COVID financial toll: parishes relying on fewer donors making larger gifts

Although the COVID-19 pandemic is taking a financial toll on the Archdiocese of Vancouver at every level, with donations down and some parishes reducing staff, finance officials are also reporting a surge in online giving as well as larger gifts coming from fewer individuals.

Archdiocesan finance director Sean O’Brien said the impact of church closings in 2020 and restrictions on Mass attendance mean parishes will likely end the year with about 25 per cent less in parish giving than last year.

The annual Project Advance charitable appeal is expected to take a similar financial hit. 

“We’re trending down between 20 to 25 per cent,” said O’Brien. “That’s across the board. There are parishes that are doing better this year than last year, and others that are doing much worse than [a loss of] 20 per cent.”

Second collections are expected to drop even more this year, to about 54 per cent of the usual amount for all diocesan special collections combined.

But amid the details are reasons for hope, said O’Brien.

When public Masses were suspended in March, the archdiocese’s development office rushed to create the online giving page My Sunday Offering. It took off, with 4,000 new donors signing up in the first 10 weeks.

With public Masses now back (albeit limited to 50 participants), My Sunday Offering has 3,029 regular ongoing donors and 2,477 casual givers.

Development director Chris Ufford said My Sunday Offering is on track to bring in $4.8 million by the end of the year, which is 15 per cent of 2019’s Sunday offertory totals.

That’s significant, he said, considering the online site only came into existence in March.

“It’s a strong foundation of support that the parishes and pastors can count on when they know revenue can come in to support the parish,” said Ufford.

The online donations don’t take into account traditional giving as well as automated or other online giving that individual parishes may have set up on their own.

The online donations also don’t likely represent net new income but rather represent donors who would typically slip envelopes into Sunday collection baskets or who find online giving more convenient.

The average weekly online gift tends to be larger than the average in-person gift, a trend consistent with other non-profits in Canada, said Ufford. The size of online donations has also been trending upward, to about $25 a week in 2020 from $20 a week in 2018.

“We can see through the online platform that some people are really stepping up their giving,” said Ufford.

There have also been some significant gifts from individual donors, with one donating a record $100,000 toward a second collection.

“It’s really cool to see the heartbeat of the Church” through its donors, said Ufford.

Project Advance, the archdiocese’s annual fundraising campaign, is also expecting a 20- to 25-per-cent decline from last year.

For 2020 the campaign shifted from capital projects to charitable efforts directly affected by the crisis or created in response to it. The goal ($3.25 million in 2019) was slashed to $1.625 million this year, with $825,000 of that earmarked for the crisis response fund.

Ufford said although Project Advance only launched in June and participation is down by 4.3 per cent this year (a decrease of 3,233 donors), the average gift size rose about eight per cent to $431. There has also been a rise in online giving to the campaign, with about 43 per cent of gifts coming in through Project Advance and parish websites, from 18 per cent last year.

He said $5 million has been pledged so far – a significant drop from $7.5 million in 2019. On the other hand, the lower goal means parish rebates – any funds raised above parish goals – are at a record high this year.

The drop in Sunday collections will have the biggest impact on parishes by far, said O’Brien, but some parishes are also facing other losses in revenue, such as lost rental income or fundraising opportunities.

Some groups are having success converting live fundraisers to virtual ones. St. Joseph the Worker in Richmond will move its annual school fundraising gala online Nov. 21, complete with a live auction.

The financial impact of the pandemic has also led to layoffs at the parish level. A B.C. Catholic parish survey asked all 77 parishes about how the pandemic has affected them. Out of 68 who responded, 12 said they lost staff positions and 13 had to reduce their office hours.

More coverage on the findings of the survey here.