Labor Day weekend has come and gone, the children are back in school, and we just had kick-off Sunday on September 10 th . I don’t know about you but for me this past summer absolutely flew by! That said, the Finance committee thought now would be a good time to provide you with a financial update two thirds of the way into 2023. Overall, we are on firm financial footing through 8/31. We currently have a year-to-date surplus of income over expenses of about $50,000. The primary reason for the surplus is that expenses are below budget. We budgeted the head-of-staff position for 8 months beginning in May and Andrew begins in Mid-October. The youth director’s position was also budgeted beginning in May but was not filled until June. The office administrator role was unfilled for a few months until we added PT staff to perform those functions. Fortunately, we will now be fully staffed once Andrew begins in a few weeks. Unfortunately, our income is currently under budget. Nearly half of that shortfall is associated with non-receipt of a one-time payroll tax credit. We do expect to receive that credit in the next few months. The remaining unfavorable variance is primarily due to pledge income being nearly $22,000 under budget. But with summer ending and vacations behind us, we’re hopeful for a strong close over the next 4 months to get us back on track. Thank you for your generous support of First Pres.

Investment assets are currently near $2.7 million which is up about $650 thousand since the end of 2022. We moved excess liquidity funds from the general operating account to cash reserves to improve investment returns, which account for about half of the increase in assets. We also received a gift to the endowment fund during this time. The remaining increase is attributable to investment returns.