The 2021 Financial Plan

In the last two years, we have seen rapid growth at the Neighboring Movement. As a result, our financial resources have grown too. We take seriously the responsibility of tracking our budget and making good financial decisions to further the Neighboring Movement’s mission of cultivating community through neighboring to change the world. In an effort to be transparent about our resources we wanted to give you an update on our 2021 financial plan.

Our Income

Most of our funding comes from three sources: donations, grants, and honorariums for teaching or speaking. We have around 280 donors who are individuals or churches who chip in what they can to help cover general expenses at the Neighboring Movement. In contrast, grants are limited in scope to specific projects, based on an original grant proposal. Finally, there are the speaking and teaching gigs at conferences and workshops, which we love because they give us connections to people!

Below we have outlined our expenses to show how much of our total budget is spent on that focus area. Take a look and if you have any questions let us know!

In Churches

Most of the money for this effort comes from a grant called the Thriving Congregations Initiative from the Lilly Endowment. In partnership with the United Methodist Health Ministry Fund, we will use these funds to expand our network of churches using the Good Neighbor Experiment (GNE). GNE is a cohort model for churches who want to be better neighbors and learn concepts of Asset Based Community Development.

35% of the Neighboring Movement’s total expenses will be spent on cultivating community through neighboring in churches. Funds will pay for staff time, training facilitators, an in-person gathering (we hope), travel to promote the GNE, recruiting churches, hosting workshops, and more.

In Kansas

Most of the funds for this work come from a grant from the Rural Democracy Initiative. This grant will help us expand our statewide work in Kansas. We already have a head start thanks to the Kansas Animator’s Network. We will have a new staff person, Claire Gallegos, who will lead this effort and help us to build a statewide asset map and initiate the second cohort of animators.

23% of the Neighboring Movement’s total expenses will be spent on cultivating community through neighboring in the state of Kansas. Funds will pay for staff time, hosting a learning cohort, travel across the state, mini-grants for local communities, stipends for speakers, and travel for an in-person gathering (we hope).

In the SoCe Neighborhood

The City of Wichita is financially supporting the 8 Front Door Project in our neighborhood. We will encourage every neighbor in SoCe to know the neighbors in the 8 homes closest to their own. We also are using private donations to purchase a building in the heart of the neighborhood which will serve as a hub of connection and our office space.

27% of the Neighboring Movement’s total expenses will be spent on cultivating community in the SoCe Neighborhood. Funds will pay for block grants that neighbors can use to have block parties or initiate projects, common space for the neighborhood, our offices, staff time, training and education materials.

As a movement

We continue to do work to expand neighboring as a movement. This includes our podcast which recently went over 12,000 listens and has 150-180 listeners every episode. We also have started hosting Neighboring Community Calls for everyone in our network. Our next one is Feb. 16! Another group has formed around our work called the Gappers which gather to process together how we might come out of the pandemic better than when we entered it.

16% of the Neighboring Movement’s total expenses will be spent on cultivating community as a movement. This includes staff time, administrative costs, our website, podcasting costs, Zoom, and professional memberships.

Our Team

Each of the focus areas above includes a portion of the salaries we pay to our wonderful staff. Living out our values within the staff team is something we take very seriously and hope to model as part of our work. To that end, we have a flat leadership structure and pay scale. All team members are paid $20/hour and we offer full-time staff an additional $4800 insurance stipend. The only exception is for our AmeriCorps Vista who is paid a stipend through that program.

2021 Staff
Adam Barlow-Thompson, Executive Director and co-founder (full-time)
Matt Johnson, Spiritual Formation Director and co-founder (part-time)
Catherine Johnson, Community Connector and co-founder (full-time)
Karen Rice Ratzlaff, Good Neighbor Experiment Coordinator (full-time)
Claire Gallegos, Kansas Animator Coordinator (full-time)
Kristopher Swanson, Program Assistant (part-time)
Lydia Mettee, Administrative Assistant (part-time)
Sydney Roe, AmeriCorps Vista (full-time, paid by the AmeriCorps)

If you have more questions about our budget or contact adam@neighboringmovement.org

If you’d like to support our work financially we’d love you to donate.