School Auction 2012

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The new Parish Activity Center will provide St. Catherine of Siena Church and its parishioners with the facilities to support an active and vibrant spiritual, educational and social experience. Since before 1870, St. Catherine of Siena has served the Martinez community and greater regional area and the Church now impacts as many as 1,100 households. The proposed Parish Activity Center will greatly enhance the outreach of the Church, the experience of its members and the lives of all those touched by its ministries. Adding this much needed facility will allow the Church the opportunity to achieve the following mission.

MISSION STATEMENT FOR PARISH ACTIVITY CENTER EXPANSION

The mission of the project is to raise funds for the development and operation of a new Parish
Activity Center for St. Catherine of Siena Parish Church, in Martinez, California and to ensure its
continued use as a spiritual, social and recreation resource for our church and community. This
mission will be realized through the following goals:

Primary Project Goals

• Enhance the recreational experience of children participating in the basketball and volleyball programs of the Catholic Youth Organization.
• Support the meeting needs of our Church, including our faith formation programs, church committees, and a wide variety of groups in need of a quality place to meet, work, study and pray.
• Allow for the expansion of Church outreach programs.
• Expand and enhance the recreational and educational programs of the Church sponsored school by providing quality indoor space for programs.
• Allow the school to use existing Parish Hall to expand the library and add space for the school lunch program.
• Provide a social hall with professionally designed kitchen to support many social and faithbased groups sponsored by the Church.
• Provide an opportunity for community groups and residents to rent the facility for outside events, thereby exposing them to the work of the St. Catherine of Siena Parish.
• Provide a stage to support small theatrical productions.

PRIMARY RECOMMENDATIONS AND OBSERVATIONS

In addition to the detailed information contained in this plan, VenueTech would like to provide the
following recommendations and observations. Implementation of these recommendations will
greatly enhance the potential for the successful operation and funding of the Activity Center.

1) While the initial phases of the capital campaign have taken longer than originally intended, the campaign has proven to be quite successful. It is not uncommon for volunteer based projects, with no fund development professional staff involved, to take several years to complete. At the same time, it must be noted that the volunteers have successfully reached the hearts of the parishioners of St. Catherine of Siena Parish. The campaign has received a total of 818 gifts averaging over $2,100. The greatest challenge facing the project has always been the membership size of Parish, which appears to have slightly more than 900 active members. The average gift however is fairly strong, particularly considering the demographics of the Martinez community.

2) To date, more than $1,700,000 has been donated through pledges and cash contributions from members of the Parish. Of that total, only $303,000 remains to be collected through the pledge process, meaning that eighty-two percent (82%) of pledges have already been paid.

3) To raise the remaining funds required to build the Activity Center, the plan has enumerated several new fund development strategies. The first of these includes broadening the case for support to place greater emphasis on the "human benefits" of the activity center, such as the impact of the CYO program on the lives of children and their families and the impact on the greater Martinez community. The second strategy involves the identification of new prospective donors such as families who have raised their children in the past with CYO as a central feature in their social life or families who may have raised their children at St.Catherine of Siena Church and now moved to other communities in the East Bay Area. Finally, the third strategy is to engage in an aggressive grantsmanship effort targeting private and corporate foundations that would be moved by the Case for Support offered by the Activity Center. All of these strategies are outlined in Chapter 3 of this plan.

4) With a history of more than 80 years of reaching community youth, the CYO program is an essential element of the Case for Support for the Parish Activity Center. In fact, it is perhaps the fundamental reason many project supporters have shown such great generosity to this point. These important programs, along with the building's ability to support the needs of the Church school, other Church outreach programs and a wide range of community events will build a strong case for support from local, regional and national foundations and corporations.

5) Traditional community centers require a financial subsidy to operate. This is largely due to the cost of management personnel. Since the Church already has staff in place and has elected to add the responsibility for scheduling and renting the Activity Center to the work of current employees, the projected operating budget is actually quite strong. Assuming an extremely conservative on-going fundraising effort, the operation should be able to achieve a level of financial self support once business (facility use) reaches standardization.

6) Once the operation reaches standardization, operating revenues should exceed $200,000 annually. This figure assumes 20-25 church sponsored events in the main hall, 20 community rental events in the main hall and a full season of CYO activities. The plan assumes that rental rates for CYO activities are subsidized by the Church. Rental activities from outside community groups could increase dramatically over time; however this potential may be diminished by the heavy use requirement of CYO, particularly if the organization expands into a volleyball program.

