Fundraising for the Mission of Catholic Education

It's Catholic Schools Week, and host Christopher Beaudet discusses the renewal of Catholic education through strong mission-driven leadership and thoughtful fundraising with Kimberly Begg. Co-author of The Catholic School Playbook, Begg expresses that while some schools are closing due to declining enrollment, others are flourishing because they place mission first and integrate faithful Catholic identity with practical leadership and administration. Emphasizing that successful schools view fundraising not as a distraction from education, but as an essential way of inviting others to participate in the Church’s mission of forming young people for heaven and for human flourishing, Begg notes, “All good fundraising…is learning how to partner with people in a shared goal.”

Begg reframes financial development as relationship-building rooted in gratitude, transparency and shared vision. She stresses starting small, communicating clearly with parents and communities about real needs, and gradually building confidence and trust that make larger, long-term efforts like capital campaigns possible. Fundraising must be ongoing and personal rather than purely transactional. 

To download a free copy of The Catholic School Playbook, simply visit www.catholicschoolplaybook.com 

Guest: Kimberly Begg

Title: Co-author, The Catholic School Playbook

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To contact the podcast, email twb@steiergroup.com.

Transcript

Christopher Beaudet: I'm Christopher Beaudet with the Steier Group. In the Gospel, Jesus fed 5,000 with only five loaves and two fish. After the crowd was satisfied, there were 12 wicker baskets left over. It seems that whenever you and I set to work and do our part, God provides the abundance.

In each episode of this podcast, I'll explore with pastoral leaders and development professionals from across the United States and Canada all the many ways God meets the spiritual and temporal needs of our parish communities, our Catholic schools and the diocesan church and not only meets those needs, but provides in abundance. You're listening to Twelve Wicker Baskets. 

 In light of this week being Catholic Schools Week, my guest today, Kimberly Begg, is a Catholic leader, author and attorney whose work has been deeply rooted in strengthening the church's educational and cultural mission. With more than 25 years of experience as a lawyer and serving faith-based and conservative institutions, Kimberly has dedicated her career to forming leaders who live and witness to the truth with courage. Kimberly is president of the Claire Booth Luce Center for Conservative Women and the author of Unbreakable, Saints Who Inspired Saints to Moral Courage, as well as co-author of The Catholic School Playbook, published by Word on Fire. She helped found Young America's Foundation's Be Not Afraid seminar for students at Catholic schools and served as founding editor of the Catholic School Playbook website. highlighting best practices from thriving Catholic schools across the country. She currently serves on the boards of Young America's Foundation, the Dominican House of Studies, and Thomas Aquinas College, and joins us today from Herndon, Virginia, where she lives with her husband and five children. Kimberly, thank you so much for joining us today on Twelve Wicker Baskets. It's a delight to have you as our guest and appreciate your time.

Kimberly Begg: Thank you, Christopher. So happy to be here with you.

Christopher Beaudet: Kimberly, we wanted to touch base with you and just explore a little bit about your work as a co-author of Catholic Schools Playbook. I guess just to start off the conversation today is to talk a little bit about what inspired you to participate in that project. How did the Catholic Schools, great name by the way, how did the Catholic Schools Playbook come to be? What motivated you to participate in bringing it about?

Kimberly Begg: Well, the most basic answer is the Holy Spirit. And I think anybody who works in faithfully Catholic education will tell you that they are just instruments of God's work. That has been my experience working in Catholic education and really in my approach to everything that I've done throughout my life. But really the idea for the Catholic School Playbook, everything about this project, I have to give the greatest credit to Mike Ortner. This was his idea. Mike is a wonderful friend, a faithful Catholic, a wonderful Catholic husband and father and an entrepreneur at heart. And he is the successful founder of a software company and brought his entrepreneurial experience and motivation to the world of Catholic philanthropy. And he had noticed that there were really two stories in education happening at the exact same time. So we were all seeing the news reports of Catholic schools having to close their doors because of limited enrollment and declining enrollment. But then there was this story of faithfully Catholic schools opening and growing. with huge waste lists and very satisfied parents and students who were just on fire for Christ and excited about learning. So Mike thought, wouldn't it be great if we could. find out what those successful Catholic schools are doing differently and put it all together in a little book. And the idea was for the book to be able to be read cover to cover in 60 minutes, in one hour, so that it would be accessible for everybody. But one more thing about the approach, and you're right, the name Catholic School Playbook, I think is fantastic. So Mike's idea completely.

