Keeping ready.
Treasurer’s Report – 2025 Annual Meeting
Board of Trustees Beacon Haven
A year ago, Beacon Haven celebrated the centenary of Christian Science nursing care in this community.
During that past century, this community accomplished great things:
in the 1920’s this community built Star of Bethlehem, its first facility
in the 1970’s this community opened Clifton House to resume care
in the 2000’s this community built the facility we are in today to maintain and improve care
And this community continues to do great things: in the 2020’s this community began building an endowment to sustain care now and for the future.
In addition to those milestone projects, I also want to acknowledge the most important accomplishment: keeping care ready and supporting the work of the Christian Science nurses all day, every day, all year.
In her report, Judy mentioned three gifts critical to keeping ready: prayer, time, and resources. This Treasurer’s report focuses on the financial stewardship of these gifts.
There are three ideas that inform the fiscal stewardship work at Beacan Haven right now:
First: keep the budget focused on Christian Science nurses. Directly or indirectly, every expense supports that priority. I will share those #s in a moment.
Second: Gift support from members and donors is what sustains the cost of keeping Christian Science nursing ready here. This has been true for 100 years, but as we have shared over the past few years, annual gift support alone now no longer covers all the increasing cost of keeping ready.
Which brings us to the Third idea: Endowment gifts can fill this funding gap separating annual gift support from the increasing cost of keeping ready. Planned gifts to endowment are already providing a vital resource to keep Christian Science nursing care available here. That work is making important progress . . . . but it is not yet done.
This chart illustrates how the budget is focused on the work of the Christian Science nurse. The green section represent the direct costs of Christian Science nursing at Beacon Haven. 67 cents of every dollar spent at Beacon Haven directly supports Christian Science nursing work. That is up 3% over the prior year.
But there are other costs to remaining ready: maintaining this facility uses 9 cents of every operating dollar. And I am pleased to report that interest expenses remain essentially zero.
18% of the budget covers the cost of meeting government regulations, billing for insurance and Medicare, processing payroll, ordering supplies, hiring and scheduling employees . . . all the essential support that allows our Christian Science nurses to focus exclusively on nursing.
A few years ago, in 2021, this treasurer’s report shared the good news that our Christian Science nurses were finally receiving a sustainable living wage increase. That year, a national funder provided Beacon Haven with a 5-year grant to help cover the increased cost of raising wages to a level where nurses could afford to work as a nurse. That grant funded a truly livable wage.
This next graph takes a closer look at the cost of providing a sustainable living wage.
This line graph shows the daily expense for Christian Science Nursing wages for fiscal years 2016 to 2026, the current year. Beginning in 2018, Beacon Haven began making some modest progress with wages for its nurses.
Then, with substantial help from our national funder, in 2021 (the period shaded yellow) Beacon Haven was able to truly lift wages for all Christian Science nurses to a level that provided a
sustainable living wage and retirement benefit. The size of this uplift demonstrates how limiting wages had become. Without a living wage there can be no nursing staff.
This grant gave Beacon Haven 5 years to get ready to carry the cost of these uplifted wages on its own. So that same year our endowment building work began to prepare for this new financial burden. How big is that cost?
The amount of just the increase in wage expense (not total wages, but just the portion of the increase) represents $175,000 this year. To cover this new cost requires an endowment of $3.5M paying 5% annually.
So now, lets look at gift support and progress with the endowment.
As most of you know, Beacon Haven started as a gift presented on Christmas eve 1920 to Abigail Dyer Thompson by her students.
Ever since that day, gifts from prior generations are what has sustained Christian Science nursing here in this community.
This same statement is true for every Christian Science nursing facility everywhere; all facilities remain open and ready because of gift support.
With gift support, this facility remains a beacon of Christian science nursing here in Minnesota, and across the Upper Midwest, including more recently the greater Chicago area, and now this year, for Wisconsin too.
Support from annual gifts and gifts to endowment account for 61% of all funding used for the Christian Science nursing mission at Beacon Haven.
Medicare and Private fees for care received provide 39% of funding.
10 years ago, that ratio was essentially reversed.
For patient fees, the biggest change is in the portion provided through Medicare. Although Medicare represents only 2% of total patient billing over the past two years, Beacon Haven remains committed to providing access to this benefit. Use of private Medicare Advantage plans is replacing Medicare for most patients.
This graph takes a closer look at gift support.
In her report, Judy mentioned how two types of gift support are essential to keeping ready: annual or monthly gifts that directly support operations and also planned or testamentary gifts used to build the endowment.
This chart illustrates the growing importance of investment earnings from gifts to endowment in funding annual operations. The green portion of the bars represents annual gifts and grants. The blue portion on top is earnings from endowment funds. It is important, however, to see theses earnings as a supplement to ongoing annual gift support to cover growing operating expense. They are not a substitute. Annual gift support remains vital. 
The columns for the middle 5 years (shaded in yellow) illustrate the temporary period when a national funder was providing substantial grant support for the wage increases and other projects, including pandemic period funding. That funder is no longer making grants of any kind.
Some wonderful endowment fund growth is already underway. As you can see in this line graph, our endowment fund has increased over the past few years from just a few thousand dollars to more than $2 million as of this month. This is illustrated by the dark blue part of the line.
However, that still leaves a considerable amount to raise to reach the level needed to support the cost of providing living wages to our Christian Science nurses. The yellow portion of the line represents the additional amount needed to reach that $3.5M goal. And the green portion of the line represents final part of the $5M goal for the endowment.
I invite those who desire to participate in the supply of this need through a planned gift to contact us at Beacon Haven.
To close. As you have seen here, annual costs have increased over the years, and in turn, new gift support is growing to meet this need.
As you make your personal giving plans for both this season and for next year, please consider stretching your gift to help Beacon Haven remain ever-ready to support the work of our Christian Science nurses.
Thank you.
