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Parish Ministry
The following article originally appeared in Salt of the Earth. It is posted here for private use only. It may not be reprinted in whole or in part without the permission of Claretian Publications.
How to raise money
for your parish's social servicesFather Dan Madigan and Ann Bancroft
OAK PARK IS A NEIGHBORHOOD in Sacramento, California struggling against poverty, crime, and drugs to restore pride in its turn-of-the-century wood-frame homes and tree-canopied streets. Banners on street lights proclaim "Oak Park, est. 1889." To anyone familiar with inner-city Chicago, Detroit, or Harlem, Oak Park might appear a lovely, working-class area.
In fact, there are "worse" neighborhoods in Sacramento, and far "worse" in larger California cities. But 80 percent of Oak Park's 18,000 residents receive some form of government aid, according to the Sacramento Bee, and more than half of its children live below the poverty line. One in five Oak Park households is headed by a single parent, and more than a third classify themselves as "non-families."
Because the struggles for survival in neighborhoods like Oak Park are less obvious than those frequently chronicled in big-city slums, they are often ignored. It is easier for those who live comfortably in economically healthy cities like Sacramento to lament the poverty of Chicago's housing projects than it is to drive down on a regular basis to a neighborhood like Oak Park and attempt to tackle such poverty person-to-person.
IN MY DAYS AS A PARISH priest in Oak Park, I awoke frequently to gunshots, shooed prostitutes from the church steps, and startled drunken homeless men curled up by the dumpster.
Less than a mile away, state workers and professionals live in comfortable, Tudor-style homes in another tree-lined neighborhood. Residents of the two neighborhoods move side by side in their own worlds and yet are worlds apart. Moving on both sides of the fence, I get to see strong families with career aspirations as well as grade-school dropouts from crime-infested streets. Over the past 20 years, it has been my objective to bring the two worlds closer together.
Constantly I ask what future there is for people with zero skills, zero work habits, zero role models, and zero aspirations. Is it idleness, illiteracy, irresponsibility, and illegitimacy that causes all this? Is it alcoholism, drug abuse, criminality, and violence that lead to this destitution? Are burglaries, muggings, and rape the chicken or the egg? Is the lack of money the sole cause of poverty? Could a change in economics set everything right?
WITH THE PHILOSOPHY OF "It's better to light a candle than curse the darkness," we began operating a food locker and soup kitchen in Oak Park. It started small, with 250 meals served each week. I asked members of my parish to volunteer, and word spread among parishioners in wealthier areas. There was no money for advertising, so I wrote regular letters to the community, describing the growth of our programs and appealing for help. (See the examples of fundraising letters on pages 30 and 31.)
The food lines grew faster than we could expand our storage in the early years. I soon learned that to meet the growing needs, we would have to get sophisticated about fundraising. It was clear that more than handouts were needed and that support of the broader community was essential.
With the encouragement of loyal friends, I overcame my own shyness and set about building relationships in the local business community. I found that there were generous, successful, spiritual people of all faiths who were willing to serve as board members and prominent supporters of our programs. With the firm support of local media and businesses, we built a foundation that enabled us to grow and fulfill our vision of "not just handing out fish, but teaching people how to fish."
With that in mind, Sacramento Food Bank Services (SFBS) has grown over the past 20 years, from a place where the hungry can meet their need to be fed to a refuge for people with the will to repair broken lives. We've seen that near miracles can happen when two worlds--the economically comfortable and the disadvantaged--break down the barriers between them and together tackle chronic social ills.
It all started when . . .
STARTING A SMALL FOOD LOCKER and soup kitchen required no great stretch of my organizational ability, but resources were tight. Members of our parish jumped to the task, and within a couple of years we were bursting at the seams. At that point, we had refrigerators everywhere: on the grounds, in the church school, under the auditorium stage, on top of the stage, in the corridors, in mobile trailers. Every inch we had was devoted to food storage.
I credit my dear friend Charles (Chuck) Sylva for having the vision that got us from that state of affairs to where we are today. Chuck was a successful commercial real-estate broker, a very unassuming, very devout man with powerful connections in the community but absolutely no hint of bravado about him. When we were cramped and serving food out of a little trailer, I asked him his ideas on how we could expand. He said he would think about it while I was back in Ireland for a visit.
While I was away, I got a phone call from the principal of our school, John Healey.
"You're going to come back and find someone seated in your chair," he told me. That didn't go over too well. I was wondering how anyone would get a key to my office, and I muttered something along the lines of, "That's a bit much." Healey laughed and indicated I was in for a great surprise.