Christopher Beaudet: Very practically oriented.

Kimberly Begg: Very practical, but he thought There are resources out there for practical advice, for how to operate a successful school. And there are resources out there for faithfully Catholic education and resources for the renewal of Catholic education and really reclaiming that rich Catholic intellectual tradition. But what if we put it all into one place so that those of us who are really interested in the renewal of Catholic education to advance the church's soul-saving mission. What if we put it all in one place to make it as easy to understand and as practical so that those of us who are interested can get together, connect, and really start to make a difference in our schools and our communities? So the answer is the inspiration was the Holy Spirit and all of the great work being done in Catholic education right now. But Mike Ortner, who is the founder of the Ortner Family Foundation, who has done just so much wonderful philanthropy out there in the world, He wanted to make this a project of his family foundation. And when he asked me if I was interested in being involved, I said, wow, yes, absolutely. And it was Mike who gave me the amazing opportunity of interviewing the school leaders who provided the content for this book.

Christopher Beaudet: Gotcha.

Kimberly Begg: Over the course of a few months, I had the opportunity to sit down in person or over Zoom or over phone calls to really ask all those questions of these amazing school leaders and find out what it was that was making their faithfully Catholic schools successful.

Christopher Beaudet: Yeah, exactly. The playbook is basically a compendium of best practices from those who are making it work.

Kimberly Begg: It is. And it covers mission first, which is most important.

Christopher Beaudet: Right.

Christopher Beaudet: I'm Christopher Beaudet with the Steier Group. In the Gospel, Jesus fed 5,000 with only five loaves and two fish. After the crowd was satisfied, there were 12 wicker baskets left over. It seems that whenever you and I set to work and do our part, God provides the abundance.

In each episode of this podcast, I'll explore with pastoral leaders and development professionals from across the United States and Canada all the many ways God meets the spiritual and temporal needs of our parish communities, our Catholic schools and the diocesan church and not only meets those needs, but provides in abundance. You're listening to Twelve Wicker Baskets. 

But it covers mission and leadership and hiring staff and training teachers and recruiting students and families and building family communities and fundraising, which I think is what you wanted to talk about today.

Christopher Beaudet: Yeah, that's our focus, right, with our title Fundraising for the Mission of Catholic Education. But all those words are important. I mean, it's fundraising, but mission, Catholic, and education, because Catholic education isn't just education with crucifixes on the wall. It's a vision of the human person that is to be formed in accord with one's own nature and dignity, and then living a life. out of that awareness. And that takes, that's a whole different curriculum we've learned and it's becoming increasingly clear and obvious from the secular alternative. And so mission, you mentioned mission, and that's one thing, you know, we always emphasize with our partners for fundraising and capital campaigns and the like is that if mission isn't clear and clearly articulated and if the impact of people's generosity isn't described in such a way as how it furthers mission, then we're really missing the mark. And I do think Though, that I'm sure you found in some of the situations where Catholic education was floundering or closing or declining enrollment, that sometimes the infrastructure for... seeking financial support and inviting people to join in mission was lacking or simply wasn't there. I guess I was going to ask you, why do you think so many Catholic leaders struggle with financial development of their schools and how can fundraising maybe be reframed as mission rather than just asking for money?

Kimberly Begg: I love the way that you framed that. And I think that's really what we should be encouraging all of our school leaders to do. So school leaders are teachers, they are philosophers, they are theologians, they love their subject matter, and they love the idea of sharing wisdom and mentoring young people and inspiring them to be lifelong learners, right? But most people do not get into Catholic education. because they have a passion for building an institution. Or they have a passion for an institution that is run well administratively. these are not really the motivations of leaders of Catholic schools and of anybody involved in Catholic education. So I think.

Christopher Beaudet: And I would say too, it's very similar with pastors. And when they heard the call of the Lord on the heart, it wasn't, come follow me and establish a well-run, efficient operations with an annual budget of blah, blah, blah, and with faculty and staff and maintenance issues and the like. Yeah.

