Sunday, February 8, 2009

CMA Update, part 2

For the first time of which I am aware the diocese is including the actual number of donors in its Parish-by-Parish reports on dor.org. This information allows us to look at the progress of the 2008-09 CMA drive in a new and revealing way.

Below is a graph showing the number of new donors per day appearing in the various Parish-by-Parish summaries I have collected over the last 4 months. (For example, if the time between two data sets is 8 days and the difference in total donors between those data sets is 240, then there would have been an average of 30 new donors per day for that period.) Also included is the average donation made by those new donors.

While the average new pledge over the last month or so is hovering around $142.00, the number of actual new donors over that same period seems to be leveling off at somewhere around 25 to 30 a day. At this rate the CMA won't realize its goal until late June or early July.

4,000 donors go missing

According to the diocese "more than 37,000" people donated to last year's CMA campaign. As of last Friday the total number of donors to this year's campaign stood at 32,766, well over 4,000 shy of last year's number.

The economy is certainly playing a role in this decline, but it doesn't seem to be the whole story. For example, the difference in unemployment rates from last year to this year accounts for about 1,000 fewer donors, but that still leaves over 3,000 AWOL for other reasons.

Many parishes coming up short

As of last Friday just 22 parishes had reached 100% of their CMA assessments. The remaining 107 parishes were a combined $822,000 short, with the median deficit being about $6,450.

Furthermore, 32 parishes were still $10,000 or more short of their assessments, with St. John of Rochester "leading" with a deficit of $28,692.50.

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