Hello, POP faithful. In this bulletin you will find our parish annual financial report. Our fiscal year runs July 1 - June 30 each year. I thought I’d add some of my commentary to the numbers.
First, there is so much for which to be grateful. Our offertory for the last year was about $2.5M. Thank you so much for your generosity. This really reflects your love of God, the Catholic faith, and Prince of Peace. Our offertory also increased about 3% this past year, thank you!!!
Also much gratitude to our school parents paying school tuition in total about $2.5M. Thank you! This truly reflects your love of the faith and desire to pass that on to your children! We have almost 500 students and an excellent school faculty and staff. Schools are rather expensive to run, so I also want to note that besides tuition funding, the parish funds (subsidizes) our school (from offertory) about $1M and the rest is fundraised by the school gala. The school therefore is by far the largest ministry of the parish.
Another large ministry, is our Early Education Center (EEC). This is entirely funded (and breaks even) by the parents who enroll their children there. I am grateful to parents who provide over $1M for this care and early formation of the children. Again we have such a great staff for the EEC, and it is a wonderful feeder into our school.
Finally, on the income side, I am grateful for all the “other” income. This category is pretty much all “in-and-out” sort of things like special collections and the school lunch program. On the second page of the report, you will see a different way of reporting of all the causes outside the parish. It is amazing that when you add up all these, Prince of Peace parish/parishioners give about $1M outside the parish. Thank you!
Now, to comment on expenses. I’m grateful that by far our largest expenses is our great personnel! All the parish staff, school and EEC faculty and staff—did you know we employ over 100 people (full and part-time) at POP? The past year saw larger than normal percentages of increase in wages and benefits. The cost of living has gone up.
We do try to have a balanced budget. Alas, we failed last year with a loss of $80K. The main reason, besides the larger increase in personnel costs, was unexpected expenses with parish maintenance. We had a massive sinking of the foundation under one wing of the school that needed addressing (so far quite successfully). Our HVAC systems are under contract but needed so much help that we had to pay extra. And the bridge repairs (they were crumbling) on the east side of the church went slightly over budget.
You also can see our balance sheet (grey inset). While it looks quite substantial that we have $2.3M in the bank, much of that is already designated/restricted (like the accounts of the lunch program, PTO and other sub-organizations of the parish who carry balances, also there are some funds already gathered from past years for a church/altar renovation). We also have a small reserve for maintenance—much needed! Minus all that, we have only a little over $1M in unrestricted reserves. Again, that sounds
substantial, until you realize that is about 2 months of our parish expenses. It is great to have this cushion, but it is about as soft as our pew and kneeler cushions (in other words, we still would like more of a reserve for rainy days).
There is a challenge. We see rising expenses across the board and struggle to have contributions keep pace with costs. God provides, and you are the hands with which God makes this happen! Thank you for all your sacrificial giving, and I must always beg for you to keep that up and even stretch a little further each year.
How does our soon-to-be parish capital campaign impact all this? Honestly, it should help! The campaign should not decrease any of our regular giving. The renovations may help reduce some future maintenance costs. And having a beautiful well-functioning parish church and facilities (including school) should help us keep our good momentum of growth—we have seen increases in the number of parishioners, enrollments, and offertory over the past few years.
If you have questions, please reach out. Thank you so much always for your generosity and love of our parish.
Peace,
Fr. Greg