gay. He’s been raised without religion, yet he has had some profound spiritual experiences he wants to talk about with peers. His ideas about the sacred don’t fit neatly into any box. He calls himself agnostic.

“James” the persona

James has some questions. He goes to the nearest UU congregation’s website, in this case Oak Ridge UU Congregation, and tries to find out:

Is this a place where I can talk about my spirituality?
Will they accept me as a gay person?
What is there for high school youth?
What are the other teens like?

I encourage you to click through ORUUC.org. Are you able to find answers to his questions? How hard, or how easy? It’s a beautiful website. You might notice that right away, the website speaks to his spiritual question. Yes! You might also notice that it doesn’t say it’s an LGBTQ welcoming congregation, though the FAQ indicates that there are transgender-welcoming bathrooms. And where does he know to look for information on the high school youth program? Under “Get Inspired?” “Grow in Faith?” “Be Involved?” He doesn’t really know what any of those three sections are. He’s kind of confused. Even though this is an extravagantly welcoming congregation for a gay teen like himself, he doesn’t know that. Looking at the website he is getting some really positive answers to some of his questions, and is not quite sure about the answers to some others.

“Tricia” and her family

Another persona is Tricia. She is 37 years old, an atheist, a teacher, multiracial, and a mom of two. Her husband is white and believes in God. Their daughter is asking them big questions, and Tricia is looking for a place where their whole family can explore meaning together. She lives in Eastern Massachusetts, and she Googles First Parish in Cambridge to find their website. She explores it with these questions in mind:

Is this a place that includes people of multiple ethnicities and cultures?
What do they believe? Will everyone in my atheist/God-believing family be respected?
What do they teach the kids about God and the supernatural?
Will the kids like it?

She explores FirstParishCambridge.org and immediately sees text and images that tell her this is an intentionally multicultural congregation. She is thrilled to learn this and thinks this bodes well. She loves what they affirm on their homepage: “You are loved… You are free… Your are called…” She wants to know more about what they believe. Where does she look? The navigation bar says “Home, Welcome, Get Connected, Worship, Children/Youth, Justice and Transformation, Y2Y, Pastoral Care, Giving, and Contact Us.” Hmm. No obvious place to click to learn about beliefs. So instead, she clicks on Children/Youth to learn more about the kids programs. She finds this great page called “What We Are Learning.” “Yes!” She says. She reads about “Spirit Play” and “Moral Tales,” which are both focused on the kinds of questions her daughter is asking: “Where did people come from? What are we doing here? What happens when we die?” She really likes this, and the programs sound like things her kids would love to do. She still doesn’t have the detailed answer she seeks about beliefs, but she’s willing to give the congregation a try.

Using these personas, we are able to imagine the experience of a user, and change our design accordingly. For James, we’d make our inclusion of people of all sexual orientations and gender identities much more obvious, with words, photos, and images. For Tricia, we’d create clearer path to find out what UUs believe. For both personas on both websites, we’d do some re-organization and re-titling of the sites’ sections, to ensure our navigation headings are clear, and help our users find what they need to find.

Do you see what James and Tricia helped us see? As Usability.gov makes clear, personas help us write for the appropriate audience, focus our content decisions, test and prioritize, evaluate new content and features, and more. They help us improve our users’ overall experience, by expanding our frames of reference beyond those that have become habitual.

Who do you as a congregation want to make sure you’re reaching? Try creating some personas, some real-seeming people with real needs that might be served by your congregation. You might develop five or six personas, or even more, and look at your website with the questions and concerns of people who are:

Different theologies/spiritual orientations
Different ethnicities/races
Different social classes
Different ages
LGBTQ
In interfaith families
Parents of young children
Single
Going through rough times and needing support
Not experienced participants in any religious community

Two cautions in using personas: one, beware of stereotypes and pigeonholing. Just because you changed your site to work well for your persona who’s a lesbian in an interfaith family, it doesn’t mean that all lesbians in interfaith families are going to like what they see on your website! Every person is unique. Two, don’t use personas heavy-handedly. For example, let your atheist persona help you find places in the site that are unconsciously marginalizing people who don’t believe in God. But don’t let your atheist persona demand removal of references to the sacred in order to be welcoming to her! We want our personas to help us clearly communicate who we are: an inclusive and spiritually-diverse movement that is seeking to grow our love and broaden our welcome.

In addition, real people come with a range of abilities, disabilities, and educational levels. Some users may be having a very difficult experience of the site because of the color contrast, the reliance on un-transcribed video content, or the highfalutin language. The UUA’s Web Team offers guidance and tools for building accessible sites. You don’t even need personas to work on making your site work for people of all abilities.

May personas prove to be a fun, creative way to build a more effective web presence for Unitarian Universalism. I would love to hear your stories of what you learn!

___________________________

Rev. Sarah Gibb Millspaugh, the UUA’s Outreach Associate for Digital Ministries, will be blogging regularly on Growing Unitarian Universalism about the connections between outreach, growth, websites, and social media.

Posted by:
Tandi Rogers

September 29th, 2015

Organizational Maturity, Spiritual Vitality, Uncategorized

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By The Numbers: pie for everyone!

I was on Church of the Larger Fellowship‘s The VUU last week on a segment we called Correlations and Covenants. I talked about data and the implications of knowing who we are more clearly. That’s why I love numbers so much. They can break down assumptions and help us see ourselves and our context more clearly so we can make better decisions as to how we change our behaviors and/ or allocate resources and so much more. I’m going to try to set aside Friday’s blog post for tastes of data in form of (mostly) pie charts.

While talking on The VUU I threw out some numbers and then immediately regretted not having pie charts ready for people to “see” the numbers. I’d like to remedy that here. I now present to you two pies…

What was your assumption before looking at the pie chart above? So many leaders at the regional and national level are from mid-size and larger congregations. We often bring our assumptions that most of our congregations are like our own. And look at that! Over two thirds of our congregations have <160 members!

Another common assumption is that most of our adult members attend the large congregations. Another way to look at that is assuming that most of our adult membership is carried by large congregations.

From this pie chart you can see that most of our adult membership resides in the Small and Mid-Size Pastoral size. The rest of the categories are fairly evenly split.

How does this change your concept of who we are as an Association? How does it change your concept of your own congregation in relationship to the collective? I’d love to hear your thoughts in the comment area.

____________________

Posted by:
Tandi Rogers

September 25th, 2015

Numerical Indicators

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I’m Lost, But I’m Making Record Time

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By The Numbers: Religious Education Growth Trends

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By the Numbers: Religious Education Snap Shot

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Emerging Ministries: 4 critical formation areas for Emerging Ministries

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