Our Comprehensive Introduction to Congregational Governance

At the 2009 Unitarian Universalist General Assembly, Unity Consulting was asked to present nine hours of training on congregational governance as part of UU University. Our core question for this governance track: How can governance liberate the energy and creativity of Unitarian Universalist congregations to transform souls and bless the world?

​We spent the first part of the track on the basic questions governance needs to answer to enable a congregation's effectiveness in the world, and the last part on the system we feel enables congregations to answer those questions well: Policy Governance® .

We're providing all of the materials we used for the governance track below. You honor the copyright on these materials by using them only for non-commercial purposes. You may copy them for your congregation's non-commercial use as described at: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/

DVD Overview Guide (pdf)
Participant Booklet (pdf)
Powerpoint
"Before -and-After Board Meeting" Script (pdf)

On the UUA's website, on the 2009 UU University Governance Track Page,  you can download MP3 files where lay leaders and ministers talk about the:
  • Benefits of filling the nested bowls and having clarity about governance roles
  • Benefits of Policy Governance®
  • Best practices for a transition to Policy Governance®

On YouTube, you can view highlights from the session:
Part 1: The Experience of the Holy (14 minutes)
Part 2: Nested Bowls of Values, Mission and Ends (8 minutes)
Part 3: Governance Leadership (12 minutes)
Part 4: Indicators of Effective Governance (9 minutes)
Part 5: Introduction to Policy-Based Governance (15 minutes)
Part 6: Before and After Board Meeting (12 minutes)
Part 7: Transition to Policy-Based Governance (16 minutes)
Part 8: Gini Courter’s Governance Charge (if you watch nothing else, watch this) (9 minutes)

(Policy Governance is the registered service mark of John Carver; the authoritative website for the Policy Governance model can be found at www.carvergovernance.com.)