June 11th

Dear Friends, 
Having talked through this with our Parish Council, Finance Council and staff, I wanted to let parishioners know that, beginning with our new fiscal year (starts July 1), we will report our Sunday Stewardship donations in the bulletin as a complete parish, and not by campus. Not everyone was on board with this move, but most agree that a united parish should have a united financial report. Also, you have probably seen (it has been in the bulletin each week for the past couple of months) that we will be combining our Split-the-Pot/50-50 as well. The revised rules for this are being finalized and will be published soon. The chances to win will be reduced (since we’ll have more players), but the winning pot will be increased (maybe even doubled). 

About 10% of current registered parishioners joined the united parish- we have had 140 new households register since our parish’s founding in July 2019. In addition, our electronic giving (which makes up a growing percentage of donations) makes it difficult to know with which campus the donor feels more aligned. Looking at the report as it has been being published gives a skewed picture (though I think the majority of the electronic giving currently comes from those who worship more regularly at Nativity of Our Lord). 

That said, the main reason is to reinforce the fact that we are in this together. We sink (I hope not) or swim (I hope so) together. 😊 Just to check whether this reporting style is in line with what others are doing, I looked online at some other parishes that were unified and maintain multiple worship sites. I did not see any that report their Stewardship income by worship site. (I was actually surprised to see that some do not report weekly Stewardship income at all.)  

We do have some funds segregated. If people specify building fund gifts to go toward specific buildings or building projects, that is certainly respected. If donations come in for a particular school, these are also directed to that purpose. But our Stewardship income, fundraising income, Split-the-Pot/50-50, and Mass intention income all goes into the same account and is used to pay the salaries, benefits and normal operating expenses for the parish.  

One caveat: we will maintain the ability to run reports of donations based upon where donors live; our database and donation records program makes that possible. I realize that some parishioners still cannot shake the concern that one of our churches is bound to close. While I do not see any discussion of this happening over the next 10 years, were there to come a time when we needed to analyze giving patterns by geography, that could still be done.  

Thank you for your financial support of our parish. As we approach the end of our fiscal year, we are behind in our budgeted collections, but our budgeted expenses were also down (since were unable to find a faith formation person to hire last year). This coming year our expenses will more closely match our budgeted income, as Fr. Paul Flavins will be joining us for one year (so we’ll need that money to pay him).  
May your week reflect the encounter with Christ 
we experienced at Mass today!