Investing with Faith / Peter Duncan

Endowment funds are earmarked to help parishes, schools and agencies

I’m fond of the adage that the best financial advice is often the most boring. There is no magic wand we can wave to bring ourselves wealth overnight.

For most of us, financial stability comes from the slow, consistent process of spending less than we make, keeping some for a rainy day, and paying our future selves by setting some aside for retirement. Week after week, we stay disciplined, and with the grace of God, we wake up toward the end of a long career and have saved enough to live sustainably in retirement.

So too it goes with planning for long-term financial sustainability for the Church. Just like saving in retirement accounts, for nearly 40 years, the generous faithful of the Archdiocese of Indianapolis have partnered with the Catholic Community Foundation (CCF) to set money aside in the form of endowment funds.

The CCF stewards these funds responsibly, invests them, grows them, and distributes a portion to parishes, schools and agencies across the archdiocese. Through the generosity of the Catholic faithful, we continue the disciplined process of setting money aside for the future. The best approach is often the most boring.

In some instances, the distribution from an endowment is earmarked to help archdiocesan parishes, schools and agencies sustain ministry work, complete unfunded projects or start a new initiative that meets a local need.

Four such funds exist today that offer parish, school and agency leaders support and opportunities for growth. They are often referred to as the Combined Grant endowment funds:

Queen and Divine Mercy Fund: Used to provide matching grants or outright awards to support projects and initiatives that promote devotion to the Queenship of Mary and/or to the Divine Mercy of Jesus at parishes, schools and agency ministries of the archdiocese.

Home Missions Endowment Fund: Used to support home mission needs in the archdiocese. A home mission parish or school is one that is experiencing poverty or faces emergency needs it cannot meet on its own that are vital to the mission of the Church.

James P. Scott Capital Improvement Fund: Used to provide matching grants or outright awards to support capital projects that demonstrate a great potential impact at parishes, schools and agencies of the archdiocese.

Growth and Expansion Fund: Used to support parishes, schools and agencies that are growing or expanding their ministries. Initiatives may be in the form of capital requests or programming needs, but the need must be tied to a new or expanding ministry.

Planning for long-term sustainability can be boring to some, but the impact of doing so is not. I can assure you the leaders of parishes, schools and agencies are elated—not bored—with the knowledge that nearly $800,000 is distributed from these funds annually.

Through the Combined Grants, direct support is provided to the Catholic community in central and southern Indiana. To learn more about how you can support these vital endowment funds, please reach out to us at ccf@archindy.org, 317-236-1482 or visit our website at archindy.org/ccf.
 

(Peter Duncan is director of the archdiocesan Catholic Community Foundation. He can be reached at pduncan@archindy.org.) †