Q & A - 2010 Catholic Services Appeal

Q How is giving to the Catholic Services Appeal different than giving to a parish?

The Catholic Services Appeal is the main source of support for our archdiocesan agencies and services to our parishes. These agencies provide the physical, educational and spiritual needs of the 700,000 Catholics in this archdiocese. It is the responsibility of CSA to ensure that these programs and services have the financial resources available to assist our parishes and Catholic schools. The local parish giving community is more focused on the immediate needs of ministry for their parishes. CSA is concerned for all the parishes.

Q How are CSA funds used?

The 2009 CSA received over $8.6 million from the parishioners of this archdiocese. Because of their generosity, we were able to financially support seminarians who are studying for the priesthood, our ordained priests who are serving in prisons and hospitals as chaplains and our retired priests who have blessed this archdiocese with their ministry of service.

CSA also provided needed funding to our Catholic schools, faith formation programs in our parishes, special ministries for our ever-growing Hispanic community and special outreach programs to the Indian and deaf communities.

CSA sustains the work of our archdiocesan mission to serve the hungry and poor of the world in Venezuela and affirms our belief in the sacredness of life.

Q How important is the CSA as a source of funding for these ministries?

CSA is critical to the life of this local church, this archdiocese. Many of our ministries are dependent on the generous contributions we receive.

Q Does our parish benefit from the CSA in any way?

To support the work of our parishes, we return 25 percent of the funds raised by the parish to the parish. These funds can be used to meet the needs of the parishes or to create a new ministry of service to the parish community.

Q The CSA goal of $9.3 million for our archdiocese has remained the same for a few years. Have we reached this goal? Is the goal realistic?

You are correct; the CSA $9.3 million goal has remained the same for a few years now. Although, some years, the pledges to the appeal were very close in reaching our goal, actual gifts received did not amount to $9.3 million. However, it needs to be said that many in our church have been faithful givers. The 2009 appeal raised $8.7 million in actual dollars. In light of the economic challenges that our parishes and individual families faced in 2009, people have been generous.

I believe that we can reach our 2010 appeal goal of $9.3 million if we work together to increase the number of donors to the appeal. In our 2009 appeal, 39 percent of our parishioners contributed to the appeal. That means 61 percent did not respond to our request. If we together would encourage our fellow parishioners who gave last year to give again and reach out to the 61 percent to do what they can for this special appeal, we would meet our goal.

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