Our critical need for regular monthly support, and how you can help

By Dr. Jeff Mirus ( bio - articles - email ) | Jan 07, 2015

CatholicCulture.org is planning a move to a more powerful and more stable technical infrastructure which will maximize both our uptime and our ability to serve growing numbers of users with maximum speed. Our current servers and software are now somewhat dated, and both stability and speed became an issue in 2014.

This will increase our monthly costs, but since we met our budget in 2014, we think we can take the next step. One important related issue is that we met our 2014 expenses only on the very last day of the year. Considering Fall is the biggest fundraising season for non-profits, this means that we were running behind all year, catching up only in December.

January is the month to address this problem

To strengthen our position—and so make our Catholic mission more effective—we need to increase regular support by our users. The main way we have of doing this is to encourage recurring monthly donations, which we also refer to as “pledges”. A pledge initiated in January helps us each and every month of the year.

This method of support works well for everybody. The donor spreads the bulk of his or her support out on a monthly basis, avoiding financial spikes. CatholicCulture.org can count on a certain base income as a result. And recurring monthly donations (pledges) can be managed by each donor in his user Account area. Pledges can be changed, deactivated and reactivated at any time with a few clicks, and credit card information can be updated as needed.

In addition, those with recurring monthly gifts are solicited far less often than others. This is because anyone who makes a donation is free from further solicitation (in most circumstances) for 45 days. So anyone who is donating on a monthly basis misses all routine fundraising messages. You’ll receive occasional requests for help in highly significant situations, but the routine financial correspondence stops.

How to set up your monthly pledge

Establishing a recurring monthly gift is simple. You click the donate menu option which appears on every page and you use the same donation form as for one-time donations. The only difference is that you answer one question YES.

The first element on the form is the amount you wish to donate. The second element is this question: “Make this an automatic monthly contribution?” The answer “no” is preselected by default. To make a recurring monthly pledge, you simply change this answer to YES. Then you finish up the form in the usual way and submit it.

At the time you submit the form, your initial monthly gift in the amount you specified will be charged to your credit card. Thereafter, on the same date each month, your card will be charged the specified amount. Again, you can deactivate this process at any time in your Account area on CatholicCulture.org.

Sending monthly checks instead

If you do not like giving online, you can accomplish the same goals by using a bank bill-pay service to disburse a regular monthly check to Trinity Communications. Or, of course, you can do the whole thing by hand every month.

If you wish to do this, use Trinity Communications as the payee, and use this address: P.O. Box 582, Manassas, VA 20108, USA. Some banks require a phone number. We do not have phone staff, but if you need a reference phone number, there is a personal number I can provide, which we use for situations that cannot be handled by email. Email me at [email protected] to request the number.

Your regular, ongoing support can make a huge difference to our mission of enriching faith, strengthening the Church, and forming Catholic culture.

Please set up your automatic monthly contribution now.