Looking ahead to the work of the next two years, the board of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), A Corporation has approved budgets for the Administrative Services Group (ASG) of $19.4 million for 2023 and $19.9 million for 2024.
Revenue for some of those budgets will come from services that ASG provides to client partners — which will total about $4.6 million in 2023 and $4.8 million in 2024.
Funding for the remainder – amounting to $14.7 million in 2023 and just over $15 million in 2024 – comes from the Presbyterian Mission Agency (80%) and the Office of the General Assembly (20%). The boards of those agencies will consider in April whether to include in their budgets the requested funding for ASG.
The 2022 General Assembly will consider those proposed budgets when it meets this summer.
If approved, those budgets would include funding for:
- Two additional linguists for Global Language Services, plus increases in funding for contract translation services;
- An additional paralegal for the Office of Legal Services;
- Higher insurance costs; and
- A manager to oversee operations and marketing for the conference center that is being created through renovations of the first floor of the denomination’s national office building in downtown Louisville. Those renovations, estimated to cost at least $2.4 million, are needed to host committee meetings of the hybrid General Assembly this summer. But the Office of the General Assembly hopes that after the assembly adjourns, both Presbyterian groups and others will pay to use that space for in-person meetings and online gatherings.
Meeting by Zoom on March 31, the A Corporation board also approved a capital expense budget of $936,000 for 2023 and $690,500 for 2024. That capital budget will cover expenses including improvements to the heating and cooling systems at the denomination’s national office building and infrastructure upgrades to the information technology system.
The board also approved a new Diverse Supplier Policy, which sets target goals for A Corporation’s purchases of goods and services from businesses that are owned by people of color, women and people with disabilities. The new policy sets two goals:
- That diverse suppliers represent at least 10% of the A Corporation’s annual spending; and
- That diverse suppliers represent at least 10% of the total pool of vendors and suppliers that the A Corporation uses.
In 2021, the A Corporation fell shy of that first goal — with just $2.23 million, or 7.4% of the overall spending of $30 million, coming from diverse suppliers, said Kathy Lueckert, president of the A Corporation.
But the number of diverse suppliers would have met the goal, with about 10% of the vendors used (182 of 1,787 vendors) being from diverse suppliers.
With the building renovation, the general contractor met a project goal of having at least 25% of the subcontractors be diverse suppliers — hired for services ranging from demolition to carpentry, drywall installation, and millwork.
