May 11, 2017
Dear Friends in Maine congregations:
If your congregation applied for a Strategic Mission Support grant in the past two or three years, then the online application for 2018 [link below] will look very familiar to you. We appreciate how much work congregations put into the process, the honest and thoughtful answers to the questions posed, and the time involved.
If your congregation has not applied for Strategic Mission Support, then this process may strike you as unlike other grant applications you have completed. The three components of strategic mission support are location, viability and vitality.
- Viability represents the requirement that you have the minimum resources (human and financial) to maintain your parish or mission.
- Vitality represents the requirement that your parish or mission is or is capable of human and spiritual growth and development and your presence is of continued value to the greater area where you are located.
- Location involves issues of distance and accessibility.
Beyond the elements of location, viability, and vitality, the application asks you to focus on the strengths and weaknesses of your congregation in terms of mission, ministries and parish/mission organization. It asks for your own observations of these matters-thoughtfully and honestly presented.
There are two steps to complete this application by the deadline of Friday, June 30, 2017.
- Complete the application at www.surveymonkey.com/r/2018-SMS-Application
- Email attachments of your congregation's 2016 year-end financial report, its 2017 budget, and the Mission Expense Analysis (link below) to Canon Terry Reimer at treimer@episcopalmaine.org.
Applications received later than June 30 will not be considered for the 2018 SMS grant cycle.
We recommend that before you start the application you look over the questions and complete the answers in a separate document for safekeeping before pasting them into this online application. A worksheet is available for this purpose
here. (Click to download in the upper right corner.)
It is the intent of the SMS grant that a congregation will have a priest employed at minimum for a quarter time and that the congregation will be able to support at least 50% of the cost of that clergy compensation. It is also the intent of the committee that congregations with endowed funds will use the income from those funds fully to offset operational expenses.
Faithfully,
Members of the Diocesan Council Finance Committee
Resources for the 2018 Strategic Mission Support Application
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