Script of the Mass Presentation for 2023 Stewardship Renewal Campaign: Mass Weekend 3rd - 4th June 2023
Hi everyone. This evening I need to speak to you about our Parish financial situation. We haven’t done that since 2016 and things aren’t looking too good at the moment.
Last week we distributed a letter Father penned regarding our Stewardship Renewal program to parishioners on the weekly Parish Email distribution list. I hope you have seen and read it. If you aren’t receiving the weekly Parish email, we have a hard copy of the letter addressed to you waiting at the back of the church so please collect that on your way out. There are also some spare copies there if we missed anyone.
Today I want to tell you more about our financial situation, what we are doing in the short term, in the long term and what we need from you.
As the letter states, over the full year in 2022 we made a loss of $57,000. To give you a feel for the scope of this loss, our overall expenses in 2022 were $223,000 so a loss of $57,000 is a significant amount. Fortunately, we were able to absorb that loss with our cash reserves but we can’t do that for much longer.
So why has this happened? Well we haven’t done a Stewardship Renewal program for 7 years. There are several reasons for this – we have had a succession of new priests over a short time and even a long period where we had no priest at all, mass attendees have diminished due to Covid lockdowns and a slow return to mass, a lack of new people replacing our older parishioners and the repurposing of our rental property.
For many years now we have had diminishing income and so we have had to have tight control over discretionary spending. Things like regular maintenance on buildings have too often been deferred. Things like repainting, fixing the bouncing floor at the back of the church, gutters and drains that don’t work are just a few issues. This isn’t a strategy that can continue for much longer. Our buildings are looking shabby. This means we are going to be looking for significant money in the next few years.
In the short term we need to reduce our expenses and our most significant opportunity lies with reducing staff. As such and much to our regret, we will be losing Jacinta from next January when her employment contract runs out.
In the longer term, we need to get back to a position where we can earn income from sources other than donation. On that front we have several opportunities that allow us to leverage our relationship with the school. These include:
- building an indoor netball/basketball court come gymnasium that could be used by the school during the day and rented out after hours and on weekends to produce income for the parish.
- an early learning centre that would be a feeder for children into the school, perhaps a kindergarten and child minding centre would fit into that concept quite well.
As public facilities these could attract government grants and investment. We have had early discussions with Maroondah Council, Catholic Education people and with Michael Sukkar, Federal Minister for our area. Michael is very positive about the potential for grants.
But at this stage these are only ideas and need a proper feasibility study and business case before anything more concrete should proceed. And this process may need some seed money to get the ball rolling.
In the future, with income streams such as these, the parish will be able to support improved pastoral and community programs and refurbish or even renew our buildings in readiness for the next 50 years.
But the other more immediate thing we have to do is to increase our current revenue. Towards that end we have introduced a levy on school families of $200 per year. Being conscious of the cost of living pressures on young families we have set the amount quite low so it should not add too much of a burden on each family. For the parish however it could raise $30 to $40 thousand dollar. That communication went out last week.
And of course we need for our faithful parishioners to look into their hearts and wallets. In particular, if you are a new parishioner or not in the Stewardship Program then we implore you to consider joining. I’ll talk more about the mechanisms for doing that next week.
If you are using envelopes, then please consider moving to direct credit card or direct debit from a bank account. We have made changes to our website to explain how you can do this and to enable it yourself so no one else needs to know your credit card number or bank account details. We hope this will give you more comfort in moving this way. I’ll talk more about this next week too.
If you donate by dropping money into the collection bag or by using the tap and go, then we are asking that you also consider moving to direct credit or debit. Obviously we are appreciative of any donation anyone can give but from our point of view, we need a consistent revenue stream rather than one that relies on you being here and one where you give a fixed amount rather than the coins that are in your pocket at the time.
If you are already contributing, then thank you so much. We wouldn’t have what we have today except for your generosity. But I’ll bet you haven’t updated your contribution since 2016. All those cost of living pressures that you feel at home are also felt by the parish so please take the time to consider how much you think you can afford to give to support the work of the parish, not only for you now, but for your children and for your grandchildren into the future.
So the message I leave with you today is that we are asking you to think about what this parish means to you and your family and if you consider that this is worth preserving. And if it is, then please consider what level of financial support you wish to provide.
Pope Francis asks us to be disciples of the faith. Our parish has a great reputation for doing that and for having a strong sense of our community and that of North Ringwood. You need to consider how you will support this so as to give us a financially sound future.
Next week I will be asking you to turn your considerations into a firm commitment.
Presented by Silvio Volombello, Chair of Parish Finance Committee
Presentation two of two: Making a pledge.
The second presentation, Making a Pledge was delivered on the Mass Weekend of 10th-11th June 2023 and can be seen at: www.holyspiritparish.org.au/Portals/3/Documents/Stewardship/Donating at the Holy Spirit Parish.pdf.