From April’s InterConnections feature story, now online at UUA.org:

A fundraising campaign that began in 1993 at the First Unitarian Society of Wilmington, Del., now the First Unitarian Church, was supposed to be all about raising money for a new building project. But along the way the campaign came to be about more than just First Unitarian.

Karel Toll, chair of the fundraising campaign, explains what happened: “In one of our congregational meetings about the campaign a member of the congregation stood up and asked why our large church was raising all this money for bricks and mortar and why we were not sharing some of it with some new or small congregation that did not have our resources?”

It seemed like a reasonable question to Toll. He took it to the board of trustees and asked it to set aside one percent of the money that would be raised. The board agreed. As a result, at the end of the three-year campaign, which raised $1.5 million for a new religious education wing, there was a fund with $15,000.

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About the Author

Sonja L. Cohen

Sonja L. Cohen is managing editor of InterConnections and senior editor of UU World magazine.