At the end of this first month of 2021, we feel uncertain about many of the institutions that have defined our lives, and which frame our worldviews. We are all distracted and distressed, unsettled and uncertain. Between changes in national leadership and the impact of the COVID pandemic, we find ourselves in the midst of unstable times and yet we are able to rely on the certainty of WES as one of our touchstones. One way to support our peers and ourselves is to support WES with participation and giving, and our members are stepping up to do that.

By the numbers, WES continues to be a vibrant community when we look at three key metrics: platform attendance, membership, and pledge income. Platform engagement continues to be robust, with more people viewing the platform on Zoom than typically attended in person. – we’ve kept in touch with members who have moved, and welcomed new members who wouldn’t have been able to attend in person and may even live outside the DC area. (In case you’re curious, live Facebook views have remained similar to when we were in person, although later views of the recordings have gone up.)

Membership also has remained strong. We’ve had a similar number of people/families join since March 2020 as have dropped their membership, and have a cohort of new members starting the Path to Membership at the end of January. Similarly, pledge income is in line with previous years. There are several ways to measure it – what people have said they’d give, what they’ve actually given, and when they’ve made payments. On all of these measures we are close to where we were in 2019.

This is not to pretend that all is as we’d want it to be. WES’ finances are challenging, largely because our 2020 rental income was 38% what it was in 2019, but the expenses of owning and operating our building haven’t gone down significantly. We see no reason that we will not rebound when the pandemic is over and folks are able to gather again – in fact, we’ve retained relationships with all of our long-term renters.In addition, our SEEK program will need to be re-envisioned and rebuilt. It’s been very challenging to engage our youth during the pandemic, especially after many years of instability in SEEK leadership. Ndara Miles and Linda Irizarry’s steady presence continue to be a boon to us, and the community will need to engage with re-imagining the SEEK program before we are ready to hire a new Director of Lifelong Learning.

We board members look forward to meeting these challenges with the support and participation of the whole community. WES members have continued to show themselves to be generous and thoughtful in these difficult times.

2020-2021 Board of Trustees:

Josh Blinder, Abi Daken, Trang Duong, Kate Lang, Lauren Strange, Vincent Tyler, Rajesh Vidyasagar