The meeting they don't want you to attend - NYYM Budget Saturday

Dear Friend,

Friends United Meeting of the Religious Society of Friends. a worldwide Quaker governing body, has recently been cited in a report for being run by an insulated elite board of insiders. Click here to see the report.

Maybe what I’m ‘on to’ in citing surprisingly similar malfeasance and decline with one regional Quaker governing body, New York Yearly Meeting of the Religious Society of Friends (NYYM), doesn’t stop in the New York region? Is there wisdom to glean for all Quaker Friends in seeing a case study of NYYM in how NOT to run a wider religious body?

Compared with its regional Yearly Meeting peers, NYYM also gives very little financially to Friends United Meeting (FUM), to Friends General Conference (FGC) and to Friends World Committee for Consultation (FWCC). (Three Worldwide Quaker Bodies) Does this practice of under-giving to wider bodies by NYYM, multiplied across many other regional Yearly Meetings allow elitism to occur in these wider bodies? It forces these wider bodies to get financing from sources like trust funds and wealthy individuals, which don’t require much accountability. Many Friends will agree that a lack of financial vigilance in both giving to and spending by the Church, destructively affects the integrity between good Quaker faith and practice.

Quakers were at one time - those who the general public came to trust, those who had nothing to hide - in a world of insulated deceit and poor quality products. Hence the appropriation of the name ‘Quaker’ for the famous oatmeal around 1900. Does the world still trust Quakers in 2007?

Back to our case study. NYYM wants more money in 2008 than it budgeted in 2007. They have invited all NYYM Friends to attend Budget Saturday Financial Services Meeting this coming September 29.

They would prefer you don’t attend however. This is why they put the critical and open meeting at Bulls Head Meetinghouse the farthest from the most NYYM Friends .... where there is no public transportation available.

Have they disallowed again, teleconferencing for regional treasurers, or any interested Friend for that matter, who cannot afford the time or expense to attend this all day, open meeting? Teleconferencing was disallowed twice at the far-off annual sessions in order to keep the details of the financial budgeting process a secret, among a very small in-crowd of rah-rah 'Yearly Meeting Friends' . These are those Friends who are not objective, and are simply staunch supporters of large spending and the stand-alone, reason-to-be existence of NYYM without any authority flowing from Monthly Meetings affiliated with their wider religious government.

The data are clear – showing NYYM as a declining religious body, which has always spent more, and continues to spend 1.5 x more than the governments of nearby growing yearly meetings – NEYM and Baltimore - while providing much less to NYYM ‘taxpayers’.

The point is - Who would have that warm, fuzzy feeling about NYYM if they could witness what is going on at this critical meeting?

And more to the point – in Quakerism, a Yearly Meeting is only what the constituent Monthly Meetings say it is. Period. Why isn’t a Quaker Yearly Meeting simply the planning and implementing one meeting a year of all Monthly Meetings? Why all the bravado? Ego? Elitism? And the money to support the peripheral activities?

Why then does NYYM have three meetings per year and now charge money for members to attend each of them? The answers: Membership decline, Membership decline, and Membership decline.

Membership growth occurs at monthly meetings. Membership decline can occur in both Yearly and Monthly levels.

Bulls Head Meeting is in the middle of nowhere. It is the farthest from the most NYYM members. Bulls Head is the home Meeting of the General Secretary and a growing refuge of the elite corps.

Bulls Head is the perfect place to have the meeting – with those abovementioned who have the interests of an elite but irrelevant organization at heart. What they will try to do over time, mark my words, is to draw more and more resources out of Monthly Meetings, especially those with or are supported in some way by large trust funds, with little or no accountability of how those resources are being used. (And who will care when it is someone else’s money?) There is obviously, to me, still padding in the NYYM budget. For example, where is the electricity surcharge of $200 per month for the NYYM office buried? It doesn’t show in the rent line, which by the way is the actual rent sans electricity in 2007. Did the office rent sans electricity go up for 2008?

What most likely will be given for all these questions will be unsupportable empty statements, not facts. Don’t’ listen to what the elite say. Follow the money and hard evidence in your own Quaker government. Go to the meeting.

Notice how much later Budget Saturday is this year? Notice how much earlier Representative Meeting (where the proposed budget is approved) is this year? This will be why they ‘can’t’ make any changes to their pre-determined agenda. Psst. Don't buy that.

The General Secretary, with the affect of a minister, has been approved at annual sessions, by the clique who can afford to spend 7 days and lots of money to attend. See the cost comparison of of annual sessions of NYYM with NEYM and BaltYM.

The NYYM General Secretary has possibly been given a ‘mandate’ by the inbred to draw more resources up into their elite corps, desiccating the roots. In this vein, General Secretary also plans to attend the Budget Saturday Financial Services Meeting. Would this be a conflict of interest - someone possibly trying to influence what happens at a meeting that has a large influence on his own (already overpaid) salary?*

I have personally seen a Philadelphia YM Gen Sec affect a Financial Stewardship Committee meeting badly.

There was a NYYM proposal and plan to reduce the staff salaries, and then increase them over time. It was totally ignored when it was written over two years ago. Want to see it with a succinct numbers plan? Click here.

Membership growth occurs only at the local Monthly Meeting level. Use the resources of time, talent, and money, first in your own neighborhood. NYYM has misrepresented the membership ‘growth’ in the past two years, and could try it again for a third year straight to make all feel better.

It is clear to many Friends that NYYM continues to have an agenda for which no discussion let alone any dissent is allowed - for example, the Friends World College divestiture in the 1990s. For another example, in the early part of this decade - the questions were whether or not to have a GS, how many days per week this person would be in the office, where the person would live, and how much the position would be paid (without any consideration of membership decline or Monthly Meetings’ ability to pay that salary responsibly). NYYM required a 35% increase in contributions from Monthly Meetings from 2003 to 2005, and now forever, it seems.

Remain vigilant NYYM Friends. Follow the money as the foundation for which the elite body is enabled or the government is run with integrity. Ask NYYM to balance its budget on 2003 funding levels, which would be in line with Baltimore and New England.

Ask also why the NYYM Advancement Committee is now the clearinghouse for ‘ministers’ who receive money to travel to other Monthly Meetings. Doesn’t this smack of a hierarchy of approved ministers paid to come to your Meeting? What happened to the prerogative of Monthly Meetings to approve and pay the expenses of traveling ministers? To me, Monthly Meetings appear to be under assault by those who are ‘more equal’. The world has plenty of hierarchal religions. It doesn’t need another one.

Consider your next vigil for peace not in a protest march about something far way – witness to internal Quaker affairs. Can Friends, or anyone, have peace without Integrity?

Plan to witness what happens at Budget Saturday, on September 29, at Bulls Head Meeting - no matter how much the elite don’t want you there.

Don’t be afraid to ask these hard questions. Then watch and listen. Go and watch the new Clerk of this committee and see if s/he serves the NYYM elite or serves Quakerism. Then go back to your Monthly, Quarterly and smaller regional Meetings and get to work - nourish the roots. The wider bodies of NYYM, FUM, FGC, and FWCC will fix themselves when this happens.

In Friendship,

Glenn R.

* It is highly likely that all of the full-time NYYM employees are ‘overpaid’ when compared with nearby similar-sized Quaker Yearly Meetings. Friends might also consider that sojourning in service to the Church is just that, not a lifetime career.

see why NYYM might be better off divided up - Like Iraq

see a proposal for a five year budget plan to alleviate heavy taxes that was rejected