This is the “priorities exercise” the Presbyterian Mission Agency board participated in Sept. 24 – not to actually allocate money, but to give board members a sense of the types of decisions they may face in crafting the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) mission budget for 2017 and 2018.
The PC(USA) faces the reality that its unrestricted reserves are drying up – they are expected to be exhausted by the end of 2016 – and that some ministry areas are funded more heavily with unrestricted dollars.
Text of the exercise follows:
The Presbyterian Mission Program Fund (PMPF) is the unrestricted fund for the Presbyterian Mission Agency. We are required to maintain a reserve of uncommitted funds that total at least 30% of the unified portion of the General Assembly Mission (now Presbyterian Mission Agency) Budget for cash flow and contingency. To restore the required reserve of uncommitted funds, the Mission Agency must cut its expenses related to programs that require significant unrestricted funds.
On the next page is a list of the programs and services of the Presbyterian Mission Agency that are either at least 50% funded by unrestricted revenue or are listed due to the size of the unrestricted funding in its budget (even though the percentage of unrestricted dollars in their total budget is under 50%).
Your assignment is to allocate 100 “priority points” to these programs, based on your answers to the following questions:
- What are the programs that the PC(USA) should prioritize in the coming 3 years, even if there are no restricted funds or program fees to pay for them?
- What is needed for the PC(USA) that no one else but the PMA can do?
- If a particular program went away, who would notice?
