2024 A Corporation financial reporting earns an unmodified opinion from auditor
Auditing firm gives the A Corp’s finance team its highest level of opinion
LOUISVILLE — The Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), A Corporation received an unmodified opinion on the audit of its 2024 financial records, the A Corp Board learned on Friday.
Meeting via Zoom, the board heard from Debbie Smith, Engagement Director for Cherry Bekaert, the A Corporation’s auditing firm. Smith said the unmodified opinion is the highest level of opinion the auditing firm issues. “You have a wonderful financial team who puts these reports together,” Smith told the board.
The A Corporation provides business services to the PC(USA) and is the official employer of denominational staff. Services provided by its Administrative Services Group include finance and accounting, legal and risk management, human resources, Global Language Services, Research Services, and Ministry Engagement and Support.
According to the audit, total net assets rose from about $731 million in 2023 to about $766 million in 2024. Total contributions were slightly up from the previous year — $51.8 million in 2024 and $50.6 million in 2023. About $36.4 million of 2024 contributions came with donor restrictions.
Investment return was down from about $65.5 million in 2023 to about $52.3 million in 2024. Still, investment return in 2024 was “really strong,” Smith noted.
Information Technology infrastructure
Peter Campbell, the interim Information Technology director in the Administrative Services Group, presented the board with a scope of work for the IT infrastructure team. The PC(USA) is partnering with Build Consulting to provide interim leadership and analysis for the newly established IT Infrastructure Department.
Build has found “numerous areas” where savings can be realized, particularly in Information Technology’s capital budget, Campbell said. Security is “comparatively strong, but can still be improved,” the report stated. PC(USA)’s core applications are in the cloud, but there are still 40 servers and a storage network in place. Migrating off those servers will save money, reduce complexity and improve security, according to the report.
Beginning with ASG, the report recommends migrating documents to SharePoint and Teams. Additional training on both will be offered. Moving fully to the cloud will take a year or two and will reduce the network management workload, save money, improve security and simplify remote access.
Vicente Guna, who coordinates Digital Enterprise Solutions in the ASG, presented on digital strategy and information systems.
“This side of the house is focused on maximizing the impact of mission through technology,” Guna said. He identified four main functions: application development, business analysis, data, and education and training.
The focus over the next two years will be on ongoing, independent initiatives; applications development; and data infrastructure and engagement. The second quarter of 2025 includes work on a number of initiatives, including completing active development of pcusa.org and the Presbyterian Giving Catalog, completing implementation of the grant management system and the Church Leadership Connection, and centralizing and hosting domain management for all PC(USA) web properties.
In addition to the public portion of its meeting, the board met in closed session Friday to discuss personnel, property and security matters.
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