Servant Leader

Just as Summer inevitably turns to Fall, our beloved Society’s leadership changes at the end of September each year with new local Council and Conference President elections at the end of respective three-year terms.

At the national level, the term of the National President and his/her Board is six years. The current National Council’s Board of Directors began their Board service in 2017. It concludes with that of the National President, when Ralph Middlecamp’s six-year term ends on September 30. Since 2017, well, what a ride! Allow me to share with you just some of the accomplishments made possible through policy development or direct actions taken by this Board.

• They strengthened support of local Councils though enhancements of our Model Bylaws, Standards of Excellence, and a new Safeguarding policy.
• They engaged more members in national service through regions, committees, and task forces.
• They expanded recruitment, leadership inclusion, and Conference support for under-represented ethnic communities and young adults.
• They shepherded six years of profitable National Council financial success and stability, including the policy formation of how to use restricted funds and operating reserves while simultaneously growing fundraising and operational support. Along the way, we increased financial and leadership support for the global Society, and supported three new national subsidiary organizations.
• During the global pandemic, the Board went remote for three National meetings – and doubled our attendance! They also pivoted all of us first to remote activities and then back again to in-person services and gatherings. Along the way they supported growth from 20 to more than 100 national webinars annually.
• The Board provided budgets and policies to rebuild our national public and member websites, and created oversight for better document management and online security systems.
• Finally, this board sold our national office to buy a new building just a block away that doubled our staff workspace, added a larger, interactional boardroom and a beautiful Vincentian chapel. This was accomplished without asking for any membership dues assessments or even a capital campaign, a rare feat among nonprofits!

There is more, but you get the idea. This has been a high-functioning board of directors working on your behalf to support and strengthen the Society in the United States. We recognized the Board members at the closing banquet of our National Assembly, but a few words can’t express the gratitude they are owed for shepherding the National Council over the past six exciting years of the Society.

We also say goodbye, well sort of, to our National President Ralph Middlecamp as his term ends. The good news is that after six years of exceptional, Vincentian servant leadership to the Society in one country, we now share Ralph with the rest of the world. Upon the election and recent installation of the new Council General International President, Ralph has been appointed International First Vice President! This is great news for all of us, as the U.S. Council participates very actively in the work of the global Society. Ralph can keep us informed and up to date on spiritual, service, financial and other opportunities.

Every national Board builds upon the work of those who served previously. New National President John Berry and his newly-appointed Board of Directors will have their own initiatives and goals, with a strong National Council to continue to strengthen in service to you as its members. Finances and staff are strong, and we have relatively few urgent challenges. It’s a great time to re-assess our Society presence, culture and operations (more on this from John soon), and take time to listen, really listen, to our members and the world around us. Thank you, Ralph and our outgoing Board, and with John and our new Board, we can’t wait to get to work!

Yours in Christ,
Dave Barringer
CEO

Every year in the Society of St. Vincent de Paul is an opportunity for new goals, leadership transitions, and reflection on our successes and challenges. At this year’s National Assembly in St, Louis, we did all this and more as we celebrated “Where It All Began” with a pandemic-delayed 175^th (now 178^th) anniversary.

The biggest set of changes is the transition from one National President and Board of Directors to a new set of national officers. John Berry, our National President as of next month, succeeds Ralph Middlecamp, who has led the Society faithfully and effectively through six years of pandemic, economic, and social uncertainties and what all of this has meant for the Society.  John has selected a new Board of Directors, which was ratified by the National Council at our annual Business Meeting held this week. We are now poised with talent for leading in the immediate future.

But what will that future bring? President-Elect John asked all of us to be part of a national listening process as we determine what the Society needs to be to remain true to our Mission and Three Essential Elements in a changing world. Much more to come on this, to be sure!

It is easy to forget that while around 750 Vincentians attended the National Assembly, more than 80,000 or so did not attend. They need to know a lot of what was discussed in St. Louis. Watch for videos of Ralph’s farewell address and recognition of his service at the closing banquet, John’s inaugural member address that lays out his hopes for his upcoming term, and other videos of our general sessions and workshops. These take some time to isolate, edit, and post, etc., so be patient as we release these in the coming weeks. They will each be announced in the e-Gazette as they become website links that you can share with your Council and Conference.

