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October25, 2022, Ciudad Juárez, Mexico – When Sister Donna Kustusch, OP, first came to Ciudad Juárez, Mexico in the late 1990s to work with Siena Heights University students at a soup kitchen, she became involved in the lives of the local women – first in a prayer community and then to address the needs of the people. Together, Sister Donna, Sister Eleanor Stech, OP, and the local women started Centro Santa Catalina with the people of Juárez.
About 26 years later, Sisters Maureen Gallagher, OP, Jean Keeley, OP, and Nancy Murray, OP, traveled to El Paso, Texas, and Ciudad Juárez to celebrate Centro Santa Catalina’s anniversary, reconnect with the people, and observe the improvements in the city and in the lives of the people.
The anniversary program involved a special presentation, Catherine of Siena: A Woman of our Times by Sister Nancy, who portrays St. Catherine of Siena – 14th Century Dominican mystic and reformer and the Patron Saint of Centro Santa Catalina – to parishes, schools, and other organizations around the world. Held at Loretto Academy Little Theater in El Paso, the event also included refreshments, a silent auction, and the opportunity to buy products made by women in the sewing co-op at Centro Santa Catalina.
The Sisters’ three-day visit included lunch in El Paso with members of the Centro Santa Catalin’s board and other Sisters that Sister Maureen had come to know; a meeting with Bishop José Guadalupe Torres Campos of the Diocese of Ciudad Juárez; the fundraising program; and a visit to the Centro Santa Catalina and the community.
“It was wonderful to see the warmth and the welcome for [Sisters] Maureen and Nancy and to see how much the Center has grown – and how much bigger their influence,” Sister Jean said. “I was privileged to be Maureen’s companion.”
In an interview, Sister Maureen recounted the history of Centro Santa Catalina, which began as a women’s prayer group in a chapel near the city’s garbage dump. Eventually, learning from the women that they needed money to buy food and send their children to school, Sister Donna helped the women to start a sewing co-op to earn their money.
Since then, the Center has become a faith-based community for women who are economically poor, offering a Homework Help program for children, a daily lunch program, computer and sports programs, and monthly prayer gatherings. Sister Maureen describes the Center as a community. “Every single woman lost an immediate family member or other relative to the [drug] cartel,” she said. “They supported one another” through these tragedies.
Sister Maureen said that Sister Donna invited her in 2006 to serve as marketing director for the products made by the women in the sewing co-op.
Based in El Paso, Texas, Sister Maureen focused on selling the women’s products in the United States. While her predecessor had sold the women’s products at five parishes in El Paso, Sister Maureen expanded the outreach. By the time she left the ministry in 2019, she said, “almost every parish in El Paso would sell some of the products before Christmas.” She also sold the products at conferences and asked other Adrian Dominican Sisters to help in the sales when they attended conferences.
Thanks in part to Sister Maureen’s marketing, the women in the co-op earned enough money to make a living. “When I was there, there were 30 co-op workers,” she recalled. “They take care of their own budget. They pay the bills first and then buy the material. If anything is broken, they fix it and then they get their share. So, they really know how to run the co-op.”
But the co-op did more than help the women earn money. “They grew really confident,” Sister Maureen recalled. “When I first got there, they would look to the ground with their heads down and wouldn’t speak. Now they stand up straight and look you in the eye.”
Sister Fran Hickey, OSF, teaches tutors for the Homework Help program.
Sisters Maureen and Jean saw other improvements in the lives of the women and in the Center during their recent visit. The Center is now directed by Rosa Villele Hernandez, a Mexican woman who had been in religious life in a Mexican community. “With her religious background, she kept the spirituality program going,” as well as the programs for children in grades 1 to 5, Sister Maureen said. “She encouraged the women – tutors especially – to go to school, and we paid their tuition.” Some returned to work professionally at the Center, she added, while others found jobs elsewhere.
Because she is a native of Mexico, Rosa obtained grants from the Mexican government and from foundations. Such funding enabled the Center to install solar panels and to provide purified water, Sister Maureen said.
Sister Jean noted that a grant from a Mexican foundation has provided funding for the Center to add two nutritionists, a psychologist, a nurse, and drama teachers to its staff. “It’s greatly expanded the resources for people coming to the Center,” she said. In addition, the Center draws help from healthcare students of the local university.
Rosa “has connections we never had,” Sister Maureen pointed out. She especially wants Adrian Dominican Sisters to know that, in the tradition of missionary work, a ministry begun in part by Adrian Dominican Sisters from outside of Mexico has now been turned over to the people from Mexico.
