No More APA!

From the Pastor:    No More APA!

Yes, you read the title correctly. The Annual Pastoral Appeal is no more! We still owe this year’s APA amount but the way the diocese is now going to be financed (remember, the diocesan expenses need to be paid from the collection baskets of all the parishes, since they cannot pass the basket around the workplace to pay the bills!) is being completely revamped. Below is from a memo I received recently explaining part of the change. More will be coming explaining all of this in the near future.

Memorandum

Enclosed please find the 2022 Catholic Ministry Appeal Goal Worksheet for Epiphany of Our Lord Parish, Tampa, detailing each GL account/subaccount, and the reported amounts for Epiphany of Our Lord Parish, Tampa, for the 2020-2021 fiscal year used to calculate the goal.

As communicated at the launch in August and the training workshop in September, for the first year, these goals have been set using the new, simplified formula for reporting revenue for looking at parish assessable revenue:

    Offertory
    Plus Donations
    Less School Support up to $100,000
    =Assessable Revenue
    Times 14.0%
    = Catholic Ministry Appeal Parish Goal

Please remember — this is a goal. It is intended to be challenging, yet attainable based on past participation in the APA.

Every parish is expected to put forth a “best effort” toward the new Catholic Ministry Appeal. If a parish puts forth a “best effort” implementing the recommended timeline, communications and activities but does not achieve its goal for the appeal, it will not be responsible for paying the shortfall.

Our job is to provide you with the tools you need to be successful. Please visit the Parish Resource Page at www.dosp.org/fakecatholicministry/fakewebpage to download and view all we have created to date, and what is in process. If you find there are additional materials you need that will help you implement a strong appeal, please do not hesitate to contact me by phone at 555-555-5555, ext. 5555 or by email at 007@dosp.org. (Webpage, phone number and email changed to protect the privacy of the person who wrote the memo!)

Thank you for your partnership in spreading the Gospel and building up the Kingdom of God!

       That was the first page of the memo. The second page was a simple graph showing how much money the parish takes in (through the collection basket and other donations) minus our current $7510 exemption for Catholic School Support. Since we just included all of that information in the bulletin two weeks ago, I won’t reprint it here. They took the total of those calculations and multiplied it by 14% and came out with our “New and Improved!” Parish Catholic Ministry Appeal Goal of (gulp) $94,368. Our current (2021) APA is “only” $66,878 of which $46,189 has been paid so far. I expect that we may get a last-minute burst of donations and actually reach our goal again this year, much as we did last year, when we came right down to the wire before the money was paid. This new way of calculating our “goal” has led to a pretty hefty increase but there is a huge difference between the goal of APA and the goal of the new Catholic Ministry Appeal. The APA goal was mandatory. If we didn’t have donations to cover it, the shortfall came out of the parish savings. The Bishop got his money one way or another. The new CMA is “best effort” rather than mandatory. This means that as long as I preach about it, encourage you to willingly give to it, explain where the money you give is going, etc., if we fail to meet the goal, the bishop simply gets what we have given rather than taking the remainder from our savings.

       I will be giving more information on this new system/process in a few weeks. The priests have at least one more zoom meeting with the bishop coming up soon to help us understand how this simplified process works. I can tell you right now that the bishop is going out on a limb with this, taking a leap of faith in making the contributions voluntary. If the people don’t give, he has to cut out programs, personnel, or other overhead costs. I’ll explain more later.

With prayers for your holiness,
Rev. Fr. Edwin Palka


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