Three general sessions deserve your viewing. Bishop Donald Hying provided another seminal spiritual reflection for us in his last appearance as our National Episcopal Adviser. (He will be succeeded under President Berry’s term by Archbishop Andrew Bellisario from the Archdiocese of Anchorage-Juneau. More on this soon!)  St. Louis Council’s Executive Director/CEO John Foppe delivered a powerful, personal, and inspiring talk to the Assembly based in part on his book, “So What’s Your Excuse?” and Vincentian Father John Rybolt, a foremost authority on the life of St. Vincent de Paul, provide insights on St. Vincent’s varied imagery through the years and thoughts on how Vincent would approach today’s challenges. Coming soon!

A new Ozanam Institute online learning program was launched during the week. More on this elsewhere in the e-Gazette – don’t miss it!

A highlight for many who attended was the Installation Mass for the new President and Board at the “New Cathedral” of St. Louis. While many had been to St. Louis previously, most had never seen the enormous basilica filled with beautiful mosaic tiles including images of our Society founders. And as St. Vincent de Paul is one of three of the city’s patron Saints, his image appears in both mosaic and statue in the Basilica. It was a beautiful and inspiring event!

The National Council enters the 2023-24 year with a profitable 2022-23, an annual budget passed this week, and money in the bank for new initiatives as determined by you and the new Board.  Our three subsidiaries – Disaster Services Corporation, SVDP National Stores and SVDP National Foundation – are healthy and poised for growth and success in their respective missions.  National committees are being re-formed under new and existing banners to reflect our Essential Elements and other priorities. National staff will add a second Stores Director to support new and existing local stores, and an HR professional to assist the National Council and its subsidiaries to manage employee benefits legally and effectively for employee satisfaction and retention.

Nearly a third of the Assembly’s participants were first-timers. Plan now to join them and hundreds of others at our next National Assembly in Phoenix, August 14-17, 2024.

Yours in Christ,
Dave Barringer
CEO

Next week, your National Council will perform two of its most important obligations when it meets in St. Louis. We want all of our members nationwide to understand the impact of these decisions, even the impact on your local Conference. Wow, sounds pretty ominous, doesn’t it?

One responsibility of our membership representative body, called the National Council, is to elect a National President and to ratify the new President’s appointed Board of Directors for its six-year term of office. The Presidential election was held months ago, so that our new President-elect John Berry would then have months to prepare for his time in office and to consider his board appointments and their responsibilities. According to our Rule, the President appoints the board (most of them, anyway – the Regional Vice Presidents are elected by members of their regions) and these appointments are ratified by the membership. This Rule provision is included to assure transparency among our members and the public about who is on the National Board, and hopefully to give them comfort that the right people have been selected according to their skills and experiences both inside and outside of the Society of St. Vincent de Paul. Considering that these Board members will be asked to serve for up to six years, this is not a frivolous undertaking!

The second decision to be made next week is an annual one, to establish a National Council budget for the next fiscal year. Writing this as your national CEO, I feel we are relatively blessed among national organizations at budget formation time. First, despite crazy economic times and a pandemic period that disrupted so many parts of our lives, we have a working, stable membership dues (called solidarity) formula. It is based on the annual income of our member Councils and Conferences, calls for never more than six-tenths of one percent of local income already earned the year prior – sometimes less with excepted revenue categories – and funds less than half of the National Council budget. Second, we have grown non-solidarity revenues to support member services growth. This includes a direct mail fundraising program shared with local participating Councils, planned giving including bequests, and smaller fee programs such as catalogue/book sales. Third, through policy development and management practices we have invested windfall bequests and other gifts and any retained revenues to produce annual investment income that reduces the need for dues funding. Along with managing our expenses properly, we benefit from a strong annual budget that allows for sustainable operations and opportunity for program/services growth with only moderate risk.

There is much more to all this, of course, but the bottom line is that the National Council uses a membership-represented body, the National Council, to provide a representative leadership National Board of Directors, who then provides a strong budget request back to the National Council for its discernment and approval. By the way, the National Council sees the board appointments and the annual budget recommendation at least 45 days before it votes – no slipping things under the door at the last moment!

If you want a membership meeting full of angry shouting, accusations about hidden agendas or funds, and knee-jerk leadership and financial actions, I guess you will need to look elsewhere. (Please fill in your own joke here…) It’s just not in our Vincentian nature or the way we operate. We don’t apologize for being somewhat boring! However, if you want to see a stable, servant leader, membership-driven and led organization in action that has continued to move ahead for 175 years, I invite you to come to the Business Meeting. Or if you prefer, you can watch a video of the meeting that we will bring you soon!

