{"id":24499,"date":"2021-12-29T13:36:29","date_gmt":"2021-12-29T18:36:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/uusj.net\/wp1\/?p=24499"},"modified":"2021-12-29T13:37:14","modified_gmt":"2021-12-29T18:37:14","slug":"thoughts-on-moral-owners","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/uusj.net\/wp1\/thoughts-on-moral-owners\/","title":{"rendered":"Thoughts on Moral Owners"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignright size-medium wp-image-24501\" src=\"https:\/\/uusj.net\/wp1\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/12\/CharlotteImm-1-420x588.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"214\" height=\"300\" srcset=\"https:\/\/uusj.net\/wp1\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/12\/CharlotteImm-1-420x588.jpg 420w, https:\/\/uusj.net\/wp1\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/12\/CharlotteImm-1.jpg 600w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 214px) 100vw, 214px\" \/><strong><em>Charlotte Jones-Carroll, UUSJ Board Chair<\/em><\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Private sector corporations are accountable to their owners \u2013 usually their shareholders.\u00a0 And governments are accountable to those they govern, usually voters. To whom are non-profit organizations accountable?\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Some say it is to the stakeholders \u2013 anyone with an interest in the non-profit, such as beneficiaries of its services, donors, funders, vendors, board, and staff.\u00a0 From a Policy Governance perspective,\u00a0 a non-profit is accountable to its <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">moral owners<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">, who are part of its stakeholders.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Moral owners are the ones with whom a non-profit board <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">decides what benefits the organization should produce<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">, as part of its mission and vision. Owners are always stakeholders <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">but not all stakeholders are owners.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">UUSJ decided during its recent strategic planning effort that our moral owners are:\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><b>UU individuals,\u00a0<\/b><\/li>\n<li><b>UU congregations,\u00a0<\/b><\/li>\n<li><b>Impacted people and\u00a0<\/b><\/li>\n<li><b>Organizations representing (or led by) impacted people.\u00a0\u00a0<\/b><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The first two might seem obvious. Historically UUSJ functioned as a network of congregations amplifying UU voices and justice-based practices.\u00a0 Further, almost all our funding comes from donations from UU individuals or congregations and grants from the UU Funding Program.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Yet, it became clear as we discussed this that our policy priorities are related to justice for people <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">way beyond<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> our UU universe.\u00a0 We want to center the needs and views of impacted people in making our advocacy decisions.\u00a0 Our policy priorities call us to speak on behalf of immigrants and refugees, persons denied full voting rights, people affected by environmental damage, and those who suffer systemic inequalities.\u00a0 To speak authentically on behalf of these moral owners, we must be in relationship with and accountable to them and their organizations.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">As a result, UUSJ is re-doubling our efforts to partner with such organizations and to listen carefully to the people most impacted. We are also continuing to survey UU individuals. We see collaborative opportunities for justice where our commitment and mission align &#8212; such as when we join in coalition work. We are also looking for more ways to include those impacted directly in our advocacy work.\u00a0 One example is including immigrants with Temporary Protected Status (TPS) or Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) in our meetings with lawmakers on pathways to citizenship.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Accountability is a relational concept \u2013 UUSJ works in a social and institutional setting.\u00a0 There is internal accountability \u2013 the Executive Director reports to the Board of Trustees, and the staff and volunteers report to the Executive Director. Then there is external accountability to our funders and to our members (UUSJ highly values its individual and congregational members).\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">In addition and mainly \u2013 we are accountable to the people on whose behalf we strive to speak and act. If we are truly pursuing justice, we owe faithful stewardship to all our moral owners.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">This means working our way through competing and often conflicting views about the right path. The \u201cbig tent\u201d of Unitarian-Universalism guarantees that we will have UU moral owners with differing views.\u00a0 This becomes even more of a major balancing act when we add the diverse views of impacted people we seek to align with on federal legislation and policies.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The ideal laws we want to see passed rarely have a chance in Congress these days.\u00a0 So UUSJ\u2019s action teams do research, listen to impacted people, hold town halls and webinars and consider views of other faith partners working in the same policy areas.\u00a0 Then we decide where and how to join in petitions, public comments, demonstrations, and Capitol Hill advocacy.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">At best, we define a clear path for advocacy on a particular issue based on our understanding of the policy goals of people affected by that issue and of UUs, as well as how far <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">they <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">are willing to compromise to assure that the ideal does not drive out the good.\u00a0 Progress may be incremental rather than transformative, but it can still move things forward.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">We strive constantly to check our accountability so that the progress we achieve toward our vision is always connected to our UU Principles, our commitment to justice, and our understanding of the urgency and harm experienced by all our moral owners.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Charlotte Jones-Carroll, UUSJ Board Chair Private sector corporations are accountable to their owners \u2013 usually their shareholders.\u00a0 And governments are accountable to those they govern, usually voters. To whom are non-profit organizations accountable?\u00a0\u00a0 Some say it is to the stakeholders \u2013 anyone with an interest in the non-profit, such as beneficiaries of its services, donors, &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/uusj.net\/wp1\/thoughts-on-moral-owners\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Thoughts on Moral Owners<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":16,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1313],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-24499","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-commentary"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/uusj.net\/wp1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24499","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/uusj.net\/wp1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/uusj.net\/wp1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/uusj.net\/wp1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/16"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/uusj.net\/wp1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=24499"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/uusj.net\/wp1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24499\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":24502,"href":"https:\/\/uusj.net\/wp1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24499\/revisions\/24502"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/uusj.net\/wp1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=24499"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/uusj.net\/wp1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=24499"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/uusj.net\/wp1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=24499"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}