Decision #7 - Administrative Staff Re-Org
Problem to Be Solved
How do we reorganize the administrative staff for the maximization of talent and the smooth functioning of the Family?
Principles
Principle #1 - Retain Staff
Churches struggle to recruit exceptional talent for two reasons:
In the United States, parishes are non-profits who subsist almost entirely on the donations of the faithful, meaning parishes can rarely pay their employees as well as for-profit businesses, nor are there many opportunities for career advancement.
Strong faith is the most important attribute for a parish employee, so if we are forced to choose between a highly trained person with weak faith, and a moderately trained person with strong faith, the person with strong faith wins out every time. Skills, after all, can be taught, but faith cannot be forced. As such, parishes end up doing more training than recruitment.
Given this, it is essential that parishes work to retain their employees, as (1) these are the individuals who have already proven themselves to be mission-driven and faithful enough to work for the Church and (2) they already possess a wealth of training and knowledge that takes a lot of time to replicate.
To the greatest extent possible, then, we want to avoid cutting or losing staff during Partners in the Gospel staff re-orgs.
Principle #2 - Sustainable Budgeting
The corollary to Principle #1 is that we should avoid adding new staff when possible. Our churches all entered into Partners in the Gospel with balanced budgets and sustainable staffing levels. Even as we shuffle staff into new positions, we want to avoid increasing our staffing levels too drastically, lest our budgets be pushed off-balance. This is especially true regarding the new Regional Staff Model - we do not want to bankrupt a previously sustainable church by adding too heavy a regional burden.
At time of writing (October 26, 2024), we are still working to create a county-wide budget that shows whether we have been successful in this balance. However, in this re-org we have generally tried to approximate this balance by “regionalizing” expenses from each office at equal rates. Now that this re-org is completed, we will know shortly whether we have been successful and where we need to rebalance.
Principle #3 - Maximize Talent
One of the assumed benefits of Partners in the Gospel is the ability to leverage pooled resources for greater benefit, and human resources are very much a part of this calculus.
Imagine, for example, a scenario where two parishes are combined and each has a Receptionist: Oftentimes, these Receptionists are responsible for parish bulletins and communication, in addition to answering phones. It is possible that, between these two individuals, one is really good at the communication piece and the other is really good at the receptionist piece. In that case, we would want the bulletin guru to do communications for both parishes, and the phone wizard to take on that role for both parishes.
Combining resources under Partners in the Gospel should allow us to employ individuals in their areas of talent by allowing one person to serve multiple churches in more focused ways.
Principle #4 - single Point of Contact
Once an organization gets as large as our combined Whatcom County Catholic churches, it is easy to feel overwhelmed and not know who to contact about what. Thankfully, a follow-on benefit of Principle #3 is that specialization has a tendency to simplify org-charts.
Another way to phrase Principle #3 is that we want to establish as many “single points of contact” as possible. When we think of an area of parish responsibility (e.g. finances or facilities or communication), we want to favor an organizational model that allows parishes and staff to go to one person for each of these needs.
Principle #5 - Administrative Only
At this point, we want to be deliberate about only restructuring internally facing structures, meaning only the administrative staff. The more a structure touches our parishioners, the more we need to consult our parishioners through Pastoral Councils and listening sessions. Faith Formation and Liturgy staff are very externally facing, so we are leaving them in place until we have properly consulted our parishioners.
General Structure
In the course of this re-organization, a pattern emerged which informed the final structure.
Administration (finances, facilities, HR, plus high-level coordination) occurs on the regional level.
Parish Life occurs on the local level.
When a church is sufficiently resourced, faith formation is the first split from parish life.
When a church is sufficiently resourced, liturgy and music is the second split from parish life.
In every case, Hispanic Ministry requires at least one additional employee.
As such:
In our locations without offices (Blaine, Deming, Lummi), all parish life is organized by a volunteer coordinator. These volunteers receive assistance from their “regional” office (Ferndale or Lynden).
In our less-resourced locations with offices (Lynden, Ferndale, Viking Catholic), parish life and faith formation each have an employee.
In our more-resouced locations with offices (Assumption and Sacred Heart), parish life, faith formation, and music (/liturgy) each have an employee.
In our locations with Spanish Mass (Assumption and Lynden), there are additional employees for Spanish support (Administrative Assistant and Registrar at Assumption, MSP Missionaries at Lynden).
New Positions
The Whatcom County Catholic churches are one of the largest families in the Archdiocese, affording us the resources but also requiring the creativity to do something new. We have departed from the model Archdiocesan job descriptions and instead adopted job descriptions more akin to a medium-sized business. Below are explanations of these new positions.
#1 - Regional Director of Facilities
Responsible for all physical facilities in the Family. Oversees any maintenance staff or volunteers. Shepherds all contracts through Archdiocesan processes.
#2 - Regional Director of Finance
Responsible for all finances for the Family. Sets financial policies. Creates financial reports. Monitors budgets. Oversees money counters and any bookkeepers.
#3 - Regional Director of Human Resources
Responsible for all Human Resource concerns in the Family. Oversees Virtus compliance. Manages hiring and firing. Helps arrange staff performance reviews.
#4 - Regional Director of Operations
Coordinates activity between Family churches. Sets operational policies. Undertakes strategic initiatives.
#5 - Executive Assistant for Clergy
Manages clergy scheduling, especially for liturgies and meetings with parishioners. Takes on other tasks related to clergy coordination.
#6 - Location Manager
Responsible for the location-based needs of a church with an office. An office manager who also coordinates volunteers and programming (excluding faith formation and sometimes liturgy).
#7 - Church Coordinator
A volunteer responsible for location-based needs of a church without an office. Primary point of contact for that campus, who coordinates with other volunteers.
Official volunteer description
