London Quaker Meetings funding gap
07 10 2009 | by Keith Walton | Read 579 times
Keith Walton explains the financial difficulties facing London Quaker Meetings
Friends, we are living beyond our means.
Meeting houses across London are currently maintained through a system that pools funds, with a view to sharing the burden as fairly as we can.
London Meeting houses have their upkeep, including running costs (such as heating, lighting, cleaning), wardens and maintenance paid for by Six Weeks Meeting. Six Weeks Meeting receives the rents that Meeting houses raise and also a ‘quota’ that Area Meetings contribute – currently about £90 per member per year. In 1960 we had forty-one Meeting houses and 4,000 members; now we have thirty-five Meetings but have sunk to 1,600 members. Six Weeks Meeting has a small amount of cash in reserve, plus investments of around £300,000, but as we need to spend in excess of half a million pounds each year, these do not provide us with any real cushion.
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