Kimberly Begg: Well, but all of that is important because we are trying to build communities. to bring families and our fellow brothers and sisters in Christ closer to God and to be collaborating in order to advance the church's mission. So it really is a very exciting challenge. So I think framing some of these challenges as opportunities is, I think, one of the first steps toward that. But also realizing that all good fundraising is and all good administration is is learning how to partner with people in a shared goal. So we can look at that as we're recruiting for faculty members and as we're recruiting for families to join in our school communities. It's very clear that we want people who are excited about forming young people to go out into the world and to think as Catholics and live as Catholics and to achieve heaven, which really is the defining goal of our Catholic schools and what differentiates our Catholic schools from just our secular and our government schools, which are very focused on college and career readiness. And the reason that they graduate Catholics often who become ex-Catholics is because they don't share the same mission of heaven and human and societal flourishing in order to advance God's kingdom the way that Catholic schools do. And so when we're looking at our school leaders and the opportunities in front of them to build an institution, I think we have to be really inspiring them and asking them to take a few steps back as to just what the bigger vision is And what God is calling them to do. And stop thinking of education maybe in the terms of a classroom, but start thinking it more of inspiring people on their path and really on their way to heaven.

Christopher Beaudet: Yeah, because I think the invitation to others to come join mission is rendered far more easy the more passionate and convicted we are of the mission ourselves. And that's true of anything we might believe in, but certainly when it comes to matters of the faith, there is no substitute for faith. You believe and embrace it or you don't. And that's going to have a consequence on your ability to bring others along. Sometimes, you know, when we talk about, I'm thinking of pastors of parishes, particularly very large parishes, where the administrative work, and it is important work, and I agree with you, it's not, it should not be divorced from the otherwise spiritual. I mean, the work of administration and bringing holy order to the community is a noble and graced work. But sometimes the particulars and the time commitment or the structural necessities of that can create a challenge for pastors to be about homily preparation, visiting the sick, sacramental ministry, et cetera. And I know they can often feel that. I think in some schools, similarly, the otherwise theological, philosophical, academic school administrator can be wrapped up in the next report for this accreditation or this issue with a faculty member or whatever. Long-winded way of asking, I guess. Sometimes schools have the wherewithal to hire someone. to be about the work of development and mission engagement. Pastors can have a business administrator or office administrator, chief of staff, et cetera. In situations, I'm curious about the schools that you spoke with to be emblematic in your playbook, how they handled that. And for schools that don't have the resources to hire a development individual or somebody involved in specifically that work, how can those leaders do it without burning out themselves?

