How you give

With gratitude and careful stewardship

An explanation of fund raising at St. Benedict’s Abbey

Dear Friends,

The monks of St. Benedict’s Abbey pray daily in gratitude for the friends and benefactors who have helped kindle the fire of service that has burned at St. Benedict’s Abbey for the past 150 years.

We at St. Benedict’s Abbey have always asked you, our friends, for both prayerful and financial support to help us on our way as we continue to live out our monastic life of prayer, and also to serve as pastors, educators, chaplains, and spiritual

directors. However, recently we have extended our request further as we have reached out for additional support for our capital campaign. As we enter the final stretch of this campaign I want to share with you exactly how we operate our fund-raising efforts. We have been and will be contacting many of you in person, by telephone or by mail about our capital campaign, “The Journey Forward.” St. Benedict’s Abbey, however, like any household, still must maintain its day-to-day operations. We must feed our family members, care for our elderly, educate our young, and pay our bills. Therefore, our regular fund-raising efforts continue for what we call our Annual Fund.

Capital Campaign

We have always been a community that relied on good financial planning to handle the approximate $250,000 in maintenance, construction and renovation needed for our facilities each year. But as we reached our 150th anniversary, we recognized that as a community that prided itself on Benedictine hospitality we could no longer ignore the fact that our Church—our spiritual center—was not accessible to all people, not even to all of our monks. That needed to be rectified. The cost: approximately $2 million.

We also had to acknowledge that our historic monastery was shielded from the elements by a deteriorating roof and windows that were not only in bad shape, but were not energy efficient. Thus, our combined Benedictine values of hospitality and good stewardship of resources prompted us to enter into our community’s second capital campaign in its history. Thanks to many generous people, we have raised $2.5 million toward our $4 million goal. We need to raise a little over $1.5 million to replace our roof and windows. There is a special pledge card that is used to designate gifts to the capital campaign.

Annual Fund

St. Benedict’s Abbey mails out two appeal letters a year. A Lenten Appeal goes out on Ash Wednesday. It is a spiritual message from the Abbot, but also an appeal for assistance. The second appeal, the Abbot’s Appeal, is sent out in late fall, closer to Christmas. It normally focuses on a specific need of the Abbey. Both of these appeals include a pledge card which invites you, the donor, to designate your gift for the general operating needs of the Abbey or for a restricted purpose, such as education or retirement needs of the monks. These two ongoing appeals are entirely separate and distinct from the capital campaign.

Please allow me to stress that the capital campaign and the annual fund are of equal importance and that every gift to St. Benedict’s Abbey is greatly appreciated. All of you, our friends and benefactors, are in the daily prayers of our community.

Sincerely in St. Benedict,

Abbot Barnabas Senecal, O.S.B.