Green Your Finances

Mission Earth devoted a portion of 2023 to promoting socially responsible banking and investing, including divesting from fossil fuels. Mission Earth:

• produced a forum about how to better align investments, banking, and credit cards with their values.

• urged the church to switch banks (from Bank of America, which is one of the top 4 banks in the world currently funding the expansion of the fossil fuel industry)

Mission Earth/PECA Forum
What You Do With Your Money Matters!

Have you invested money as you save for retirement? Do you have money squirreled away in the bank? Do you use credit cards? If you said yes to any of these questions, then you may be allowing investment firms and banks to use your money to fund activities that you might not personally support. You missed the forum, but you can still watch the recording to find out what Barb learned as she investigated investments, banks, and credit cards in her drive to align her money with her values.

Click here for the companion website! (has all the tools you need)

Switch to a Fossil-Free Bank

Part of the professed mission of our church is to care for the Earth and to affirm the 7th Unitarian Universalist Principle (respect for the interdependent web of all existence, of which we are a part).  Mission Earth found it deeply disturbing that the money that our church has on deposit Bank of America and the profits that it made from our credit card were being used to make the climate crisis worse.  This runs completely counter to the values that our faith espouses. So, after a long association with Bank of America, SFUU finally closed its account in May of 2023 with the full support of the Board of Trustees and the Congregation.

The process of switching began with an investigation of BOA’s deep connections to the fossil fuel industry through its lending practices. Even after the signing of the Paris climate accords in 2015 by world leaders, Bank of America continues to lend hundreds of billions of dollars to the fossil fuel industry ($279 billion since 2015 according to the Banking on Climate Chaos 2023 fossil fuel finance report). Scientists have been crystal-clear: if we don’t stop expanding the fossil fuel industry right now, we will not be able to keep temperatures to the levels agreed upon by the world’s nations. We then conferred with the SFUU Treasurer to ascertain what our specific banking needs were and explored local banks to nominate a few banks that best matched our banking criteria. All of this information was shared with the Finance Committee, and the Treasurer, and the Board of Trustees. Mission Earth then drafted a letter to BOA explaining why we had switched banks. The final version of the letter was presented to the congregation during a congregational meeting where it was signed by the Mission Earth Team and members of the congregation.

Mission Earth thanks the Treasurer, the Finance Committee, the Board of Trustees, and the congregation for making this move!