2024 Annual Report - Lovers Lane United Methodist Foundation

2024 Foundation Annual Report & 2025 Prospectus

Dear LLUMC Friends:

Thanks to all of you, 2024 was a great year for the Lovers Lane Foundation (and for our church). And, despite the recent downturn in the stock market, 2025 looks to be a good year as well, thanks to the methodology of our grant administration.

As of 12/31/2024, the Foundation’s net assets were $20.4M (up from $19.4M at the end of 2023). We made grants to our church, its ministries, and members in need totaling more than $915K in 2024, and approximately $744K of that went directly to church operations (mostly supporting maintenance and repair areas).

Thanks to the work of our Power of One Committee, the church has identified areas where additional efforts will benefit Evangelism, Discipleship, Family Ministries, and Missions (just to mention a few), and the “elevated” part of the recently completed stewardship drive will cover most, if not all, of those costs. In addition, as part of the Power of One work, the church’s financial operations have been greatly improved, and the church has put into place better procedures and more transparency. They have adopted a balanced budget for 2025 (and the church is working hard to keep that budget balanced – even though this is a challenge this time of the year).

Here is the really great news:

As part of the Power of One Initiatives, the Lovers Lane Foundation has:
– committed $1M to the church to cover the cost of replacing our worn-out HVAC Chillers;
– committed an additional $1.1M to our church to cover 3+ years of interest carry on the church’s TMF debt
– funded the cost of replacing the AC in Wesley Chapel

2025 Board of Directors

Officers
Anne Arneson – Chair
Brad Holcomb – Vice Chair
Rick Herrick – Deputy VC
JB Brill – Treasurer
Jim Bentley – Development Committee
Mark Lanyon – Investments Committee
Royanne Kerr – Events Committee

Other Members
Gerald Box
Uel Crosby
Cecille Lijauco
Mari Tietze-Love
Sheila McLauchlin
Bob Richardson
Diane Ross
Clint Shouse
Melissa Stallings
Dennis Street

Ex-Officio
Eddie Rester
Jenny Schaefer
Scott Williams
Christian Yanicelli

Executive Director
Paul Ditto

Foundation Exec Assistant
Martha Stowe

The Lovers Lane UMC Foundation is a separate 501(c)(3) organization that provides financial support for our church, its members, and the ministries of LLUMC. This is accomplished through the faithful giving of members of our church, to be used in areas of mission & outreach, evangelism, education, benevolence, music, arts, technology, scholarships, and lecture series. The Foundation also supports our church financially through grants to assist with facilities and campus preservation. Unlike other 501(c)(3)s of the church, the Foundation is not owned by the church, but our sole purpose is to support LLUMC and its ministries.

The Board of Directors of the Foundation (pictured above) are all faithful members of LLUMC and are appointed by the church to manage the Foundation on behalf of you and all our donors. Our board is a working board and all board members are engaged in one or more of our key working areas. Our Foundation is served by 4 key committees: The Development Committee helps design and implement activities that grow our Foundation. Our Investment Committee oversees the work of Northern Trust (our full discretion Investment Manager). Our Grant Committee reviews and approves every grant the Foundation makes. Finally, our Event Committee helps put on our McCormick Lecture Series, Shipp Lecture Series, Owen Lenten Lecture Series, Donor Appreciation Dinner, and numerous other events and activities.

Our Endowments

Our endowments are held in more than 45 separate Permanent Endowments (or Funds) and Guardianships broadly benefiting:

Campus preservation
Education/Scholarships
Mission and outreach
Lecture series
Evangelism
Children’s Ministry
Rays of Light Ministry
ArtReach Gallery
Kenya Ministries
Music & Visual Arts Ministries

Congregational Care/Benevolence
Communication & Technology
Deaf Ministries & Special Needs
Youth & Young Adult Ministries
Twelve Step Ministry
Wesley Prep School
Shepherd’s Garden & Columbarium
Prison Ministry
Walnut Hill Church
Walnut Hill Church Sanctuary

Giving Options

If you would like to help our Foundation help our Church in greater amounts in 2025 and beyond, we welcome your tax-deductible contributions. You can designate your gift to any of the ministries mentioned here.

