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First, Thank You to everyone who participated in our June Town Hall Meeting—in person or virtually—and a huge Thank You to all who contributed to our Second Mile Giving Campaign. Thanks to your spirit-led generosity, we exceeded our $200,000 goal by $24,000, and we now have an adequately funded 2025 General Budget.
The Finance Committee continues to address Asbury First’s finances through a sequence of integrated work:
- Improving coordination and engagement with other Committees, Teams, Work Areas and Staff (ongoing)
- Reviewing and reforecasting the 2025 General and COC Budgets (complete)
- Closing the identified 2025 General Budget deficit (complete)
- Stabilizing our cash balances (subject of this update)
- Developing balanced 2026 General and COC Budgets (in progress)
- Working with the Financial Sustainability Task Force to develop a long-term sustainable financial plan (in progress)
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Educating and engaging the congregation—all of you—through open communication (finance@asburyfirst.org), Town Hall Meetings, updates (like this one) and prompt access to Finance Committee meeting minutes (which now include a General Budget monthly Income & Expenses Statement) on the Asbury First website (click here).
Stabilizing Cash Balances
The Finance Committee has carefully evaluated and reforecast projected cash-on-hand across all of our fund accounts for the remainder of 2025, the net of all dollars available to pay for monthly expenses associated with general operations. This work identified that planned expenditures from our various funds will reduce available cash, creating the potential for a short-term cash shortage. This is due to the timing difference between incoming funds and outgoing expenses. Of utmost importance, we have sufficient budgeted income to cover all of our expenses. The need is for adequate cash-on-hand to ensure bills and payroll can be paid promptly over the variable time budgeted income is received.
The Finance Committee reviewed this concern and evaluated options to address it. The first option was to utilize our available line of credit to borrow, short term, as needed. This is the intended use of a line of credit, as revenue does not flow into the church evenly throughout the year. Historically, we have not used our line of credit for this purpose, preferring to borrow from ourselves to save interest payments. The other option involved monetizing a significant non-cash asset, a $155,500 interfund loan dating back to 2012, currently owed to the General Budget Fund by the Capital Campaign Fund, and this was the preferred option.
With unanimous support from the Investment Committee, the following proposal was presented and approved by the Governing Board on August 11:
- The obligation for the interfund loan will be transferred from the Capital Campaign Fund to the Capital Improvement Fund where it belongs. This was a loan to pay for a capital project, not part of a capital campaign.
- The lender for this interfund loan will be transferred from the General Budget Fund to the Endowment Fund; this will have the net effect of increasing the cash balance of the General Budget Fund by $155,500, an amount sufficient to stabilize our cash balances.
- The Endowment Fund is loaning this amount to the Capital Improvement Fund as a no-interest loan, and the Endowment Fund loan will be repaid when a known irrevocable charitable remainder trust is received.
This work represents excellent collaboration between the Finance, Property Stewardship and Investments Committees. Additional information on this topic can be found in the Finance Committee’s June Meeting Minutes. If you have any questions or concerns, please write to finance@asburyfirst.org.
The Finance Committee’s next update to the congregation will be in late September, and this update will include information about 2026 budget development, review, and approval timelines.
Dawn Riedy
Chair, on behalf of the Finance Committee
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