Fundraising Campaign

Fundraising Campaign History

•  One year ago, our ministry had accumulated $4.2 million in loans to help buy, build and equip our current campus.

•  One year later our congregants have pledged over $1.8 million payable over a three-year period.

•  Around $450,000 in pledged contributions have already been received.

•  An additional $195.000 in one-time contributions has also been received.

The progress we have made is truly worthy of celebration. Still, there is much work yet to do. We have two years remaining in our Fundraising Campaign, and we encourage you to continue honoring your pledges and sustaining the support you have provided to our ministry over the past year.

At this continued rate of commitment, by the end of another two years we will have paid off one of our loans completely, effectively reducing our original debt in half!!!

Together, we will achieve our goals!

Following comes from an April 1, 2008 Mailing to our congregation
If you would like to read the PDF of that mailing please click here.

What a Difference a Year Makes!

Where We Were
Alittle over a year ago, our ministry faced a critical financial situation. Prompted by growth and a new vision, the church had initiated a “Building a Dream” campaign in 1997. Through this initiative, our ministry invested a total of roughly $7.2 million to buy, build and equip our current campus: the buildings and the land on which they sit, as well as vacant land purchased in the hope of expanding our church home and campus in the future.

Congregants provided the money to cover about 40% of that investment. To cover the rest, our ministry accumulated a significant debt structure of $4.2 million in loans.

This debt was beginning to put a tremendous strain on our ability to serve our spiritual community. The loan payments we were required to make totalled more than $450,000 each year in principle and interest. This was causing ministry expenses to consistently exceed the income we were able to generate. We were forced to eliminate staff positions, cut programs and delay much needed maintenance
and improvements of the campus in order to keep our budget and finances balanced.

In addition, our ministry had been forced to draw from cash reserves – or savings – to make up for shortfalls, reducing our cash reserves to less than $100,000. Furthermore, a balloon payment of $2 million was due on our loans in April of 2007, an impending deadline that was cause for some concern.

What We Did
Knowing that our greatest strength comes from our Unity, we gathered all of you – our congregants – together to determine
how best to deal with this critical situation. Through written surveys, personal interviews and other feedback forums, our congregants made it very clear that they wanted to act strongly and quickly to reduce our ministry’s debt.

In response to this congregant input, the Board of Trustees unanimously voted to launch a Fundraising Campaign last year to reduce the debt.

Congregants were asked to pray and to discern how they were able to contribute, and to make a financial commitment to the Fundraising Campaign to ensure that our ministry would continue to grow, prosper and make a difference in our community and world.

The long-range goal of the Campaign was to give greater life to our vision and mission, and to build strong community. The more immediate goal was to retire our mortgage and create financial freedom for our ministry. Congregants were assured that all money raised through the Fundraising Campaign would be deposited into a separate account and used exclusively to eliminate
our debt.

Where We Are Now
One year later, this Campaign has proven to be a true blessing to our ministry. It has served as a magnificent opportunity to build strong community among our congregants, and has created a collective consciousness for all of us to solidify and foster the successful future of our spiritual home.

To date, our congregants have pledged $1,808,345 payable over the three-year term of the Campaign. Our progress during this first year is as follows:

1) Contributions already received against Campaign pledges are about $450,000.

2) Contributions received from those who did not make a pledge, but made a one-time contribution to the Campaign, are about $195,000.

3) After refinancing our debt with more attractive terms, the church has put all of the money we have saved through our new, lower mortgage payments into a loan reserve account.

Through these three measures, we have been able to pay down our mortgage from $4 million to $3.25 million!

Our tithes on the approximately $645,000 we have collected have also allowed us to contribute over $30,000 each to both the Valley of the Sun Habitat for Humanity and The Hunger Project. Because we are a tithing ministry, these tithes are being drawn from our general fund so that every dollar given to the Campaign remains dedicated to debt reduction, while we stay true to the tithing principles we teach.

Where We Go From Here
Clearly, the progress we have made over the past year is worthy of celebration. Thank You, Thank You, Thank You for your support, participation and belief in this ministry! We continue to be very excited and thankful for the generous support the ministry has received and – even more importantly – for the strong sense of community that continues to build as we work together to further secure our wonderful church home.

