Faithful face more pressure to give, despite donating £37m

LESS THAN a year after raising £37 million with what was widely regarded as a vigorous fund-raising campaign, the diocese of Westminster is going back to its parishes seeking fresh donations.

Mike Infurnari, the diocese’s recently appointed director of development in its Office of Fundraising and Stewardship, suggested that appeals such as the one launched last week could become an annual event.

The new appeal, launched specifically in the name of the archbishop, Cardinal Vincent Nichols, is seeking an unspecified sum to fund the diocese’s continuing ministry.

Last year’s Growing in Faith scheme, run by the US-based specialists Community Counselling Services (CCS), was designed to plug three specific – and substantial – holes in Westminster’s finances: the underfunding of sick and retired priests; paying for an enlarged intake of seminarians; and an increasing number of parish projects.

It met with opposition from priests and lay people, with some people switching parishes in protest. Because the campaign encouraged people to pay by direct debit, many will still be making contributions three years after the campaign was launched in 2012.

Mr Infurnari would not be drawn on the question of donor fatigue. He said: “I’m a big believer in letting people decide. If we put a message out there and if people do say they have a few more pounds to share with the Church and are happy to do it, well fine. If they don’t, they will just put the leaflets in the rubbish bin.”

He tried to draw a distinction between Growing in Faith and the Cardinal’s Appeal. “Last year’s fund-raising was not an appeal,” he said, “it was a capital campaign – I’m sorry to split a hair there. Anytime you put your hand out and say ‘Please give’, it is an appeal per se, but in my trade, a capital campaign is defined by a moment in time – the diocese had three acute financial needs; it said ‘We need a major movement’ – and that’s what a campaign is.”  The appeal, he said, would support the Church’s mission and ministry.

The appeal will be run in-house by Mr Infurnari’s team, with no input from CCS or other exterior fund-raisers. “We have no specific target in mind,” he said. “We are not particularly aggressive in that area.”

But he warned that a campaign like last year’s could be repeated. “It wasn’t going to be the be-all and end-all, with the diocese never needing anything more. They had an acute issue: how are we going to pay for these sick or retired priests for the next five to 10 years?

“We are going to have to address that again in the next 10, 15. It’s naive to think the diocese is never going to need money again,” he said.