The Grant

Some of our readers have asked about the financial grant awarded to the diocese by the Lilly Endowment and how it is connected to the planning and implementation of UiH.

A few statements have been published about the grant. We’ll summarize them here:

• The grant is in the amount of a million dollars and is phased over 3 years & carries a requirement of the diocese finding matching funds from donors:

“The grant, which extends over three years, awarded the diocese of Lafayette-in-Indiana one million dollars. As a part of the phase II grant agreement, the diocese must have a dollar for dollar match of one million dollars by the end of the three years.”

The Catholic Moment, December 22, 2019

Diocesan CFO Matt McKillip is also quoted in the same article as saying that donors had provided matching funds for the first phase and that these donors had at that time agreed to provide some large portion of the second match as well.

• The grant provided access to the Leadership Roundtable and ultimately led to Partner’s Edge. The Catholic Moment reported in April of 2018 & again in December of 2019, that because of phase I of the Lilly grant, the diocese began working with the Leadership Roundtable organization. This eventually led into their consultancy with Partner’s Edge, Dennis Cheesebrow’s organization. (He has a long-standing relationship with Leadership Roundtable.)

• Money from the the second phase of the grant is to be used for the implementation of UiH:

“We are at a point in the implementation and planning process of Uniting in Heart where we need to use these funds [from Phase II of the grant] to push the plan into motion.”

Fr. Theodore Dudzinski, in The Catholic Moment, December 22, 2019

A detailed blueprint:

Nearly all grants involve a very detailed blueprint, which, if approved by the granting agency, becomes an agreement for specified action. All aspects of the project are laid out in detail. This would include short term, mid term and long term goals, and budgets that specify exactly the products, programs, processes, or businesses with which one will be dealing. A detailed timeline of the plan’s execution–what will be done by whom, by which date–is critical, as are the project outcomes and explanations of how said outcomes will be measured. This last is often accomplished by taking assessments of various kinds before and after the project.

If one is awarded a grant for his project, he is not free to change, pause, delete, replace or delay anything without endangering his relation to the granting agency. The project must be carried out as submitted, barring special permission. In one sense, the funding organization is evaluating the grant recipient as a project partner on the basis of how he follows the agreed-upon plan. The recipient will be obliged to report & account for whether he has carried out the plan as specified.

The Lilly Endowment

The Lilly Endowment remains one of the few funding organizations that offers grants to churches and religious groups. And they are a remarkably generous funder, offering about of a third of their grants to such religious organizations, so a partnership with them is highly valuable.

In 2016, the Lilly Endowment reported giving religion grant monies in excess of $114,139,000 across many categories, including young adult initiatives, theology training for future ministers, high school youth theology programs, campus ministry and the like.

The same year, Lilly approved 36 grants ranging from $14,370 to $1,000,000 in a single funding category: their “National Initiative to Address Economic Challenges Facing Pastoral Leaders Support.” The purpose of these grants was: “to help national and regional church related organizations undertake innovative projects designed to reduce or alleviate the economic challenges that impair the ability of pastors to lead congregations effectively.”

There were only two Roman Catholic dioceses among the 35 recipients of this grant that year, according to Lilly’s Annual Report.

They were the Archdiocese of Chicago and the Roman Catholic Diocese of Lafayette-in-Indiana.

Again, much of the plan seems to be in tandem with Chicago’s model, now including monies from the exact same funding category of the same endowment at the same time.

Does the grant provide for the implementation of a plan like that of Chicago: new sorts of parish leadership, technology & parish program models, etc.? We ask that our diocesan leaders consider sharing the details of the grant proposal & the objectives and process of the plan in more detail. If we are misjudging the nature of the project, this would clear up much of the confusion.

In the meantime, we suggest renewed prayers for our bishop, all clergy and people of our diocese. These difficult times have placed great pressure on everyone. Our goal must always far transcend these present struggles and problems, even while accepting and integrating them.