St. George Catholic Church

THE CHALLENGE

In 2010, the small Catholic community of St. George in Hartford, South Dakota built a beautiful new church. But a poorly run capital campaign left a bad taste in parishioners’ mouths. Five years later, the parish was still in debt and now faced an unstable financial future. The community had been using operational funds to make debt payments. Faced with growing costs, St. George leadership chose to cut payments back to only the interest portion of the loan. This left the parish with $1.1 million in remaining debt and no way to pay it off.

THE VISION

Extinguish the existing debt to save the St. George community hundreds of thousands in interest payments and allow the community to return focus to its ministries.

THE SOLUTION

The St. George community knew it needed to raise funds quickly, but recognized that the small size of the parish and staff meant that outside counsel would be key. The church leadership turned to the Steier Group. A strong communications plan helped mend the fences from the previous capital campaign, leading to major success.

“This was essential to a very successful campaign,” Rev. Paul King said. “Without overcoming this reluctance, we would not have been able to reach out to so many parishioners, which was so vital to achieving the highest goal we had set of eliminating our parish debt.”

Thanks to the A Vision of Our Future Capital Campaign, the St. George community will extinguish nearly all of it’s debt.