Still, there is much work yet to be done. We have two years remaining in our Fundraising Campaign, and we encourage each of you to continue honoring your pledges and sustaining the support you have provided to our ministry over the past year.

And if you are new to our spiritual community, we invite you to join the party!!!

Some Fundraising Campaigns have a tendency to lose momentum after the initial surge. We, however, have set an intention that our Campaign will not falter but, rather, will continue to grow in success. We ask each of you to hold this intention in consciousness, and we ask for your continued prayers that we achieve all that we have set out to do.

If everyone continues to honor their pledges, and we receive the same financial support as we did over the past year, in two years’ time we will have completely paid off one of our loans, effectively reducing our original debt in half!!!

Together, we can achieve our goals. Our faith will grow stronger, our community will grow closer, our vision will become clearer, and our finances will become even more abundant. We will also continue to be more connected, energized and focused as a community as we envision what we want for ourselves and our ministry.

Our Campaign celebration has really just begun.

Gratitude Labyrinth to Create a BIG ‘Thank You!’

An article from the January / February 2008 issue of Upward Venture Newsletter

Early on in the Fundraising Campaign, a “Thank You” Committee was formed to ensure that we communicated to all contributors how much their donations were appreciated. This amazing group of people wrote thoughtful notes of gratitude for each and every contribution made, and have been a part of the ongoing discussion of what the BIG “Thank You” will look like as we continue to move toward our goal of achieving financial freedom over the next three years.

One of the ideas that has been received with great enthusiasm is a Gratitude Labyrinth.

What is a Labyrinth, you ask? A Labyrinth is an ancient symbol that relates to wholeness. It combines the imagery of the circle and the spiral into a meandering but purposeful path.

Labyrinths have long been used as meditation and prayer tools. One is invited to enter the labyrinth, to walk the curved and winding path to the center, and then exit the labyrinth, following the same path out. This represents a journey to our own center, and then a journey back out again into the world after having gleaned the gifts of a meditative and prayerful time.

Many of you that have attended Unity Village have probably visited the Labyrinth there, or may have experienced the Labyrinth at the Franciscan Renewal Center here locally.

Our own Gratitude Labyrinth would be constructed of bricks displaying the name of each donor to the Fundraising Campaign. Serving as a visual “Thank You” to everyone who participated, it would be located as an extension of the existing Petersen Prayer Garden on the south side of the building. It would be enclosed with walls and vegetation, with an opening to the outside community through a gate to the south. Our Labyrinth would not only invite our spiritual family into a deeper walk of gratitude, meditation and prayer, but would also welcome, reach out and support those in our greater community who are seeking a journey to their center and looking for their own path.

Gratitude Labyrinth Will Serve as Huge ‘Thank You’ to Campaign Contributors

An article from the May / June 2008 issue of Upward Venture Newsletter

It is the desire of this ministry to fully express the amazing impact that every contribution has had on our Fundraising Campaign. After much conversation with the campaign committees, congregants and staff the concept of a Gratitude Labyrinth emerged.

Reverend Maraj, Committee Chair Cathee Tankersley and Board President Pam Petersen invite you to join them May 4 for the Groundbreaking of the Gratitude Labyrinth just south of the Petersen Prayer Garden. The ceremony will be held after the third service.

A Labyrinth is a metaphor for the spiritual path we take. It symbolizes the journey to our inner self (Center/God), it represents the path back, now wiser through prayer and meditation, to reconnect with the outer world. This is our path of gratitude. Our “Gratitude Labyrinth” is not only to honor those we are grateful to for supporting our financial campaign but to acknowledge the infinite circular flow of God’s abundance in our lives and the life of this ministry.

Fundraising Campaign Is Accomplishing What We Intended

An article by Rev. Richard Maraj, Lead Minister and Bruce Mosby, Executive Director as seen in the September / October 2007 issue of Upward Venture Newsletter

This is is the first of many articles that we will be writing to you over the next three years, through the summer of 2010. The purpose of these articles, which will periodically appear in church publications like this one, is to report to you on the status of our Fundraising Campaign pledges and how much we actually collect over the next three years, and to keep you apprised of how our pledge receipts are working to pay down our church mortgage.

