One in a series of introductions to the subcommittees of the Bishop Search Committee
Hello, we’re the Financial Oversight Subcommittee. Chair, Mr. Craig Riemer (All Saints’, Riverside). Members: Ms. Kathy Eisel (St. Luke’s, Monrovia); and the Rev. Dr. Rachel Nyback (St. Cross, Hermosa Beach).
What does your subcommittee do? We are charged with monitoring the expenses incurred by the Search Committee. In particular, we review the invoices submitted for payment: Is the expense attributable to the Search Committee as opposed to the Transitions Committee or something else? Is the charge consistent with any contract with the vendor and otherwise reasonable in amount? Is the documentation submitted with the invoice clear and complete, and is it sufficient to support the amount charged? At the end of each month, we submit an expense report to the Search Committee co-chairs for their consideration to be forwarded to the Standing Committee. We also prepared a budget to control the total amount of the expenses to be incurred in the search process, which we have estimated to be just shy of $77,000.
A financial subcommittee might not be the first thing we’d think of when conducting a bishop search. Say more about the role you play in the process. The Search Committee has lots of moving parts acting simultaneously. Some members worked on the beginning of the process, such as scheduling and conducting the listening sessions. Others are more closely involved in a later stage of the process, such as arranging the discernment retreat. Managing all those different efforts is a big job that falls on the shoulders of the co-chairs. The financial oversight subcommittee is designed to ease the co-chairs’ burden a little bit by providing a second set of eyes to make sure that the financial details of the search process do not get lost in the shuffle.
What are some of the expenses involved in the search? The most significant expenses include the accommodations for the discernment retreat, at which the entire Search Committee will interview a small group of the most promising candidates, and the travel expenses to bring those candidates to the retreat. Another substantial expense is the search consultant hired by the Standing Committee, which is standard operating procedure for a bishop search in the Episcopal Church. (Her assistance has been invaluable.) Other expenses include the Spanish language interpreters at the listening sessions, the Holy Cow! online survey and the services of the consultant who prepared and analyzed the results, and catering expenses for several in-person daylong meetings of the full committee.
What’s the biggest challenge you’ve faced during the search? We can’t say that any of our work has been particularly difficult, but the single task that took the longest was the preparation of the budget, since it required us to predict every event that might occur in the search process, to imagine every type of expense that those events might involve, and to estimate (or solicit other people’s estimates) the amount of those possible expenses. We are glad to have that task behind us!