WHEN I LANDED BACK IN SACRAMENTO, Chuck picked me up at the airport. He drove into town and, before dropping me off at Immaculate Conception, took me a block away to the abandoned, 30,000 square-foot Arata warehouse. This building, once Sacramento's first major supermarket and the first pushcart market in the West, was a rat-infested and boarded-up testament to the neighborhood's decline.
"That's what we need," Chuck said, pointing to the massive structure.
"Oh, no, that's far too big!" I responded. It took up nearly half the block.
Then my dear friend gave me an even bigger shock. "I've decided to take a year off, and work with you," he said. "We'll get this building and move the food lockers over here."
At age 39, when he was one of Sacramento's top real-estate brokers, Chuck Sylva took leave of his lucrative career for the entire year of 1987.
"There's more to life than making money for your own benefit," he told the Sacramento Bee when the story hit the business pages.
CHUCK'S GOAL WAS TO RAISE the money to buy a warehouse and really help SFBS begin to take off as a social-service center. He knew I had great intentions but lacked the business sophistication to get the funding we'd need.
Within a few days we had our bishop, Francis Quinn, out there. He looked at the building and gave me a loan of $400,000. I made a commitment that we would pay it off. We got a loan for another $350,000 from the bank and bought the building.
We could only afford to do a little bit with the building at a time, and it took most of a year to finance and refurbish it. John Healey and I spent all our spare moments, along with parishioners, remodeling the Arata Center bit by bit. I couldn't even imagine a time would come when we would use all of that space, and need even more.
MEANWHILE, CHUCK SAID IT WAS TIME FOR US to be hitting the streets to raise the cash to pay for this building. One morning he told me he was taking me to visit a friend of his, Chris Steele, who was then partner of a successful development company.
Until that point, everything was going fine. I was secure within my own Catholic community, doing the work with the poor I felt called to do. I had lots of help from my parishioners past and present, and Chuck's great gift of time and business experience. However, I had no connections in the community at large, certainly not in the business community, and no idea of how to develop them.
Ask and you shall receive
DESPITE MY ABILITY TO GET UP and tell stories and give sermons, I'm terribly shy in such foreign circumstances. I'd never asked anyone for money in my life. I had no stomach for it. I suppose I'd had to make general appeals in church for donations, but I couldn't ask a friend for even $5. I just couldn't do it.
So we were driving down the freeway on this maiden voyage, when Chuck said, "You'll meet my friend, and I want you to ask him for money."
"Oh, gosh, no," I said. "He's your friend. You ask him."
"Oh, no-no-no," Chuck responded. "I'm just doing the introducing. This is your project, and you're going to have to start doing the asking."
I can remember at that point feeling very uneasy, very uptight. I was thinking, "I can't do this. There's no way. It'll kill me."
Finally I said to Chuck, "How much shall I ask him for?"
He said, "I want you to ask him for $100,000."
Honestly, I could have asked him to pull off to the side of the freeway so I could throw up!
WHEN WE ARRIVED AT CHRIS STEELE'S office he was very friendly. He told us how he got his start from humble beginnings and asked about our project and the purchase of the Arata building. He and Chuck were talking real estate this and development that, and all of a sudden he turned to me and said, "Father, what can I do for you? I know you've come to me for help."
So, I looked at the man and I don't know how, but I blurted out, "Could you give us $100,000?" He looked back at me and without blinking an eye said, "Well, I think we can, but I need to talk to my partner about it." So we left, and that was it.
It was only a matter of weeks when a $50,000 check arrived in the mail. I couldn't believe it. I just couldn't believe it. The check came along with a note: "You'll get the other $50,000 when the cows come home." Well, the cows came home rather quickly, and within a couple of months we were well on our way toward paying back our loan. Because of that, Chris Steele will always be my financial hero.
WHILE PEOPLE HAVE COME ALONG and done enormous things for SFBS since, two people, Chris Steele and David Allen, did something for me when SFBS was penniless and owned nothing. Steele, who gave me that first check, and Allen, who soon afterwards donated the proceeds of the sale of a house, showed they believed in our vision.
From then on it was easier to go out and ask, and we started getting checks and more checks. We passed the collection plate at churches and had teams of eight to ten people asking for donations from people as they left church. A crusty old fundraiser we hired to advise us was familiar with raising money for the Catholic Church. When it came time to make our appeal to St. Mel's Parish in the suburban community of Fair Oaks, he convinced us to try a different tactic.