Our intention with these updates is not to overwhelm you but, rather, to fulfill our promise that we would keep our Unity community informed about the progress of the pledge receipts and their application to our intended goal of paying down the mortgage.

Prior to the launch of the Fundraising Campaign, our church held two mortgages: a $2.3 million building loan with a 6.95% interest rate and a $1.885 million land note with a 6.9% interest rate.

In April 2007, we refinanced these two mortgages. We now have two loans for $2 million each, with lower interest rates of 6% and 5.75%, respectively. We have seven years to pay off the first of those loans. The other loan has a shorter, three-year payoff term that is designed to coincide with the end of our three-year Fundraising Campaign pledge period.

So far our church congregants have pledged more than $1.7 million dollars to our Campaign, which they have agreed to pay over the next three years. As your church leaders, we are holding a vision and intention that all of those pledges will actually be fulfilled, and that we will also receive the additional sum we need to pay off the $2 million loan due in April 2010. We invite all of you to hold this intention with us, as this will be a significant achievement and milestone for our church.

Here are the relevant numbers to date:
• The church has already received $266,000 of the $1.7 million that have been pledged to our Fundraising Campaign.
• Additional contributors who did not make a pledge have also given one-time gifts to the Campaign totalling $157,000.
• So .... the total Campaign dollars the church has received thus far is $423,000. In September 2007, the church will make a $400,000 payment on the three-year loan, reducing it from $2 million to
$1.6 million. (Another payment will be due in March of 2008.)

As you can see, our Campaign dollars are doing exactly what they were intended to accomplish ... paying down our church mortgage. We thank all of you for helping us to achieve our Campaign goal, and ask for your continued prayers that we achieve all that we have set out to do!

Wednesday, June 27 • 2-8 p.m.

Fundraising Prayer Vigil

Concluding with our Wednesday Evening Healing Service at 6 p.m. in the Chapel To give thanks for what we have already achieved with our Unity of Phoenix Fundraising Campaign, and to pray for its continued success, we will be holding a special Prayer Vigil on June 27 from 2 to 8 p.m. We warmly invite you to join us at any time during this six-hour Vigil -- in person or wherever you are-- to help build momentum for our Campaign through the power of prayer!

Prayer is a powerful way to achieve spiritual and other goals, and to strengthen our awareness of God's presence in our lives. By uniting in prayer, we can celebrate the success we have already achieved and embrace even more powerful moments of triumph!

Please plan to join us during this special day of prayer! Special
prayer slips are available at the Welcome tent; if you would like a prayer read during the Vigil, be sure to fill out and submit a prayer request.

May 16, 2007

Dear Congregant/Member:

Thank you for your interest in Unity of Phoenix and our financial situation; we so appreciate your interest and dedication to this ministry. We are delighted to share with you the information regarding the refinancing of our church loans. Throughout many of the fundraising campaign lunches and dinners, you were informed of the latest progress pertaining to the refinancing of our church mortgage loans. Our desire is to share the refinancing status and information, which is now complete.

M&I Bank previously held our loans. We had two loans totaling about $4 million (the amount stated over the many months leading up to the fundraising campaign was $4.2 million, but they were paid down to $4 million by the time of refinancing). The two loans had interest rates of 6.95% and 6.90%. In total we paid about $37,000 per month in mortgage payments.

We had three banks that expressed interest and, in fact, competed for the opportunity to refinance our $4 million debt. We were blessed to have such aggressive interest in our Ministry by the financial community. Our historical and current financial information was thoroughly reviewed and analyzed by these banks over the course of several months. Each bank reached the conclusion that our system of financial management was one of the best among large churches in the Valley.

Further, the historical and current information shared with the banks regarding our congregation indicated to them that there is a core congregant base that is tremendously loyal and dedicated to this ministry. And finally, these two factors -- combined with our leadership, management and staff -- impressed each bank that Unity of Phoenix was a “sound” credit risk for them, and this is why we were aggressively pursued for refinancing.

