Support our Kitchen Project with our Annual Campaign

Keeping Connected    December 2019

I hope everyone had a wonderful Thanksgiving weekend and hope you were able to spend some quality time with family and friends. By now, you have received the letter for our Annual Campaign. As you saw, we are looking to improve the quality of our kitchen. This is a long overdue project and very much a necessity. Our appliances are old and not energy-efficient. We need a dishwasher and we need to think about the layout of our kitchen and how we can make it more functional. Although this project is going to require funds, the intent of the project is to provide one new way we can improve our ability to bring in additional revenue to our temple.  With a properly functional kitchen, members will be more apt to hold life cycle celebrations at our temple and we will may be able to rent out our kitchen to a cottage industry, such as a baker.

This kitchen project is just one of many that we are looking into for improving/increasing the revenue streams at our temple. Last year, we hired a consultant to help us think of ways we can improve our revenue stream and be a sustainable congregation. The Board of Trustees has been working on examining the report prepared by this consultant. Besides the kitchen upgrade project, some of the other ideas we are looking into include a summer camp, an after-school program, a travel program, solar panels, a program focused on Jewish learning for special needs adults, rental of the building for music or art classes, and moving the temple’s legacy-giving program forward. We may find some of these are not feasible but we have committees looking into our possibilities, including developing business plans where needed.

It is important that we start thinking about the long-term financial health of our temple. We made the first step by implementing a voluntary dues program, making membership at our temple accessible to more people. We now need to improve the look of our building (I’m hoping for new carpeting this year) and we need to slowly implement some new programs, which will result in increased membership and increased revenue, and will be the key to the sustainability of Congregation Shalom in the years to come.

Happy Hanukkah to all!!

Liz