© 2019 Emilio Coppola
© 2019 The Urantia Book Fellowship
Emilio Coppola was born and raised a Catholic in Rye, New York, and is now living in Virginia Beach, Virginia. He has been a licensed financial professional since 1988 and has started and run several small businesses. Currently he is the owner of a firm that manages investments and consults with companies on their financial options for funding their businesses. Emilio started reading The Urantia Book in April, 1996, and has attended study groups in several cities throughout the United States over the years. He has been a member of The Urantia Book Society of Greater New York since March 2005, and has served many roles in the society. Emilio has also been a member of the New England Urantia Book Group (UAI) since December 2007. He has been The Urantia Book Fellowship Treasurer since 2009. He has been the Urantia University Treasurer since 2010 . He has been a member of The Urantia Book Foundation IT Round Table meeting over several different years. He is strongly motivated to disseminate the teachings of The Urantia Book, and to serve all of his brothers and sisters in any way that he is able. One may wonder where Emilio gets the energy for his service and dedication. His answer:
“The more I read The Urantia Book, the more I want to tell people about it!” His daily prayer is to do the Father’s will, and he makes himself available for that. Consequently, he finds that opportunities continually flow into his life. Beyond that, for any “figuring out” of how he’ll be used, he simply leaves that to God. He wants to serve The Urantia Book revelation in ways beyond just financial donations; in addition he desires to serve Urantia Book organizations with his talents and time.
¶ The Urantia Book Fellowship Treasurer’s Report — Emilio Coppola, Treasurer — From Vanuary 2019 through Unne 2019
Our 2019 budget is essentially balanced with our in-flows from our previous year’s income. I am proud to say that The Urantia Book Fellowship is on track with our 2019 budget and has been fiscally responsible with the utilization of the donations given. In 2019 The Urantia Book Fellowship will be engaging in a major overhaul of The Urantia Book Fellowship website; this will be an infrastructure expense and not part of our normal budgeting process. Not only will we be overhauling the entire website, but also we will be migrating from Adobe Business Catalyst (BC) platform to the WildApricot (WA) system platform. The WA Migration project is more than 60% complete. The forecasted expense for the entire migration project should be under $70,000. To date, we have expensed about $26,000 for the project.
Our investments are equally split between three investment managers or brokerage firms (Wells Fargo; Raymond James; and Greater Kansas City Community Foundation). In general, our investment portfolios have been performing well given our risk exposure. There is growing concern about the ability for the market to continue to go up and to maintain the pace of growth over the past decade. We continue to monitor our investments, working with our professional financial advisors. I am very concerned that we will not be prepared to generate income off of our portfolio should the market have a significant and extended downturn in prices. I will be investigating in some options like dividend producing stocks as a potential way to insulate the portfolio and generate much needed cash flow.
Our CPA, Gloriann Harris, and Paula Thompson will be completing the financials and we will send the most recent Urantia Book Fellowship Balance Sheet and Profit & Loss reports electronically just shortly before the GC Meeting. (Please feel free to call me at 914 -844-9278 to discuss any questions you may have.)
We secured Manning & Silverman & Co. again out of Chicago as our independent CPA Audit Firm for the 2018 calendar year for the FEF audit. The 2018 audit should begin in September-October 2019. This will be the first time in more than a decade that the audit will be at our office outside of Paula’s home. It is the little things in life that make us so very happy. It is important to note that as an organization we demonstrate “transparency” to our donors and the community we serve, by providing a full independent CPA managed GAAP Audit of The Urantia Book Fellowship’s books and records each year.
As part of our ongoing efforts to move The Urantia Book Fellowship to a more “transparent” and “scalable” organization, I believe rather strongly that a good set of Policies and Procedures is the basis of growing and protecting the organization and its members. I have been advocating for more than six years that FEF adopt a full and comprehensive set of policies and procedures and they are available for purchase from a number of vendors and can then be modified to fit our organization structure and culture. Unfortunately, my idea for this has not been adopted by FEF, however I will continue to raise the concern to the GC and EC. Upcoming Goals:
It is my desire that the Treasurer continues to improve upon the “transparency” and “scalability” of The Urantia Book Fellowship organization–to create and implement policies and procedures that promote accountability and transparency, while being scalable in its nature. It is my intention to concentrate efforts on implementing “Best Practices” organization wide.
In the interest of transparency, many of you know that I have been personally struggling with business and family health challenges that stretch my ability to be truly productive to the organization and The Urantia Book movement in general. I was hoping that I would be past all of these challenges by the end of 2017, I am now hopeful that it will be by the end of 2019 .