To: Pastors, priests and parish staff
From: Juliet Greco, vice president of development and donor relations, Catholic Foundation of North Georgia
Endowment Sunday returns for the third year the weekend of May 18. This initiative has been approved by Archbishop Hartmayer for all parishes to hold an Endowment Sunday. It is an opportunity to educate your parish community about your endowment fund and secure the financial well-being of your parish now and in the future.
Every parish and mission in the archdiocese has its own endowment fund. More than half of surveyed parishioners are likely or very likely to contribute to their parish endowment fund if they knew about it and this effort focuses on educating your parish communities about it. You can also choose to run a second collection that weekend to help grow your endowment fund. Last year, many parishes received gifts or were informed of bequests.
To help you in this effort, an Endowment Sunday toolkit is available in English, Spanish, and coming soon as a NEW resource this year: Vietnamese. The toolkit includes:
- Communications timeline
- Prewritten articles for bulletins and newsletters
- Graphics
- Sample script to use for a pulpit talk at Mass
- And more
The toolkit also includes an overview of endowment funds to help you understand them and be able to communicate their purpose to your parish. They are a wonderful opportunity to provide stability and sustainability for your parish.
Please register using this short form to let us know you are participating so we can help support you. By signing up to participate, your parish will be eligible for a drawing to receive a $500 donation to your parish endowment fund.
In addition to the toolkit, we have more resources available on the Endowment Sunday page on our website: cfnga.org/endowment-sunday. This includes sample prayers of the faithful for Endowment Sunday, a weekly breakdown of tasks from the toolkit and downloadable graphics in English and in Spanish.
We would like to work with you to increase your parish endowment fund, and we would like to make it as easy as possible to do so. Designated distribution grants from your fund can be used for the general mission of the church, which may include capital needs, religious education, ministries and operations.
If you have any questions, please contact me at 404-497-9440 or jgreco@cfnga.org.
