Funds from the Diocese of Charlotte’s first-ever capital campaign – “Forward in Faith, Hope, and Love” – have been making an impact for a decade. Pictured above are students at the opening of St. Pius X School’s DeJoy Primary Education Center in 2016 and the renovated interior of the Catholic Conference Center in Hickory. (File | Catholic News Herald) CHARLOTTE — When Michael Miller took over as principal of Asheville Catholic School in 2013, everyone knew the school needed more space to serve its growing student population, but raising the money was taking some time. While the community was generous, there was a feeling that more help was needed.
That help came when then-Bishop Peter Jugis launched the Diocese of Charlotte’s first-ever capital campaign – “Forward in Faith, Hope, and Love” – which recently celebrated a decade of impact across the sprawling diocese.
“To put it simply – and this is not hyperbole – we would not have been able to do our project without the FFHL funds,” Miller says. “When we got the call that we received a grant, it was the spark we needed. It made donors feel that we weren’t left on our own, that there was a whole diocese behind you.”
The $475,000 in FFHL funds that Asheville Catholic received, combined with contributions from local donors, paid for a 12,000-square-foot addition and remodeling project that included six new classrooms, a conference room, storage space, and remodeled kitchen and bathrooms.
“We broke ground in June 2020, and we were able to start the school year of 2021 in the added classroom space,” Miller says.
The improvements couldn’t have come at a better time for the school, which has seen enrollment grow to 250 students since then.
COMPREHENSIVE EFFORT
From building and improving facilities to funding priests’ retirement and providing tuition assistance, the $65 million FFHL campaign is enabling the diocese to respond to extraordinary growth now and into the future.
That was its aim from the start.
The comprehensive effort aimed to provide new funding to parishes and ministries to use as they saw fit, as well as solidify the diocese’s future through endowments and major capital projects.
By pooling funds from people across the diocese, FFHL empowered churches and schools to do more than they possibly could have on their own.
As Bishop Jugis wrote at the time, the FFHL campaign “will provide extraordinary resources that will better position the diocese to strengthen parishes and prepare for the future.”
“FFHL has had a significant impact on the work being done in parishes and in ministries across the diocese, and will impact the diocese for years to come,” says Jim Kelley, the diocese’s development director.
FFHL funds were designed for five critical objectives:
- Strengthening parish life and ministries as the center of the Catholic community
- Providing for priestly formation and retired clergy
- Ensuring the vitality of Catholic education
- Guaranteeing the availability of pastoral and temporal resources
- Expanding the outreach of social services
The diocese’s 93 parishes and missions have so far received $19.5 million – almost 30% of the entire FFHL campaign – to support their parish life and ministries.
Among them is St. Pius X Parish in Greensboro, which needed to consolidate and expand its facilities on its North Elm Street campus after opening a new 1,100-seat church for its growing congregation of more than 1,700 registered families.
With help from the FFHL campaign, the parish was able to raise the funds it needed to build the Simmons Parish Center, which provides 23,477 square feet of space for offices, a banquet hall and commercial kitchen, a library and gathering spaces that have become the heart of parish life.
“Every single day there’s at least three or four activities in that building,” says Pat Spivey, former pastoral associate. “From Bible studies to meetings, a new program for young moms with kids, the Knights of Columbus have pancake breakfasts there, the Boy Scouts meet – all kinds of activities that we weren’t able to do before.”
“FFHL helped us to meet the goal that we had for having state-of-the-art facilities on our campus,” she says.
FFHL money also helped the parish build the DeJoy Primary Education Center next door at St. Pius X School to serve pre-kindergarten to first-grade students.
Not just parishes have benefited from FFHL funding.
The diocese’s College Campus Ministry program has used $454,000 to renovate and repair its facilities at four campuses, and the Catholic Conference Center in Hickory got a $1 million makeover funded in part by $606,000 from the FFHL campaign.
LASTING IMPACTS
The FFHL campaign’s impacts haven’t stopped at brick-and-mortar projects.
As Kelley explains, “While funding for capital projects was initially spent in the short run, FFHL also will provide support for the Church long into the future through endowments.”
An endowment is a permanent fund, the principal of which is never touched, but the income from which can be used according to the wishes of the donor organization or person.
The FFHL campaign established seven endowments: Vocation and Seminarian Support, Catholic School Tuition Assistance, Faith Formation, Campus Ministry, Catholic Charities Diocese of Charlotte, Multicultural Ministries, and Parish and Mission Support Services.
So far, these endowments have grown to a market value of over $23.5 million, and it continues to grow through prudent investing.
Distributions from the endowments are having a real impact.
Thanks to the FFHL Tuition Assistance Endowment, students at the diocese’s 20 Catholic schools have received more than $1 million in tuition aid. This school year alone, students at six schools received a total of $120,200.
Schools apply for the Tuition Assistance Endowment funds and use them to assist families with the greatest financial need.
The diocese’s Faith Formation Office is using funds from its endowment to provide adult faith education resources from the Catechetical Institute at Franciscan University.
The robust collection of materials through the Catechetical Institute is free for everyone in the diocese, and linked through the diocese’s website.
The Faith Formation Office uses the Catechetical Institute resources to train parish catechists who teach more than 30,000 children across the diocese. Just in the past two years, more than 900 catechists from 63 parishes have participated.
“This partnership provides every parish, mission and school with access to materials, both in English and Spanish, that will assist in the professional training of catechetical leaders for the diocese, as well as provide enrichment programs for adult faith formation,” says Christopher Beal, director of the Catechetical and Faith Formation Office.
During the darkest period of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 – when churches were closed and people unable to meet or worship in person – the diocese’s Hispanic Ministry Office used $17,400 in FFHL funds from the Multicultural Ministries Endowment to buy computers and recording equipment so they could provide webinars and video conferencing to “keep the faith going” and strengthen Hispanic families during the crisis.
Help for retirement fund
Also, FFHL funds totaling $6.1 million have been used to expand the diocese’s priest retirement fund, to ensure sufficient funds are there for future retired priests once they step back from active ministry.
In the past 10 years, 29 diocesan priests have retired from ministry. Fifteen more are still serving beyond the retirement age of 70, and at least another 28 will reach retirement age within the next decade.
Matt Ferrante, the diocese’s chief financial officer, says, “As the number of priests in our diocese continues to grow, it will be increasingly important to secure future funds to support their retirement. Ensuring that our pension funding is sufficient to meet these future needs is essential.”
From preserving the integrity and beauty of our spaces to creating a legacy for the future, FFHL funds are continuing to put the faith of the diocese into action.
As Kelley notes, “We are so grateful for people in the over 15,000 households who contributed to the FFHL campaign. Their gifts had impact through the gifts the parishes received and through the various capital projects the campaign funded. Equally important, the distributions from the seven endowments will impact this diocese for generations to come.”
“The sacrifice that those who gave to FFHL and that others are making now by donating can have a profound impact on people decades and decades into the future,” emphasizes Miller, whether through facilities that will outlast us all or Catholic education that will have a ripple effect for generations to come.
— Trish Stukbauer