April 6, 2018 at 1:53 p.m.
Parish seeks Bingo alternative
More than $50,000 each year?
Bingo!
After recently reminding parishioners of that important fact, Rev. Christopher Drennan, OSA, pastor, convinced enough of them to volunteer as Thursday-night Bingo workers to keep that game going. Without the money raised from its Thursday and Sunday night games, the parish would have to make up the difference in the weekly collection or look at cutting back on parish programs and staff.Supplement
"Part of my concern is we're not surviving simply on what they give in the collection. They would have to give more in the offering" to eliminate Bingo, Father Drennan said.Bingo playing has been part of the parish since the late 1960s, and a team of volunteers has been working at the Thursday night game every week during that time. Over the years, team members have died, become ill or retired from their work, and the need for fresh volunteers became apparent.
For the past month, Father Drennan has been writing in the parish bulletin to ask parishioners if they would consider working Bingo once a month to keep the game around. Along with the Sunday night game, the parish takes in approximately $1,000 each week from Bingo, without which parish programs and staff might need to be reduced.
Keeping it going
"Bingo is our only real fundraiser. Bingo provides an average of over $50,000 a year to our parish budget. We would need $1,000 a week more in the collection, every week, to recoup this loss," Father Drennan wrote in the bulletin. "I would love to rely only on your free will sacrificial gift to support the parish. This has not been possible to date. We need the income from Bingo."He wanted 20 new workers so that teams could be set up; a team would have to work only once a month, as the Sunday volunteers do. About half of the people needed to keep Thursday night Bingo have offered to help, and it appears that the game will continue.
Father Drennan would prefer not to rely upon money collected from the twice-a-week games to support parish activities, but expecting parishioners to give $1,000 more each week to the collection would be a bit much.
He also knows that Bingo provides a way for people to socialize and have fun without spending a lot of money. Depriving them of this social event would affect more than just the financial health of the parish.
Stewardship
Assumption/St. Paul raised $800,000 to complete a $1.3 million renovation project by asking parishioners to contribute $1 a day for three years. The parish used savings and money earned from investments to pay for the remainder.As that fund drive shows, parishioners are capable of supporting parish programs and staff without Bingo, and Father Drennan favors such generosity over Bingo for long-term support of the parish.
"I think stewardship is the answer," he said, with planned giving, bequests and endowments as some of the ways parishioners could support their church. "You really don't want Bingo to be the only thing."
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