Please thank your voting National Council Member (NCM), almost always the Arch/Diocesan Council President or the President of the oldest District Council where we don’t yet have an Arch/Diocesan Council. We ask, as I hope you do as well, for this NCM role to be taken very seriously. After all, they represent you among nearly 90,000 other US members. When they return from St. Louis after next week, ask what they heard, what they approved, and what they learned on your behalf.

Yours in Christ,
Dave Barringer
CEO

In a few weeks, hundreds of Vincentians from across the country will arrive in St. Louis for the National Assembly under the theme of “Where It All Began.” Thanks to the pandemic, our original 175^th anniversary celebration will be two years later than scheduled.  Let’s take a look not only at where it all began, but also when it all began back in 1845 St. Louis.

St. Louis was a major city in 1845 thanks to its location on the banks of the Mississippi River and its uses for commerce, fur trading, and both military and civilian exploration of all points West. From its 1840 population of 16,469 the city would grow to 77,860 by 1850, becoming the eighth largest American city. The St. Louis Diocese covered a third of the country but with only 75 priests and 33 churches. By 1849, St. Louis would become the second archdiocese, after Baltimore, within the organized states of the Union. It was the only major Catholic presence west of the Mississippi.

St. Louis was considered the gateway to the West from the time of its 1804 launching of the Lewis and Clark expedition until at least the great railroad expansion after the U.S. Civil War. Steamboats and wagon trains regularly started from St. Louis, and much wealth was generated from fitting these expeditions from St. Louis merchants and wagon builders. The city would continue to grow, especially around the time of the 1904 World’s Fair and later decades. For Vincentian purposes, the “Old Cathedral” (the only cathedral in the city at that time) was completed in 1834 in a bustling mixed-use downtown of commerce, shipping, and residences. Today the Old Cathedral sits in a national park at the base of the famous Arch, built in the late 1950’s-early 1960’s. The entire five blocks from the cathedral to the river was razed of old warehouses for the arch’s construction, but the Old Cathedral was gracefully spared.

When the Society of St. Vincent de Paul held its first meeting on November 20, 1845 at the Old Cathedral, life was quite different than we might realize from today’s city and United States.

Nationally, John Tyler’s Presidency gave way to the election of James K. Polk. There were only 26 states in the Union; Florida was added in March of 1845, followed by the former Republic of Texas in December. The Texas addition sparked the Mexican-American War that year, over some disputed territory. The U.S. Naval Academy began in Annapolis in 1845. Newspapers in 1845 included the first usage of the term “Manifest Destiny” and the first accounts of a new game called baseball.

Published pieces that year included the autobiography “Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave” and the first printing of “The Raven” by Edgar Allen Poe.

When our first members met, they met by candlelight or perhaps gas, as light bulbs would not be invented until 1880. They arrived by horseback or carriage, since the earliest cars didn’t come around until 1871. They may have had just a short meeting, since there were no indoor bathrooms back then (late 1840’s)!

In considering our Society’s beginnings, let’s remember that we are older than Goodwill Industries (1902), The American Red Cross (1881), and the Smithsonian Institution (1846). We pre-date basketball (1891) and tennis (1859), the Transcontinental Railroad (1869), the California Gold Rush (1848), and the women’s suffrage movement (1848). The Society of St. Vincent de Paul was not only established before the U.S. Civil War (1861-65), but during the war we even held our first National Assembly! (September 1864 in New York City).

We are only the 7^th country to have a Society presence since our Paris founding in 1833. Irish Catholics had been welcomed years prior to the rich Missouri farmlands, and a gracious reputation preceded more Irish migration in the 1840’s. The great Irish Potato Famine occurred in our formative year, so there was intercontinental travel, by steamship, of clergy and laypersons who would help form the initial St. Louis Conference. The Ireland SVdP’s copy of The Rule was brought to St. Louis and guided our beginnings. To be established in 10 countries in just 12 years (Germany, Mexico and Scotland were also formed in 1845) from Emmanual Bailly’s and Blessed Frederic’s first meeting is surely an act of God.

As you consider joining us for National Assembly in a few weeks, or if you are coming at another time to St. Louis, please visit the Old Cathedral. Imagine what it was like, where and when, our St. Louis founders decided to use a Rule from abroad and get organized using their funds and Catholic faith to serve the city’s poor. If you need further inspiration, a statue of St. Vincent de Paul stands at the front of the cathedral. He is, after all, a patron saint of the city.

Yours in Christ,
Dave Barringer
CEO