Dear St. Catherine Parish Family,
You may remember that last December, I spoke to you about stewardship and about our financial state in the parish. At that time, our regular offertory giving was about $70,000 under budget for the fiscal year, which runs through the end of June, and we were averaging around $34,000 per week for our offertory collection. We were also about $20,000 away from reaching our goal for the 2016 Archbishop’s Annual Appeal, which ended at the end of the calendar year.
I am happy to report:
We are now more than $80,000 over budget for our offertory.
Without factoring in the exceptionally large collection we had at Christmas, we are now averaging about $39,000 per week.
We surpassed our goal for the 2016 Archbishop’s Annual Appeal by over $20,000 last year.
We have surpassed our goal for pledges for the 2017 Archbishop’s Annual Appeal, and if we fulfill all our pledges, we will surpass our goal by over $50,000. All of that will be returned to the parish next year.
For all these reasons, I want to thank you. Many of you have responded to my appeal and to the needs of the parish very generously. Many of you have made sacrificial gifts to help support the parish and to show the Lord your gratitude for everything He has done for you.
Please keep it up! The needs of the parish are still great, and I believe the Lord has big plans for us! I am hoping that with a stabilized offertory and with greater participation in stewardship, we will be able to move forward with some critical facilities projects. More importantly, we will be able to devote some significant resources to continue to build up our spiritual and educational programs related to adult faith formation and evangelization and our programs for our children and teens.
In the coming weeks, I will be speaking a little more about the importance of stewardship. Specifically, I will be asking you to consider signing up for our online giving service in order to ensure that you can continue giving over the summer while you might be away on vacation. Our goal is to increase our average online giving percentage to 35% (currently about 25%) and to raise our average weekly offertory giving to $45,000 per week by the end of the 2017 calendar year.
Thank you again for your remarkable generosity. If you have any questions about stewardship or our parish finances, please feel free to contact me.
