Diocesan capital campaign under study

By William T. Clew
The Catholic Free Press
The Diocese of Worcester has hired a consulting firm to conduct a feasibility study for a diocesan capital campaign, Bishop McManus said in a letter to the people of the diocese.
“Last spring, we began to study the long-term needs of our diocese and the financial challenges our parishes and diocese will be facing in the years ahead,” the bishop wrote. “We began to consider a diocesan-wide capital campaign that would benefit the parishes and the pastoral ministries of the diocese.”
He said the last capital campaign, “Forward in Faith,” conducted in 1999, “was a great blessing to our diocese for more than a decade.”
He said that he named a committee several months ago to help “determine if the time was right for our diocese to conduct a capital campaign.” After interviews and discussions, he chose Guidance in Giving Inc., of Bayport, N.Y., to conduct the feasibility study. He said it is a Catholic organization that has been involved with stewardship and development throughout the country and has raised more than $5 billion in the last 38 years.
The annual Partners in Charity Appeal, like the weekly parish offertory collections, supports the annual operational costs of the ministries and maintenance costs of the diocese. Capital campaigns, unlike annual appeals, are conducted to address long-term needs, such as endowing certain ministries or education programs to assure continued funding, or addressing major capital expenditures like building improvements or debt reductions. All are necessary for the Church to focus on its evangelizing mission, the bishop noted.
“Ignoring capital repairs for too long places impossible burdens on a parish or diocesan operational budget,” he wrote.
Consultants from Guidance in Giving have been meeting with pastors and lay people. In order to give all households in the diocese a chance to take part in developing a well-informed feasibility study, the diocese has designed a survey. The bishop’s letter and the survey are available on the back page of this week’s Catholic Free Press and online at worcesterdiocese.org. You can access the online version from the home page by clicking on Diocesan Planning Study for a Capital Campaign.
The 14-question survey asks the reader’s initial reaction to the need for a capital campaign; whether the reader’s opinion would be influenced if 40 percent of campaign proceeds were to be used for parish needs; what issues are important to the reader; would the reader support and work for a capital campaign; how much could the reader donate over four years; among other questions.