The purpose of this article is to explain changes in how our parish Angel Fund will be administered. As most of you already know this fund provides tuition assistance for parish families whose children attend our school.
Two background items should be brought to your attention. First of all our school tuition is managed by TADS, a Minneapolis, MN company specializing in tuition billing and financial assessment. Families seeking financial assistance with their tuition provide financial information to TADS enabling them to assess the family’s needs relative to other aid applicants. In our October 4th bulletin detailing our financial status as of June 30, 2015 some of you may have noticed that the Angel Fund had a negative balance. This was the result of several years when TADS was not given an absolute limit to monies available in the Angel Fund which led to more assistance being awarded than was actually in the Angel Fund.
The second background item is that in late 2014 St Francis de Sales was the benefactor of a $439,445 bequest from a parishioner’s estate. The planned gift was given with the stipulation that it be used exclusively for our school.
In light of the above, an ad hoc committee including Father Jim, the trustees and our school principal was formed with the goal of reviewing school needs and specifically the Angel Fund. One decision was to designate $75,000 of this donation to the Angel Fund. This amount eliminated the negative balance and provided approximately $25,000 in tuition assistance for the 2015-2016 school year. Additional uses of this generous bequest will be discussed in a future bulletin article.
Along with establishing the grant to the Angel Fund, the committee developed a detailed policy defining how the Angel Fund will be managed in the future. The policy describes application requirements and associated deadlines. The policy also requires the Pastor along with consultation with our School Principal, Finance Council and Parish Trustees to review the Angel Fund balance and set the Angel Fund Award Limit by June 1 each year. TADS is notified of the Award Limit which is the maximum amount of tuition assistance available for all applicants for the upcoming school year. TADS then reviews the financial status of all parents requesting assistance and determines the specific amount available to each family with the total award amounts not to exceed Award Limit. St Francis de Sales has directed TADS to make the awards proportional to the family’s needs rather than an equal amount to all applicants.
We are grateful for the continued support of the Angel Fund through monthly donations and on-line giving. In addition, there will be a second collection on the first weekend of each month to support the Angel Fund. Thank you for your continued support to our parish school.