February 2017

One of the biggest trepidations I had when I was asked to be president was that I was going to be responsible for overseeing the Strength to Strength campaigns. After all, the “buck” should stop with me.

Our membership has been slowly declining so we’re asking fewer people to help out more and more financially with our Strength to Strength campaign.

I’m so proud at what our Temple is capable of. With a group of Board members taking on the role of callers and with Jody Comins chairing the campaign, we’ve been able to surpass our budgeted goal of $104,000. Yasher koach!   The $104,000 is the amount we need to collect in order to meet our budget which keeps the Temple operating.   If anything unforeseen occurs, like a bad year of snow plowing or extra needed repairs, we are in jeopardy of running a deficit.

In the case of a projected deficit, the Budget Committee would need to go to each committee asking them to scale back their programming even though they were allocated funds at the beginning of the fiscal year.   In order to prevent this from happening, we continue to run our S2S campaign. It gives congregants the chance to give knowing that they are helping us succeed where we might not otherwise.   The list of people who have donated through the middle of January is posted later in this issue of Ruchenu.   Thank you very much for your support. 100% of your contribution goes to our bottom line! Our “Thank You” reception will be held on Sunday, March 19^th featuring musical guest, Herb’s Heard.

As I mentioned earlier, our membership has been slowly declining. However, we might be starting to see a reversing trend and in that spirit, we are having a New Member Shabbat on Friday, March 10^th to celebrate our new members. It would be great to see you there.

I would love to hear from you with any ideas to make Temple Beth Sholom “The Place to Be”. I can always be contacted at President@beth-sholom.org

B’Shalom,
Dave Levinson, President