Thank you all for your support of our Foundation and our church. We love you.

View Our Giving Options

You have made the church part of your life. The Foundation is your opportunity to make the church a part of your legacy.

Your gifts to the Foundation are an endowment that will benefit your church in perpetuity. We never spend the principal or corpus of our permanent endowments. The Foundation may be the only place where your contribution to one of our permanent endowments will not be spent at all—not one single penny.

Unless you tell us otherwise, if you contribute to one of our 45+ permanent endowment funds, your contributions will all be held in one or more of our endowment funds. Only the income from your contribution will be spent, thus creating a legacy, a source of perpetual support for our church. We use a balanced or average approach to our distributions. We distribute every year to our church, its ministries, and members 4.5 % of the 3-year average balance in each of our endowments. Even in years when our earnings are less than 4.5%, we still distribute that same reliable 4.5%. During years when our earnings are more than 4.5%, that excess is reserved to grow the Foundation and to accumulate retained earnings so we can distribute that same 4.5% in years when earnings are less than 4.5%.

How We Helped Our Church in 2024

Specifically, in 2024, the Foundation supported the following areas and ministries of our church in the amounts noted below:

The Foundation has been honored to partner with our church in nearly every area.

ALL OF THAT IS THANKS TO YOU! Grants and gifts totaled almost $1M in 2024 AND we expect our 2025 grants and gifts to our church, its ministries, and members in need to be more than $1.5M — but we need your help to get us there!

Maintenance & Repairs	$521,000
12th Step House of Hope	$100,000
Church Interest Carry	$88,000
Kenya Mission/Scholarships	$84,000
Walnut Hill Church	$37,000
Church Tech Upgrades	$28,000
Benevolence	$26,000
Lecture Series	$30,000
12th Step Ministry	$18,000
Scholarships	$14,000
Family Ministries	$14,000
ArtReach Gallery	$13,000
Music Ministry	$13,000
Deaf Ministry	$12,000
Youth Ministry	$9,200
Miss/Out Reach/Cong Care	$6,000
Children Ministries	$3,000
Prison Ministry	$2,500

The Foundation provided help with the cost of youth retreats and sponsored the youth ministries’ end-of-the-year luncheon, along with five scholarships for graduating seniors.

The Foundation helped underwrite the cost of this year’s Vacation Bible School.

The Foundation administers the Imani Kenya high school and college sponsorships and scholarships, as well as the summer learners workshops and the coffee farmers community empowerment program.

2025 Prospectus

With your help, we expect our 2025 grants and gifts to our church, its ministries, and members in need to be over $1.5M— but we need your help to get there!

Click below for all our giving options.

View Our Giving Options

Estate Planning Ministry

The Foundation has an estate planning ministry where we have partnered with PhilanthroCorp, an estate planning specialist firm. Pursuant to this estate planning ministry, we provide free estate planning services to members of our church. You heard that right – free (as in no charge to you). If you would like to know more about our estate planning ministry or any other aspect of the Foundation, please let us know. We are here to serve you! Call or email Paul Ditto at 214-706-9561 or pditto@llumc.org.

The Shepherd’s Garden & Columbarium

The Foundation Underwrites the Costs and Manages the Shepherd’s Garden and Columbarium

Help create a legacy for a loved one and for the church by honoring a loved one with a Shepherd’s Garden Plaza Pavestone or dedication of a statue in the Shepherd’s Garden. You can also make arrangements in the Columbarium for a niche for your or a loved one’s ashes.

All net proceeds go to a LLUMC Foundation fund to maintain the garden in perpetuity.

For more information, click here or contact Paul Ditto at pditto@llumc.org or 214-706-9561(w) 214-726-5561 (c)

Learn More

Owen Lenten Lecture Series

Look Inward and Focus Outward.