Feature photo at top: Rosa Villele Hernandez, left, Director of Centro Santa Catalina, and Sister Maureen Gallagher, OP, sell products made by the women at the sewing co-op.
October 20, 2022, Adrian, Michigan – For many people, asking for money – even for an organization or cause they believe in – can be a challenge, and so can discussing death. Yet, some members of faith-based communities are charged with doing both as they ask benefactors to consider a planned gift – a donation left in a will or other estate plans.
In a chapter in the newly published book, Faithful Giving: The Heart of Planned Gifts, Amy Palmer, Director of Development for the Adrian Dominican Sisters, shares her own experience of asking donors for a planned gift and offers strategies to help others in this effort. The book, written by James W. Murphy, includes chapters to guide leaders and case studies written by people of diverse faith traditions who seek planned gifts from other members of their faith community.
“The main message is that it doesn’t matter how large or small your organization is,” Amy said in a recent interview. “It’s about building relationships with donors and understanding their passion. I wanted to write a very simple article about how to go about asking for a planned gift because it can be very scary. I wanted to make it as easy as possible, using strategies that have worked for me.”
Amy suggests going beyond tracking the amount of money raised and also tracking the number of phone calls made, the number of emails sent, and the number of visits conducted. She notes her own practice of sending donors birthday and anniversary cards, calling to thank them for donations, and even sending a get-well card after a donor has surgery. These are specific tools to help develop relationships, she said.
In the book, Amy relates her own experience of visiting with a donor couple in their home and asking them to consider a planned gift. The couple decided at first that they didn’t want to give a planned gift out of fear that not enough would be left for their children. After his wife’s death, the husband realized that his estate would provide enough for both his children and the Adrian Dominican Sisters and he agreed to the planned gift.
People just getting started in fundraising might feel awkward asking for money, but Amy sees her work as going beyond the financial aspects. “It’s asking people to be part of a mission, of a ministry that’s a lot larger than us,” she said.
A development professional for 20 years, Amy said she “fell in love with the fact that you can help people in such a concrete way by working in the area of fundraising – the people who benefit from the organization.” In the case of the Adrian Dominican Sisters, Amy said the benefit is “multi-layered,” because donations help the Sisters and the people the Sisters minister to throughout the world. “Our fundraising efforts have such a huge impact across the globe,” she said.
Book editor James W. Murphy said Amy was recommended to him by Sister Patricia Daly, OP, a Caldwell Dominican Sister who had contributed to his earlier book, Faithful Investing. He said he was grateful to Amy for writing her chapter. “Her story is very valuable and will be valuable to Catholics and other faiths,” he said. “She wrote a very heart-felt piece.”
“The main purpose in writing the book is to empower congregational leaders as well as the leaders of smaller religious entities to raise these special kinds of gifts,” James said. He noted that the Adrian Dominican Congregation is fortunate to have a professional development director, but many congregations and religious organizations do not have that advantage. “Many rely on volunteers to do that work,” and asking for money – and discussing death – can be intimidating for volunteers, he said.
James spoke of the essentials of raising money: building trust, developing relationships, thanking people for their generosity, and adopting a “simple conscious awareness” of the situation of the donor who is involved.
While these essentials appear to be universal, James said that there are differences in the focuses of various faith traditions. His emphasis in the book is to “know thyself and know one’s constituents” within your faith tradition. The chapters provide guidance for creating and sustaining a planned giving effort and each case study draws on the experience of a volunteer or development professional from a different faith tradition – and each faith tradition can have a unique perspective, James said.
“Some faith traditions, especially Islam, are really focused on giving while you’re living,” he pointed out. The Sikh tradition also focuses on giving during a lifetime. “Our book focuses on inculcating a sense of giving beyond one’s lifetime, especially in the United States, where people have had the opportunity to build up [their financial resources] in their lifetime.”
James noted that people of faith often have a strong connection to their own congregation. It is this connection that makes it likely that they would be willing to leave their faith community in their estate plans.
“The big secret is that the wealthy are not the big planned givers,” he said. “Most who give these gifts are ordinary people, but they believe so much in their faith tradition that they raise [it] to the level of family in their estate plans.”
James writes from the experience of working with the Episcopal Church in the United States – developing new resources and giving webinars to empower leaders to reach out and ask Episcopalians to partner with them. “Over half of Americans don’t have a will,” he said. “This is a ministry opportunity for the congregation to help those people who haven’t made those decisions.”
Feature photo: Amy Palmer, Director of Development for the Adrian Dominican Sisters, displays Faithful Giving: The Heart of Planned Gifts, to which she contributed a case study, “Strategies for Planned Giving.”