Our loans were refinanced with JP Morgan Chase Bank. And all of our daily banking relationships will also move to Chase Bank from M&I Bank. (We do appreciate the great business relationship we've had with M&I over the years, and we thank them for their financial partnership.)

We have two loans with Chase Bank now. They were structured with the fundraising campaign in mind. One loan for $2 million is a 7-year loan at 6.00%. The second loan, also for $2 million, was structured to coincide with our 3-year fundraising campaign commitments. It is an interest-only loan for 3 years at 5.75%. Our monthly payments are now $22,500 versus $37,000 previously, for a savings of $14,500 each month. Over a year, that savings totals $174,000.

This interest-only loan is sort of like a “revolving loan,” though it is not. It's like a revolving loan in that we can pay down the principal amount of the loan easily, at any time, and in any amounts. This is the feature that corresponds to our 3-year campaign pledges.

So as pledge dollars come in over the months of our 3-year pledge horizon, we can take those dollars and pay down this loan. In offering this option to us, Chase Bank felt that if the church was confident that the campaign would bring in at least $2 million in contributions over 3 years, we could easily pay off this loan.

As you may know, we currently have campaign pledges of $1,681,299 over the next 3 years, from April 2007 to April 2010. With everyone's continued support, we are well within striking distance of achieving the goal of completely paying off this $2 million loan over the next 3 years.

Thank you for your continued support of this ministry. If you have any additional questions or comments, I would be happy to talk with you. Please know that the strength and unity of every part of our Unity community is what allowed this refinancing to take place and under such favorable terms.

Our congregants, great staff, and dedicated board, and the management of this church each played a role in this process. You have held the vision of this ministry to be the best that it can be. Thank YOU for doing your part in making this ministry great.

With deepest gratitude and blessings,
Bruce D. Mosby, Executive Director
bmosby@unityphx.org 602-978-3200, Ext. 254

Easter Sunday, April 8

To All Who Have Supported Our Campaign:

Thank you!! You have helped make our Fundraising Campaign – Together We Prosper-God is our Source – a tremendous success. We are blessed by the outpouring of generosity from our church family. We are so grateful for your commitment to support us as we realize our church’s vision and mission and eliminate our debt.

Our success, of course, is not limited to a fundraising amount. Together, with God, we have co-created many gifts. The campaign process has more clearly defined our spiritual home and its principles, built a stronger community, deepened our faith, and given us the opportunity to rally as a family to ensure a prosperous future for our church. You have made a difference. Increased church attendance and Sunday offerings during this time reflect the clear intention to claim God is our Source. We are, indeed, blessed.

Your gift is invaluable to our church in many ways. We extend to you are warmest gratitude for your continued commitment to the Campaign and to Unity of Phoenix. Blessings of Gratitude,
Rev. Richard Maraj, Lead Minister
Rev. Alice Anderson, Pastoral Care Minister
Rev. Shannon Olesen, Minister of Youth & Family Ministry
Bruce Mosby, Executive Director
Penni Honey, Operations Manager

P.S. If you have pledged a future commitment to our campaign, the church office will provide you with a periodic update of your commitment and an envelope in which to submit your gifts.

From the March, 2007 Campaign Brochure

From Your Minister and
Campaign Co-Chairpersons

Our Fundraising Campaign is an opportunity for all of us. It is an opportunity to put our faith in action, to support our vision and mission, to build community, to honor God, and to accomplish something greater than anyone of us could do alone.

Scripture tells us, “I can do all things through God who strengthens me.” We all draw strength from our church, and now it is time to give something back to the source of our strength. We have the power to succeed in all areas of our lives. We have the power to eliminate our debt and free our ministry to move forward touching and healing lives.

Achieving this great goal requires that we all make a commitment to use our faith, hold a vision, be true to our mission and make a financial commitment over and above our regular giving and tithes to reduce our debt.

