The annual day of giving designed just for Catholics — #iGiveCatholic — is coming up again on Dec. 2.
Forty parishes and schools in the Archdiocese of Louisville are taking part this year, with the hopes of funding projects large and small to meet the spiritual and material needs of their ministries.
St. James School hopes to fund bus service for students from West Louisville. The Shrine of St. Martin — the top earner in years past — aims to boost funding for its sacred music program. St. Charles Church in St. Mary, Ky., hopes to repair its bell tower’s electronic tolling system.
“I really think we’re going to knock this out of the park this year,” said Molly Keene Smith, director of the archdiocese’s Office of Mission Advancement, noting the success of the last two years.
“This will be our third year participating,” she noted. “The first year, we had 31 participating organizations and we raised $220,000. Year two, we had the same number of organizations (though some were different), and we raised double” — $475,000.
Keene Smith said she encourages organizations — and their members — to ask former members for support.
“Push it out to supporters who live across the country — people who grew up at your parish, alumni of your school,” she said. “Push it out to everyone you know. I’m very passionate about this because I have seen great success, and I know it will build and grow here.”
Online giving starts Nov. 17, and donors can watch the progress of their favorite organizations in real time on the leaderboard. View the campaign — and all the participants — at www.igivecatholic.org/community/louisville.
Registration for organizations closed on Nov. 1, but Keene Smith said she encourages additional parishes and schools to consider participating next year.
Participants “pick a project that needs to be done — everyone can see the need, and it’s not in the budget,” she said. “Everyone can raise money to get that thing done. All of our parishes and schools have these needs.”
She said some projects are small and require a few thousand dollars, while others are major projects that seek tens of thousands of dollars in funding.
Regardless of the project size, Keene Smith said, organizations should do something every year.
“You have to stay with it year after year so people come to expect it,” she said. “We’ve got to build awareness.”