Kimberly Begg: You start with what you have. So first of all, it all begins with solid leadership. So you need a school leader that really is passionate about growing the school. And if you don't have that, no amount of advice or help in fundraising is going to grow the school. So thinking about some of the leaders that I spoke with, there's a really impressive leader at a school in New Mexico. And I remember talking to her about her early days in fundraising for the school. And by the way, this is a very, not an affluent town. Most of the families there are not affluent. Most of them receive quite a bit of financial aid. But she had a lot of early success in fundraising that gave her the confidence to go out and do more fundraising by really just sharing what the needs of the schools were with the parent community. So for example, they needed a playground rope. Their playground rope had broken. I don't remember the story, but she included that request in a newsletter. And wouldn't you know, a lot of parents and probably grandparents too, right? Others kind of came out of the woodwork and offered to help provide this kind of material and equipment for the kids for their playground. But I think you start with what you had. So this woman had the ability to reach her school families with a newsletter. Other schools, you're right, will have the ability maybe to hire a development director, and that always, I think, should be the goal. But even if you do not have those kind of resources for a salaried employee, What you do have is a faculty of other teachers. And often you will have somebody working in reception. And you also have parent volunteers. And out of that network, I guarantee there is somebody there who would be really excited about helping to communicate the needs of the school. So Christopher, if you've read Catholic School Playbook, you'll know that one of the best practices that we recommend because it is a practice used by a lot of our most successful, faithfully Catholic schools is having some kind of a state of the school address where families can come in. And let me tell you, that's interesting. When you are a parent, you are deeply interested in how your school is spending your tuition dollars and your fundraising dollars. So one of the very first things that this very successful school leader in Tyler, Texas did was her very first year, she was told by the bishop, if you can't get your enrollment numbers up, if you can't get this school out of this mess, we are going to have to close your school. So how's that for motivation? Your very first year of the job, right? So she brought in her school parents and they had a state of this school evening. And she showed them the numbers, what was coming in tuition, where that gap was, because as an administrator, that you receive revenue, right? And that's mostly tuition. and you have your operation costs, and then whatever the gap is between your revenue and how much it costs to operate that school, that's what you have to fundraise. And so think about how effective it is if you're a parent and you are sending your children to this Catholic school, especially if you are loving the formation that they are receiving there, and you go to one of these events and you actually get to see what the head of the school sees and what challenges the head of the school is facing, then you know, okay, this is where my tuition is going. And especially when a school leader can share, you know, we really think it's important to be attracting good teachers, really high quality, faithful teachers to be able to pay them well and to be able to keep them so that they're not losing them to higher paying opportunities. You don't want your best teachers to leave. The parents don't want your best teachers to leave. So when you can really go into each of those elements of a budget, explain why they're important, and then explain exactly what the need is, then you can give your parents an accurate picture, inspire them to want to do more. And then when it comes time for your different fundraisers, yeah, they're going to be a little bit more eager to jump in themselves. Now, one thing I should say here is that anybody listening to you who has kids in Catholic schools will tell you that the fundraisers almost always are coming back to the tuition paying parents and they're thinking I'm already spending all of this money sacrificially on tuition when my kids could be going to the free public school down the street. And so when you're looking at fundraising and trying to raise additional revenue, the head of the school really needs to be looking at those full tuition paying parents, the ones that maybe do have a little bit of extra, where they have some discretionary income to work from. But then beyond that, looking at grandparents, you know, looking at other community leaders. If you're a private school, looking to your board. If you're a parochial school, looking to your parish and partnering with your pastor, a lot of our most successful faithfully Catholic schools are those with the strongest relationships with their church. And it's because the pastor has shown leadership to want to support the school instead of seeing the school as competition. Because unfortunately, that is what has happened historically over the last few decades. And sometimes pastors come into schools and they feel overwhelmed. And as you mentioned, that they feel overwhelmed that there is this whole administrative institution that they have to oversee. And some of them have looked at their schools as competition instead of as an apostolate of the church that they have been tasked with managing.

Christopher Beaudet: Right. Yeah. And you know, you mentioned a perspective that some school parents can have, namely that the tuition that they're paying because they don't have to, technically, they could send their children to another school that's paid by tax dollars, et cetera. But because of that, their decision to send their children to a Catholic school and pay tuition somehow at times can give them the impression that tuition is itself already charitable giving.

Kimberly Begg: Yes.

Christopher Beaudet: Such that when the school seeks charitable giving above and beyond tuition, it's seen as an extraordinary ask or maybe if at best, and maybe being tone deaf to my extraordinary generosity already. So. Yes. And so the, to your point, I think it's very rare. I don't know if I've come across a Catholic school where tuition fully funds the actual costs involved in educating the child. So, and if, and were it to, people would have a sticker shock at what tuition would suddenly become. How do we, how would have schools, these schools that you've studied, how have these schools shifted the perspective of tuition from charitable giving that I don't necessarily have to give because I could send my child elsewhere, but they want this education, they want this formation. How have they shifted the mindset of tuition from charitable giving to adjust and required payment and contribution to this enterprise together? Does that make sense?

Kimberly Begg: It does make sense. And I think the answer is that the parents who send their kids to the schools that we highlight in Catholic School Playbook, know that they're in a very special place. So they uniquely know the value because they have friends with kids in just government schools. They have probably lots of friends who are homeschooling. They have friends with children in your kind of run of the run-of-the-mill secular inspired Catholic school where, as you said, a crucifix on the wall in a religion class and you call it Catholic. And so they know that the faithfully Catholic education that their children are receiving. one that draws on the church's longstanding intellectual tradition is very unique. The schools that we are highlighting to are aware of the other schools in this network. So they're aware that there is this movement of schools out there and that it's not true that in every community there is one accessible. And so they know how rare this is, that it's growing. but still that it's something to be valued and really prized. So I do think that the parents are aware of the value that they're receiving and they know that they've made the decision to pay tuition instead of not paying tuition.

