St. Paul’s Steering Committee
Meeting Minutes 3/25/2003
Tonight’s Steering Committee meeting will be very short, because the final Program Planning Workshop will be held this evening at 7:00 PM. Our newest member, Cecelia Flores, joined the SC at tonight’s meeting. Before the SC meeting, the parish representatives who interviewed the Fundraising candidates and Bill Brown, met to discuss which firm should be selected for our Capital Campaign, Kirby-Smith or CCS. The discussion focused on the ability of each firm to identify the Director who would be our principal point-of-contact and the possibility that each firm would provide a bi-lingual Director.
At 6:30 PM, the SC members began to show up for their meeting. The SC had no other agenda item for their meeting, so the discussion continued and involved the members of the SC. Various topics were discussed. Bill Brown questioned whether it was critical to mandate a bi-lingual Director since it would naturally eliminate a percentage of otherwise very talented and experienced people from either firm. He questioned, on St. Paul’s behalf, whether it was better to have the best possible Director and if they happened to be bi-lingual that would be great, or demand that we get a bi-lingual Director regardless of their other qualifications. The SC recognized that it would be possible to overcome the obstacle of having a non-Spanish speaking Director, but it would require much more work on the parish’s part and we would need a very strong team of leaders in order to derive the same benefit as having a bi-lingual Director.
Another topic discussed was the possible need to combine the Capital Campaign with a Stewardship Campaign that would increase the general offertory. St. Paul’s goals for fund-raising are ambitious and it is quite likely that our Capital Project will require the parish to take on considerable debt. We would be much more able to service that debt (or even get the necessary loan) if we could demonstrate a higher offertory. Bill Brown’s comment was, that compared to other parishes of similar size across the country, St. Paul’s offertory was low. He considered this a good thing, because it meant that there was untapped power in the community already. In other words, based on our offertory, St. Paul’s parishioners do not appear burdened with a sizeable fiscal responsibility to the parish. The SC agreed to investigate the possibility of combining the Capital Campaign with a Stewardship Campaign.
No consensus was achieved as to whom we should hire as the Fundraising firm. The workshop was about to start and the members of the SC needed to attend that event. The SC tabled the decision until the next meeting. The meeting was adjourned at 6:55 PM.
Later that evening, Fr. Jerry, Dan Jones, Rusty Boicourt, and Bill Brown met again to discuss which candidate should be hired. Some progress was made and consensus was achieved in several areas. The main topic seemed to be that CCS focused on large givers while Kirby-Smith was more interested in reaching all parishioners. Which approach is best for St. Paul’s is not yet certain. Dan and Rusty will present their ideas at the next SC meeting.