Catholic Charities Has Another Tough Year Charity Comes Up Short Of Goal, But Contributions Still Welcome
For the second year in a row, Catholic Charities is facing a disappointing end to its annual Christmas fund drive.
The largest private charity in the Inland Northwest has raised $516,000, short of its $550,000 goal. Last year, Catholic Charities set the same goal and collected $527,000.
Although the annual drive has no official end date, less than 150 people gave money after January last year, said Mary Ann Heskett, fund drive coordinator.
“We need another 250 donations if we are going to make $550,000,” she said.
Not enough Catholics give to the charity, Heskett said. Less than 5,000 of the 24,000 Catholic families in the Spokane Diocese donated this year.
While getting 20 percent of any target group to donate money is a good standard, it’s not enough, Heskett said.
More than 75 percent of the 100,000 people who get help each year through the charity are not Catholic. They include elderly people who live in low-income apartments, homeless men at the House of Charity, and battered women and single-parent families seeking emergency shelter.
A focus group convened by a consultant indicated many local Catholics have no idea what Catholic Charities does.
“When they find out they say, ‘Oh, we’ll donate to that,”’ Heskett said. “So we have to get the word out more.”
Heskett said she hopes to get more of the diocese’s 81 parishes involved in projects with the people who get help from Catholic Charities.
Members of St. Joseph church in Colbert are volunteering at the Guse Summitview apartments for single mothers. A women’s group at St. Mary in the Spokane Valley sponsors a Mother’s Day lunch for another group of single mothers.
The percentage of Catholics from those parishes donating to the charity is higher than the average, Heskett said.
With Congress cutting back, charities will have to pick up more of society’s burdens, said Donna Hanson, secretary for social ministries at the diocese. Almost 40 percent of Catholic Charities $2.9 million budget comes from the government. The charity also will concentrate more on getting large individual donations. This year, the average donation was $105.
, DataTimes