Christopher Beaudet: Yeah. what I'd like to do, Kimberly, is take a brief break right here. And then when we come back, we've been talking a lot about tuition and operating expenses and kind of the ordinary habitual day-to-day best practices or playbook. I'd like to shift to capital campaigns and extraordinary asks and organized appeals to just get your thoughts on what you discovered, again, from these schools that have done it very well and some tips and lessons you've learned from that engagement with them about extraordinary asks of capital campaigns. So don't go anywhere. I am speaking with Kimberly Begg, who is the author of Catholic Schools Playbook. We will be right back.

Steier Group: If you're a parish or diocesan leader preparing for a major fundraising effort, here's a name you need to know. The Steier Group. For more than 28 years, the Steier Group has helped Catholic dioceses, parishes, and schools raise over $3.6 billion through custom-designed capital campaigns. Our full-service approach covers everything: planning studies, campaign communications, custom graphic design, leadership coaching, and hands-on support every step of the way. If you are ready to build something lasting, connect with the Steier Group. Learn more at SteierGroup.com. The Steier Group, inspiring support.

Christopher Beaudet: Thanks for staying with us. I'm speaking with Kimberly Begg, author of Catholic Schools Playbook. We're learning some of the tips and good, solid best practices that she and her co-author, Mike Ortner, discovered. Kimberly, I wanted to talk to you a little bit about capital campaigns. That's the explicit work of the Steier Group, and we do partner with a lot of Catholic schools in running capital campaigns for them. One thing that sometimes I think can be nerve-wracking for Catholic school leaders is that the next immediate need may be the rope for the playground, or the next immediate need the crumbling stairs on the east side of the building, take your pick, becomes the subject of the next appeal and seeking money. So it's maybe frequent appeals to address a lot of varying things. And the most pressing one is always the one that, you know, the squeaky wheel gets the grease. Whereas when we talk about a capital campaign, we tend to encourage our clients to think very big. Put together a strategic plan. Where do you want St. James the Apostle School to be 20 years from now, et cetera, generational consequence. That gives you the platform to seek generational changing gifts of that magnitude. How can leaders and the ones you've studied to determine the right mix of appeals whereby those immediate pressing things that do come up are still addressed? but at the same time, structure events or a capital campaign to be able to address that larger, longer term vision.

Kimberly Begg: I appreciate the question, and I have what I think is a good answer for you.

Christopher Beaudet: Okay, good. Those are the kind I like.

Kimberly Begg: Okay, the reason the reason the climbing rope is important is because it gets the school leader focused on, the task of identifying a need and engaging with those who can help satisfy that need. And it's small enough and achievable enough that it allows the school leaders to develop some confidence and also maybe a story to go on and tell somebody else about. So when you're talking about capital campaign, yes, it is so important to have a very big, inspiring vision. And you're right that the day-to-day needs can really take over. But those two, the little need that needs to be met on a daily basis and the forward-looking plans, they have to be done in tandem. Because if you only have a capital campaign, you've probably recognized this working with school leaders. The school leader often will say, okay, well, we're going to hire this, you know, this wonderful group. They're going to come in, they're going to help us through this capital campaign and great, I can get back to the really important job of running my school. Right, right. Well, it is really important that a school leader understand that fundraising is an important part, a hugely important part of their job, because if they want to have a strong school that is forming young people to be passionate, about being good Catholics, passionate about going out into the world and strengthening the mission of the church so that they can be leading strong families, then they need to be tending to all of those administrative and fundraising matters that maybe they're not comfortable with. So a plan is really important. So it can't just be we have this one fundraising campaign and we put the materials together and we have an information night and people come and listen to it. The plan needs to have little steps along the way so that there can be some preparation happening for that next step. Also some transparency and accountability and continued communication with those who are going to be most likely to invest.

Christopher Beaudet: In your work with these schools, did any of them give explicit tips on running a capital campaign like raising $5 million, $10 million to advance for like generations, a new wing, that kind of thing?

