UMD Budget Reaches $1.05 Million

In a quiet vote this spring, the Board of Directors approved a $1.05 million budget for fiscal year 2007-2008. Board Member Greg Rowland commented, “What’s special about crossing the threshold of $1 million dollars? In most ways, our organization is no different at $1 million dollars a year than we were at $950,000. The truth is that we’ve long been “spending” more than a million dollars in community resources each year, if you count the thousands of hours of volunteer time, and the hundreds of thousands of dollars of in-kind donations we’ve received in meals and food. No matter how you look at it, the work of addressing emergency needs in Durham – homelessness and hunger, substance abuse and mental health challenges – requires and deserves every dollar we can raise. Some people see ‘$1 million’ and think, ‘Oh, you must be big and fancy.’ The truth is that if you gave us $2 million a year, we’d put every penny to good use just taking care of the essentials. There’d be nothing fancy about it.”

– posted by Phil Marsosudiro, UMD Volunteer