Grants aim to assist lay leaders serving local Church

By John Shaughnessy

Hoping to ease financial concerns and stresses for lay leaders throughout the Church in central and southern Indiana, the archdiocese and Lilly Endowment, Inc. have teamed up to create the Ministerial Excellence Fund.

The archdiocese’s fund focuses on providing grants—up to $5,000 each—to youth ministers, business managers, pastoral associates, parish life coordinators, parish catechetical leaders, principals and assistant principals who are burdened with individual student debt or family-related medical expenses.

Applications for the grants will be accepted soon. Contributions to the fund are already being accepted. The archdiocese has to raise $100,000 in both 2017 and 2018—funds that will then be matched by Lilly Endowment.

The fund reflects the archdiocese’s commitment to helping and keeping its talented lay leaders in parishes and schools across central and southern Indiana, according to Matt Hayes, the manager of an archdiocesan project called Empowering Pastoral Leaders for Excellence in Parish Leadership and Management.

The Ministerial Excellence Fund is part of that overall project, which is being funded by a three-year grant from Lilly Endowment.

“There’s a recognition that pastoral leaders leave the ministry because they don’t have enough economic support,” Hayes says. “We want our pastoral leaders to stay. We don’t want an undue financial burden to cause them to leave.”

With that goal in mind, the archdiocese’s Ministerial Excellence Fund will specifically assist pastoral leaders who experience financial stress because of individual student debt or family‑related medical expenses.

A person receiving a grant could have a year’s worth of student debt or medical debt paid—up to $5,000.

As part of the grant, recipients will also be required to participate in financial education sessions, which are free.

“We don’t want people to just use the money to help with their debt,” Hayes says. “We also want them to think about how they’re managing their finances over the long term.”

All the money in the fund will be distributed by the end of 2018, Hayes says, but the archdiocese hopes to continue the program long term by establishing an endowment.

“The archdiocese doesn’t want this to go away when the grant goes away,” Hayes says. “We want this to be lasting.”

The archdiocese’s Office of Stewardship and Development is committed to achieving both goals: maximizing the matching funds offered by Lilly Endowment in 2017 and 2018, and helping create an archdiocesan endowment that will continue beyond those years.

As of Sept. 26, $22,000 has been raised through archdiocesan efforts, according to Jolinda Moore, executive director of the archdiocesan Office of Stewardship and Development.

“With the Lilly match, we’re already positioned to give away $44,000,” Moore says. “We know we can already impact the lives of eight different families who are committed to the ministries of the Church. And every day we’re meeting with more donors to secure more funding.”

Moore says the Ministerial Excellence Fund will have a positive effect on young people who want to work for the Church, and older people who have dedicated their lives to ministries in the Church.

“We have so many young people who want to work in ministry, but the reality of their financial situation once they leave college often prohibits them from working in the field,” Moore notes. “Their college debt is so great that they’re stuck.”

Burdened with educational debt, these young people often have to choose between following their desire to work for the Church, or getting a job in the private sector that lets them pay off their debt, she says.

“And these grants are not just for the young either. It could be for older people in ministry who have been in unfortunate health situations, and they have medical debt they can’t afford,” Moore says.

“We’re committed to this initiative because we know the real impact it will have in the field.”
 

(For more information about the Ministerial Excellence Fund and how to apply for a grant, contact the archdiocese’s Human Resources Office at 317-236-1594 or humanresources@archindy.org. For more information about how to contribute financially to the Ministerial Excellence Fund, call the archdiocese’s Office of Stewardship and Development at 317-236-1415 or 1-800-382-9836, ext. 1415. Interested donors can also contact Jolinda Moore at jmoore@archindy.org or Ron Greulich at rgreulich@archindy.org.) †