During fall charge/church conference gatherings, district superintendents shared news from the Dakotas Conference Board of Pensions regarding important decisions the Board made at its fall meeting.  Below is the letter that was shared with all congregations:

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    As you may know, the Board of Pensions governs the pension, health care, and other benefits programs available to clergy and lay employees of Dakotas Annual Conference United Methodist institutions, including local churches, our Annual Conference, and other United Methodist related entities.

    Part of this role includes developing and implementing a funding plan and strategy to ensure we have adequate resources to meet our current and future financial obligations. With that, we are happy to report that we have had a favorable year! This allows us to be able to allocate some of our extra funds to care for our churches, clergy, and lay employees.

Therefore, we wanted to notify you of some of our recent decisions that will have a positive impact on your church. These decisions include the following:

     *A direct bill bonus for churches in 2024 was approved. Your church will receive the bonus check in December, equal to one month of your Healthflex direct bill and/or Pension direct bill.
    *The Board of Pensions will fund the direct bill portion of pension, health, and disability insurance benefits in 2025 for all Dakotas Conference staff, DS, and camp directors. This will help keep the church apportionment percentage lower.
    *In 2023 the Healthflex premiums increased over 15 percent, however, the Board of Pensions made sure your local church direct bill cost remained the same as it was in 2022.

    Additionally, we have medical grants to assist pastors who find themselves in unfortunate financial situations. If your church or pastor needs financial assistance, please don't hesitate to contact your District Superintendent or JoAnn Early.

    We hope this financial relief helps you more freely equip the local church to make disciples of Jesus Christ for the transformation of the world. Thank you for your ministries and have a great charge conference!

Blessings,
Board of Pensions 

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These missional decisions have a profound impact on the financial health and wellbeing of local church and conference ministries. The direct bill bonus for local churches will represent approximately $161,000 in pension and health direct bill relief to our congregations. The Board’s commitment to fund the cost benefits for conference staff marks an estimated $393,000 in savings to the conference apportioned budget. Additionally, the Board set aside a portion of 2024 overfundedness to cover 2026 health insurance costs to the Conference, allowing conference leadership to include this into 2026 budget planning next spring. 

In addition to these allocations, the Board addressed the status of the Transitional Reserve Fund. The conference has used approximately $322,000 of our Transitional Reserve Fund to help churches who were significantly impacted by disaffiliation votes and deliberations. The Board of Pensions made the decision to allocate an additional $300,000 to the Transitional Reserve Fund (essentially bringing the balance back up to where it was prior to issuing the grants.) This will ensure ample funds are available to help United Methodists in the Dakotas as we navigate this liminal season.

Finally, the Board continued to contribute a tithe of the overfundedness to the Central Conference Pension Fund ($140,000) and allocated the remainder of our 2024 overfundedness ($371,000) to the Board of Pensions Active Health Fund. This fund is set aside to help the Board keep healthcare direct bill costs to churches (and our conference) lower than they would otherwise be without using these funds to subsidize the health premium costs.

We are very grateful to the Board of Pensions for the members' continued faithful stewardship and commitment to our shared ministry.