Father Richard Doheny agreed to let us set up tables with volunteers and serve coffee and cookies down in the church school after Mass. At services, when it came time for me to talk about our project, I didn't directly ask for a collection. Instead, I urged the congregation to read our pamphlets, and said there would be volunteers down at the school happy to tell them more.
Now, I knew this was a wealthy congregation and expected I could walk out of there with perhaps $4,000 in pledges. But dozens of people accepted our invitation for coffee and a chat with our volunteers, and I walked out of that church at the end of the day with $80,000 in pledges!
Faith-to-face
THAT EXPERIENCE TAUGHT ME a valuable lesson. Sitting down and talking face-to-face with a person, personally sharing your excitement about a program, is a far more effective fundraising strategy than simply passing a basket after a speech.
Chuck, in addition to being a brilliant planner and businessman, helped me build my own foundation for fundraising and developing strong community ties. First, he recommended I join the Rotary Club of Sacramento. Now, there are over 27,000 Rotary Clubs in the world, and Rotary of Sacramento is number 15 in size. It has nearly 500 active members. Walking into a meeting was, for me, a very frightening experience.
I felt, "I'm different. I'm not wearing a business suit and tie, I'm not in real estate or banking. I'm a priest, and there's no way I'll ever fit in." Even though the club's members were very friendly and seemed a wonderfully generous bunch of community-minded people, I had such difficulty overcoming my own shyness I resigned after just a couple of months of meetings.
I wrote a letter saying I had to resign on account of my duties and such, but I confess it was a lie. It was because I just didn't feel comfortable. The club was so generous, though, it wrote back, and instead of accepting my resignation, gave me a leave of absence. I was overwhelmed with how nice they were. I thought, "If they're that kind, then I'm going to try and get courage enough to go back." Later, I even got the courage to tell the true story to the club's president, Dave Murphy.
SO, WITH THE HELP OF Chuck Sylva, John Healey, and the generous people at Rotary, I broke out of my cloistered world and into the community at large. My newsletters about the work we were doing at the Food Bank were sent to hundreds of people, then thousands. Hundreds more personal thank-you notes were required as the newsletters generated donations.
"Nemo dat quod non habet" is a statement that has remained with me since my seminary days. It says: "You cannot give what you have not got."
Bishop Fulton Sheen challenges us even further when he says, "I would rather see a sermon than hear one."
And Will Rogers adds his piece by saying: "Know what you are doing. Love what you are doing. Believe in what you are doing."
ALL SOCIAL-SERVICE AGENCIES LOVE and believe in what they do. But I wonder, are all social-service agencies fully aware of what they are truly trying to accomplish?
I say this because experience has shown me that many poor people are perfectly content with just receiving catering help. And that many agencies seem fulfilled in merely rendering such a service.
However, I cannot help but feel that this approach accomplishes very little. Pauperization flourishes. Self-actualization stagnates. And self-esteem and ethical values are placed on the back burner.
I also question if government can ever teach moral values. And I question even further if agencies that rely heavily on government funding are rendered impotent by that very reliance.
This is the thinking that has motivated our operation over these 20 years to bypass bureaucracy. To turn to church pews, civic organizations, and humanitarian individuals for hands-on volunteer help. And at the same time to embrace the entire Sacramento populace for our needed financial support.
Local support
NINETY-THREE PERCENT OF OUR FUNDING comes from local donors, and less than seven percent from government grants. Some people are in a position to give money, others are in a position to give of themselves. We've been fortunate to have an advisory board of business and community leaders who have done both. Over the last ten years, board members have donated $800,000 of their own money to keep our programs thriving.
Basic grassroots organizing has worked well for SFBS. Rather than preoccupy ourselves with problems or bogging ourselves down with bureaucratic solutions, we've chosen to focus on the many opportunities for doing good each day.
Our work could not be done without the energy and generosity of nearly 800 volunteers. I spend many hours acknowledging the generosity of our donors, personally signing notes to approximately 15,000 people each year.
BECAUSE WE ARE VIRTUALLY SELF-SUFFICIENT, we needn't fear that government cutbacks might threaten our existence. Each time we've tackled one need, another has become apparent, and we've seized the opportunity to develop new programs. Our aim is to lead our clients toward self-sufficiency. Unless we do this, I believe we will only be participants in their pauperization.
How can we expect our clients to become self-sufficient unless we model self-sufficiency ourselves? By thriving as a volunteer and donations-based organization, I believe we provide a daily example of the philosophy we strive to impart.Salt news | In session | Stat house | Salt links | Idea exchange
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