Dear Friends,
St. Clare’s is continuing in our mission during these troubled times. We hope that you all have had the opportunity to worship with us remotely in our Zoom services. It has been wonderful to see so many faces even if we aren’t in the same physical location.
Even though our facility remains idle, our commissions are still meeting, we are still worshiping together, and we are working on ways to take care of each other and our community. We hope you will join us.
Our current financial status is strong. The first three months of the years saw pledges coming in at a higher rate than in recent years. Parishioners also contributed for past years’ pledges. This means that we were able to modestly increase our Operating Reserve by $10,000 to $115,000. This is our ‘rainy day fund’ of unrestricted savings available to us in times of financial hardship.
We are committed to paying church and Genesis staff through the remainder of this crisis. We have sought out available government resources by applying for an SBA CARES loan. We are also working on ways to replace our Sunday plate through new ways to accept donations. St Clare now has a registered text number for text giving through our e-Giving platform. The number is 734-294-5660. Click here for instructions about setting up and using the text number. Once you go through the set-up process you can easily increase giving from your checking account by texting a gift amount. We also have a custom list of “Keywords” that have been set up to direct St. Clare’s text giving: Pledge, Non-pledge; BDFP; Discretionary; Flowers; AltarGuild; ArkFund; Other; Haiti. We are also participating with the Diocese to accept credit card and debit card donations through EDOMI. During the continued shutdown of our parishes, the Diocese is covering transaction fees so your entire donation will go to St. Clare’s.
We anticipate that while people are suffering economic hardship there may be increased need for immediate help through our discretionary fund. In the month of March, a parishioner offered to match $1000 in donations. We received over $2500 in donations for a total increase of more than $3500 (including the match).
Please continue to be generous in your gifts, please reach out to us and to your fellow parishioners to check in on each other, please participate in the Outreach Commission which is working on ways to support our larger community.
We can get through this together.
Yours in Christ,
Mike Meyer for the Vestry