7) Projected operational revenues include a limited fund development program which helps to keep the Activity Center financially self sufficient. This program includes an annual "Friends of the Parish Activity Center" program, an on-going grant program, a local sponsorship effort and an annual fundraising event.

8) The business plan includes a "Pre-Opening Budget" of $40,000 which VenueTech recommends be added to the Capital Campaign goal. The items in this budget include those items typically not included in a construction budget but may be required prior to opening the venue.

9) It is recommended that the Capital Campaign goal include an operating reserve of $100,000 and a reserve for unpaid pledge payments of $50,000.

10) It is recommended that a "Friends of the Parish Activity Center" program be established which would allow for smaller gifts. While the financial goal would be to generate an average membership give of just $100, the primary goal of this program is to build a larger donor base which will be appealing to private and corporate foundations. This program will also allow the Church to reach into the Martinez community and past the Church membership to gain new project supporters. This is truly the concept of "Friend Raising" as opposed to Fundraising as these supporters tend to support the project on a long term basis and will help support the operating cost of the facility for years to come.

11) The plan includes a series of recommended operating policies including rental rates, usage policies, and other operating procedures.

12) The plan features a series of performance benchmarks which will provide the Church the tools to "measure success" in the future. It is recommended that the Parish form an "Activity Center Committee" to oversee the operations and policy development of the new facility and to review and report the success the Church enjoys in achieving its mission.

13) Finally, the new business plan includes a specific mission statement for the Activity Center that features a series of Operating Goals. It is recommended that these goals and mission statement be revisited and re-communicated on an annual basis to ensure that the facility is meeting the needs of the Church, the community and the promises made to the donors that made the dream of the Parish Activity Center possible.

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In our last PACE update it was announced that we were about to undertake an internal audit knowing that the information important in order to draft Grant Proposals. Our plan is still to return to the Diocese with our business plan and we will want perfect records at that time. The first pledge drive was posted in the old DOS computer program so a spread sheet combining the two campaigns had to be created, which brings us to where we are today. The office staff along with PACE volunteer, Esther Concepcion, has completed the data entry and we have discerned that there have actually been 818 gifts averaging $2,100 each. We have collected 1.7 million dollars and are still receiving the $303,000 in remaining pledge money. PACE UPDATE In our last PACE update it was announced that we were about to undertake an internal audit knowing that the information important in order to draft Grant Proposals. Our plan is still to return to the Diocese with our business plan and we will want perfect records at that time. The first pledge drive was posted in the old DOS computer program so a spread sheet combining the two campaigns had to be created, which brings us to where we are today. The office staff along with PACE volunteer, Esther Concepcion, has completed the data entry and we have discerned that there have actually been 818 gifts averaging $2,100 each. We have collected 1.7 million dollars and are still receiving the $303,000 in remaining pledge money. We are putting the finishing touches on our business plan from the information gleaned from our internal audit and are putting together a cost analysis in order to look for alternate ways to fund our building, as well as ways to garner even more pledges. Part of this process is to discern how many families are registered at St. Catherine's; a tedious process we are undertaking at the time of this writing. At our recent PACE fund raiser aboard the Hornblower on the San Francisco Bay we had a fabulously fun evening and made money too. Fr. Vincent Brylka, our priest here at St. Catherine's at the inception of PACE, attended as a guest. It was wonderful to have him at that event because it was the kind of party he would have put together when he was here with us. We had many fund raising events for PACE when he was our Pastor and now Fr. Leo sees it in very much the same way. We can look forward to other fun events with Fr. Leo at the helm and watch our dream become a reality.It would have been nice if we could have had a backward look at the beginning of our project, but it might have been too discouraging to even start. So many things could have stopped us completely. We might not have been able to merge our two lots. Our property might have been incompatible with flood concerns. If the dirt had been unstable we might have failed the soils analysis. If the neighbors in opposition had been more numerous and if we hadn't got our parking variance we would have been brought to an abrupt stop. We could have been stopped by the Diocese, the City, the County, the Fire Marshall or the Health Department anywhere along the process, but we weren't. The huge amount of money we have received in pledges is unbelievable enough to be miraculous. I believe this has been a result of our continual prayers. Fr. Leo says we can't get dollars without pennies. Please continue to contribute, either through pledges or prayer, as we seek alternative funding and try to garner more pledges.

Our PACE cruise was so enjoyable that we wanted to share some pictures of the event with all of you.

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