CHHSM Fund Creates, Leaves Lasting Legacy

Emily Howard is the current CHHSM Scholar. The program is funded by CHHSM’s Legacy Fund.

“When I came into the first CHHSM events I attended, I felt a new dimension of my call to ministry.”

That’s how current CHHSM Scholar Emily Howard describes her experience of being introduced to the world of CHHSM members. Howard is one of many people who have benefited from the services and programs provided by CHHSM’s Legacy Fund.

The Legacy Fund was created in 2012 as part of CHHSM’s 75th anniversary, and quickly surpassed the initial goal of raising $300,000. The fund provides training for individuals, governance boards, and member ministries in servant leadership and leadership formation strategies. Funds are allocated by the CHHSM Board of Directors where the need is greatest and where the resources will have the most impact.

“CHHSM is the place where UCC health and human service ministries celebrate the history and heritage of diakonal witness to the church and wider world,” says Michael J. Readinger, president and CEO. “We help prepare excellent servant leaders for the future. The Legacy Fund initiatives create the needed support for health and human service leaders, who often can become overwhelmed by their organization’s day-to-day demands.”

Thanks to the Legacy Fund, CHHSM’s core leadership formation programs include:

* The Nollau Institute and Nollau To You, where lay and ordained health and human service professionals learn about faith-based, servant leadership; and Institute graduates are consecrated as Diakonal Ministers;

* The Rev. Jerry W. Paul CHHSM Scholar Program, which affords UCC seminarians the opportunity to discern calls to health and human service ministries;

* Consultation and Vocational Services: these include seminars on theologically-grounded governance education; and consultations that help CHHSM members create heathier organizational cultures, which in turn helps each ministry’s team members more effectively do their work.

Kenney Washington

Kenney Washington, director of client services at the UCC’s Back Bay Mission in Biloxi, Miss., is a Legacy Fund scholarship recipient and current Nollau Institute class member. He says he is grateful for all the support he’s received.

“It gives me great pleasure and joy to be a recipient of a scholarship to attend the Nollau Institute, and to be supported financially by Nollau and Back Bay Mission,” Washington says. By making that kind of commitment, “both have displayed a belief in me to learn and grow from this experience.”

“Nollau Institute will allow me to grow spiritually and professionally, while also establishing lifelong friends and connections along the way,” he adds.

Since its inception, the CHHSM Legacy Fund has supported these and other leadership initiatives with disbursements of more than $112,000. All money raised for the Legacy Fund comes from friends and family of CHHSM: member corporations, individuals, staff, board members, legacy leaders (retired execs), covenant partners and other people connected to CHHSM.

“We often view CHHSM as a large family,” says Readinger. “The Legacy Fund is our ongoing investment in the future of that family and its leadership.”