| Dear Friends,
Greetings Holy People: Happy Palm Sunday! Enjoy our Palm Sunday Liturgy. There is a link at the bottom of this email.
These next announcements are about how the Coronavirus has affected our parish financially. As you read it please understand that if you have been laid off or if you anticipate that you will be laid off, I am not expecting you to worry at all about the parish finances and your Sunday offerings at this time. You have enough to worry about right now. If we can help, please let us know. But for all the rest of you, please keep reading.
First the good news:
- Because of your previous good stewardship and because of the hard work and good management of our parish finance council, our parish is projecting that we are able to cover our normal expenses for the next 3-4 months. This money is typically used to do maintenance projects for our parish; now we will be using it to stem the tide of this crisis.
- We have paid each of our parish, school and child care/day care employees in March. We will continue to pay all of our employees through the end of the school year. We have a great team of employees in our parish, school, and child care/day care ministry and we do not want any of them worrying about whether or not they will be able to provide for their families.
Now the less than good news:
- We have put a freeze on all non-essential spending in our parish. Only salaries, utilities and other essential spending will happen at this time.
- Our Sunday collections typically run about $21,000 a week or $84,000 -$105,000 a month depending on the number of Sundays in a month.
- We receive about $35,000 a month from our online contributors and thus far we have been receiving about $5,000 a week in mail in envelopes. All told that would put us at about $55,000-$60,000 depending on how many Sundays there are in a month. This is about 65% of our normal income.
- While we are committed to paying our child care/day care employees, our revenue stream there has dried up completely.
- As I said, we were in really good shape financially when this crisis started (we had about a 2-3 month build up in our checking account). But we don’t know how long this shelter in place order will last. So we need your help.
How you can help:
- There are three ways that you can give at this time.
- The first is to mail in your offering. You can do that best by check. Sending cash in the mail is dangerous and we do not recommend it.
- You can sign up for electronic giving by going to faith.direct/IN872. Register an account and begin giving electronically. You can also download their app for your smart phone and set up your account easily that way.
- You can now text to give using a credit card. Text the dollar amount you wish to give to 812-296-4080. It will send a message to your phone. You can follow the prompts and make your contribution that way. Once you are set up with text to give, you simply need to text an amount and then it will text back and ask you which fund you want it to go to. You punch in the number of the fund and that is it. It’s really easy. I even figured it out!
Once again, if you are laid off or facing a layoff, please know we do not want you to do anything but take care of yourself.
To all the rest of you, if you can help out it will be greatly appreciated.
Look for our next update on Tuesday! God bless you all. Have a great week.
Love, Fr. Tom |
