By Father Stewart Hasker, Priest in Charge

As I am sure you know, all parishes are required to raise enough money to cover their costs themselves. They do not receive any direct financial support. Indeed, they are expected to contribute to the cost of the services provided by the diocese – the evangelisation programme, the care of our elderly priests, the Archbishop’s office, the training of seminarians and much more. Most parishes therefore run “planned giving” campaigns every three or four years.

Our last planned giving campaign was back in 2005 and there was a wonderful response. But, as this chart shows, our collections have started to go down again and they are now 20% lower than the average per head for parishes in the diocese.

This is a real worry because, despite the generosity of so many of you, we are not raising enough money to make ends meet. Indeed we have not done so ten years and this clearly cannot continue as the parish now has an overdraft of nearly £200,000.

I have discussed in detail with the Parish Finance Committee and our immediate priority is to ensure that, at the very least, we cover our day to day running costs. We will therefore look at a number of issues over the coming months to see if we can both increase our general income and reduce our costs still further.

But the uncomfortable truth is that we will also need your help if we are to get our finances in order and we have no choice but to set a target of increasing our collections by at least 20%.

Can you help?

Talking about money when times are so hard is extremely difficult and I would like to say loudly and clearly that I do not want anyone to give more than they can afford, particularly if you have been directly affected by the recession or if you are living on a small pension.

But what this means is that we will need the help of those of you who are still in a reasonably strong financial position…....perhaps because you are in a secure job or because your financial commitments have gone down over the last year or so. I have therefore enclosed a leaflet on planned giving which sets out some of the issues.

What Next?

We will be focusing on this topic over the next couple of weekends and what I would like everyone to do is to fill in a form telling us what you feel able to give, as this will this will enable us to plan on a realistic basis. You can, of course, do this at any time (using the form in the leaflet) but there will be an opportunity to complete a parish pledge card during the Mass on April 3rd.

Could I stress that you can simply write down what you give now if that is all you can afford. But if you can contribute a bit more, it will make a real difference and there will be absolutely no problem about changing the amount that you give if, for example, your circumstances change. All I can ask is that you do what you can and, if this happens, I have no doubt that the parish will rise to the challenge.

With thanks for whatever support you are able to give and every blessing.

Yours sincerely

Father Stewart Hasker, Priest in Charge

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