Lent is the season for reflection—looking inward enables us to examine our hearts, souls, and motivations. Looking outward moves us to leverage the inward journey to action aimed at making a difference in the world.

This year, we combined the desire to present an awesome Holy Week Lecture Series with Support for our “A Great Day is Coming Soon” and our Passing of the Baton to Dr. Rev Eddie Rester.

Rev. Dr. Jim Ozier was our guest speaker and he drew our attention to The Net Worth of a Church and The Making of a Miracle in the Church on Tuesday, April 15, and Wednesday, April 16. Each Lecture was followed by a buffet lunch and a robust Q&A Session. You can view the recorded lectures here.

The Owen Lenten Lectures are endowed through the generosity of Babs and Arch Owen and were established in 1985. Arch Owen was the first president of the LLUMC Foundation and it was his great vision that recognized the need for an endowment to support, in perpetuity, Lovers Lane United Methodist Church, its Ministry, Outreach, and Evangelism. Arthur Lee Owen passed away on February 21, 2010; Babs enthusiastically supported Lovers Lane and the Lecture Series until the end of her fruitful life on December 7, 2021, just shy of her 104th birthday. The Foundation Board of Directors holds immense gratitude for Babs and Arch Owen for their steadfast generosity and loyalty, and we hope these lectures enhanced your time of renewal during the Easter season and got us focused on A Great Day is Coming.

ArtReach Gallery

The Foundation underwrites 100% of the cost of our ArtReach Gallery in Watson Hall.

The ArtReach Gallery is managed by the Foundation’s Visual Arts Committee. The mission of the Visual Arts Committee and the ArtReach Gallery is to showcase rotating art shows of artists from all communities to raise the spiritual awareness of the LLUMC congregation and others in the DFW metroplex.

The ArtReach Gallery was founded in 2010 and showcases rotating art shows on the walls of Watson Hall at Lovers Lane UMC. Exhibits rotate on approximately a 60-90 day schedule. The art gallery is sponsored by the Lovers Lane Foundation and funded 100% by our Visual Arts Endowment (one of its 45+ permanent endowments). The ArtReach Gallery is the work of and is administered by the Foundation’s Visual Arts Committee.

Unless otherwise indicated, all art on display in Watson Hall is for sale, and 25% of the sale proceeds go to the Visual Arts Endowment.

Click below for more information about our ArtReach Gallery and the Visual Arts Committee.

Learn More

How We Helped Our Church

Through the Folsom Fund and the Arnold Fund, the Foundation funded all the costs for new, bigger, and brighter screens in Shipp Chapel and we set aside funds to improve Shipp Chapel to better serve the relocating of our Thrive Worship to Shipp Chapel.

Through the Arnold Fund, the Foundation was able to provide a large matching grant to help cover the costs of the new LED video screens for our Crosswalk Service.

Through the Ewert Fund and the Eckam Fund, the Foundation has been able to help cover the cost of maintenance and repairs in the Shepherds Garden (including landscaping).

Each year, through several music endowments, the Foundation has helped with the cost of concerts, section leaders in the choir, tuning pianos and more.

Through two Imani Kenya Endowments and the Montgomery Kenya Scholarship Endowment, the Foundation works with the Imani Kenya ministry programs alongside our partner church in Meru, Kenya, sponsoring more than a dozen students through High School and several through College (Kenya’s free public education only goes through Primary Grade 8). The work under the Imani Kenya endowments has also helped establish a coffee farm and a coffee processing plant to provide local families with resources to send their own kids on to high school and college. Pictured are some of the students planting a coffee plant at the coffee farm. For more info check out the Imani Kenya website at www.imanikenyna.org.

Through the Shipp Lecture endowment (and Phil and Teresa Lack) and the Phillips Family Fund, the Foundation helped our 12th Step Ministry with a $100,000 contribution toward the new building across the street and with annual maintenance, repair, and program funding for the 12th Step Ministry.

For more information contact: Paul Ditto, Executive Director of the Foundation at 214-706-9561 or pditto@llumc.org