The ‘Dawn’ losses may reach $2.1 million
By Paula R. Kincaid, The Layman Online, February 17, 2000
LOUISVILLE – “Disaster, or devastating could be used,” said Donald G. Campbell, director of Congregational Ministries Division when he described the financial crisis of “The Dawn .. an Epiphany.”
Campbell provided his assessment during a Feb. 17 meeting of a committee of the General Assembly Council.
The millennial youth/young adult event in Indianapolis may have lost as much as $2.1 million, according to financial figures presented to the General Assembly Council’s executive committee by John Detterick, the council’s executive director. Presbyterian officials are already counting on a $1.7 million loss, but they have also penciled in a $400,000 setaside in case the deficit hits $2.1 million.
The final loss figure will not be determined until contractual commitments are negotiated, said Campbell. “And those negotiations are not easy.”
Mission Support Services, the PCUSA’s legal department and staff members in Christian education are working to resolve the contracts, said Campbell.
Fred Denson of the Congregational Ministries Division committee asked if the staff was “negotiating from a position of strength or weakness?”
“There are very few positions where we are negotiating from strength,” said Campbell, but there are options. The future use of rooms may be part of discussions.
Of the $1.7-million loss, most of the obligations are charges for hotel rooms that were booked and not used.
Campbell said the Congregational Ministry Division’s share of the estimated $1.7 million debt is $900,000. He said the money would be compiled from all program areas.
“There may be some projects we will not be able to tackle or tackle as quickly,” he said. “If there is a way of stretching a dollar to produce resources they [the staff] will do that.”
Awareness came too late
Campbell said the awareness came in December that “the climate in the country was more into staying home than going out” and that that climate was going to “drastically affect the Dawn event.” By then, he said it would have cost more to cancel the event than to go forward.
There is a learning aspect to this, said Campbell. Staff will use the experience as a case study in how to do events in the future. In response to a question asked during the executive committee meeting concerning lessons learned from the Dawn, Detterick said a case study will be compiled “not intended to point fingers and lay blame” but to be used in developing “our own course in project management.” The course, he said, will be a training tool for key personnel of future projects.
“We have developed some bad habits during the years,” said Detterick. “We have not done some things that some of us believe are elementary.”
Detterick said commitments were made that were not reviewed by the legal department.
“We had expected people to follow through on implementation and arrangements who were not prepared to do it; and we had people doing things on their own,” he said. “There are specifics behind each of those we have documented.”
The Soul Children of Chicago, a 40-member choir of children ages 7-17, performed on Dec. 28 as part of The Dawn’s entertainment.‘Surplus of the Holy Spirit’
“While we did incur a financial debt, we did have a surplus of the Holy Spirit, and a positive impact on our denomination,” said Ed Craxton, associate director of the denomination’s Christian Education Program Area.
A staff member who worked with the Dawn called it a “humbling event. It was wonderful for some people, but not for as many as we expected.”
A short video of The Dawn was shown to the committee. Clips included a speaker encouraging the youth to read and learn the Bible and then “to make up your own mind about it.”
Another speaker told the youth, “You are children of God without blemish.”
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