The Campaign brochure has information on the details of our Fundraising Campaign. As you read through the brochure, please keep in mind what Unity of Phoenix means to you. Also keep in mind how your faith has helped and continues to help you with your personal goals.

On March 25, we ask that you bring your commitment envelope to service. Every commitment, regardless of the amount, will help us achieve our goal. A debt-free church will free us to expand our ministries and bless even more individuals and families with our services, facilities and programs.

If you have any questions about the campaign we are all available to talk with you. Together we will prosper because God is our Source.

Rev. Richard Maraj, Lead Minister
Pat Clegg, Campaign Co-Chair
Melissa Knecht, Campaign Co-Chair
Ken Lange, Campaign Co-Chair
Al McCoy, Campaign Co-Chair

From November 2006 Upward Venture Newsletter

To All in Our Unity of Phoenix Community,

During the past 10 months many of you in the congregation have participated in Family Meetings, Surveys, Focus Group Sessions, and a World Café session to provide much valuable collective discussion and input on how to move this ministry forward. 

What was spoken loud and clear is the congregation’s top priority to “get our church financial house in order”, (meaning pay off the $4.2 million debt on our land and building); even if requires launching a fundraising campaign. 

Having worked together to arrive at this priority, it is time for all of us together to take a major step in the life of our Unity of Phoenix Church. I did not know what to expect when I moved to Phoenix, but I am thrilled to part of this adventure.

To accomplish the first step in launching this major fundraising campaign, I need your help. Please take a few minutes and complete our Fundraising Readiness Survey. (Read the results)

Your input will ensure we are headed in the right direction, together. We will use your guidance to create our plans. You will see the results of the survey in our Upward Venture newsletter and other congregant communications.

In order to have a successful fundraising campaign, the Board of Directors and I will use the services of The Church Development Foundation, a firm that specializes in helping Unity churches raise funds for debt and buildings. I have worked with them before and they “understand” Unity.

In the book of Jeremiah, God says, “For I know the plans I have for you, plans to prosper you and not harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.” God’s plan for us is to prosper and succeed.

Let’s work together to make this fundraising campaign a success. Let's pray together and hold the intention together as we achieve financial freedom and the great future God has planned for us!!

Sincerely,
Richard Maraj
Lead Minister

January 30, 2007

What to Expect: A Calendar Overview

Immediately
Everyone Is Invited into Prayer and Participation

Mid- to Late-January
Organize Campaign Committees
Initiate Communications Strategy

Early to Mid-February
Finalize Campaign Plans and Activities

Mid-February to Mid-March
Events & Gatherings with Rev. Maraj & Spiritual Leadership Team
Campaign Prayer Activities

Mid-March
Commitment Brochures Mailed

Late March
Commitment Sunday: March 25
Campaign Follow-up

Ogoing
Raise consciousness, build community, nurture youth and family, provide outreach to our community and claim God's abundance.

Intention
Establish Financial Freedom

January 20, 2007

We will keep you informed about our fundraising campaign.

We will be mailing a newsletter regularly to all Unity of Phoenix congregants for which we have a mailing address. We will also post in pdf form a copy of each newsletter here online.

January 2007

You Are Invited!!!!!
Fundraising Campaign Committees
Volunteer Organizational Meeting
Thursday, January 11, 7 p.m. (in the Sanctuary)
(Childcare will be provided)

We are seeking volunteers to join the following committees:
• Prayer • Events • Communications • Ambassador • Thanks

Your participation in the campaign will require very little of your time, but will make a big difference for our Unity community. Your three months of committee work will help to make our Unity of Phoenix vision a reality ... plus, you’ll have the opportunity to make new friends and leave your unique imprint on the campaign and, most importantly, our church.

Please plan to attend this meeting to find out how you can help! At the meeting, we will:
• Review results of our Campaign Readiness Assessment;
• Provide information about the state of our church;
• Share the details of our Fundraising Campaign Plan;
• Review Campaign Committee duties; and
• Establish Campaign Committees.

If you are unable to attend this meeting, but want to join one of our committees, please contact Beth Marks at bmarks@unityphx.org or 602.978.3200, Ext. 333