Kimberly Begg: The advice is that major gifts have to be a part of your strategy. So wrapping paper is not going to get you there. So you need to be partnering with individuals who have the capacity to give large gifts and sometimes family foundations that have the resources to make major investments. And what a lot of these schools have found out is that most of their donors have some kind of an association with the school. So it's a grandchild who's in the school, or maybe they're in the parish and it's the parochial school, but there's usually some kind of a connection with the school. But there are those, usually older Catholics, sometimes their children have already grown. Sometimes they have grandchildren and they really want their grandchild to go to that school someday. But they see investing in this Catholic school as the way that they have been called to strengthen the church. So Just as we're trying to form young people to follow their calling and to unite their will to God's will and do whatever it is that he is asking them to do out there in the world, we need to be working with Catholics who have a passion for forming young people to be strong Catholics, to strengthen the church, and who will understand this unique relationship with the Catholic school, this unique partnership as their way to give back to the church, to strengthen the church, and to.

Christopher Beaudet: Absolutely, 100% to all of that. And I think you've mentioned grandparents a couple of times. And I do think that, like, for example, a typical parochial school may not be that large. Some of them are, but a lot of them aren't, you know, extraordinarily large. You know, there was a long time where parochial schools didn't need necessarily the fundraising infrastructure and development strategies, et cetera, that really is a necessity today. And all of that is really premised on good data, on reaching people, on knowing where your alumni are, knowing where past students' families are and grandparents and maintaining that communication, like you mentioned, even that newsletter from New Mexico, just some kind of point of contact with folks. And I think a lot of grade schools, I mean, Catholic high schools are all about alumni. They've got an alumni network and keep in touch. What's been your experience with Catholic grade schools and their alumni? when they're still single digit or 12 or 10 when they leave the school. Is there any kind of connection there that you've seen, their ability to tap that support?

Kimberly Begg: Only when their experience was fantastic. The answer is not really, but that should be a part of what our schools are doing moving forward because we are graduating now Catholics who are on fire for their faith.

Christopher Beaudet: Yeah, I think of, to a point you made earlier, that the more rooted A parochial school, again, I'm talking about the parochial grade school, maybe not the one-off or one that's, know, a regional Catholic school, but there too, the more the school can be rooted in the community that gathers around the Eucharist, the parish, it seems to me, has the network and the underpinnings for sustainability, right? Because Catholic education, its mission doesn't exist in a vacuum. It exists. as St. John Paul II wrote about higher learning, ex cordiae ecclesiae, from the heart of the church. And so the more the day-to-day lived experience of the Catholic school is experienced as living in and from the heart of the church, I think that's the dynamic, the secret sauce, if you will, to achieve your mission and make it easier and to invite people to support it.

Kimberly Begg: Yep, absolutely. most private schools, most colleges and universities, their fundraising strategy relies very heavily on alumni. But what we're seeing more of now is that all Catholics realize that the formation of young people into a faith that can help them flourish and live out their calling the way that God intends, but also to be helping others, their families, their community, and the rest of the country. So I think moving beyond that alumni, but really alumni giving is not something that a lot of these schools have experience in, but I do think it's going to be a more important component moving forward. But boy, oh boy, I mean, what the real goal is, though, is to get all Catholics excited about Catholic education and giving in some way, whether or not they personally benefited or whether or not their own children are benefiting.

Christopher Beaudet: Yeah, and I think to do that requires addressing, I think, a misperception of Catholic education as a commodity to be purchased. And so if I don't need to buy it, my kids are already out of Catholic school or I don't have any kids in Catholic school. Yeah, the parish I go to has this school, but that's not part of my experience of the parish. Then I don't have a reason to support it, you know, as opposed to the church's articulation of Catholic education is always that it is not kind of like stewardship. It isn't a part of the faith if that happens to be your thing. No, this is constitutive of the mission that Christ established with the apostles to teach, to educate, to form, to guide. The church cannot be herself unless she is educating. Mater et ecclesia, right? So a mother teaches. And so I think that that can be a challenge sometimes when we run campaigns in parish schools where we're seeking support from the broader parish community. But the question can be, well, I don't have any children at the school, why would I give to it?

Kimberly Begg: Right. I love the understanding of a school as an apostolate of the church.

Christopher Beaudet: Yeah, exactly.

Kimberly Begg: And Father Sirico in Grand Rapids, that's the way that he turned his school, Sacred Heart Academy, around, was with that understanding. And that's how he got his parish excited. Again, this is their story of a bishop telling him when he came to that parish, look, you know, you can do, basically, if you want to make a go of it, great. If we want to close it, we can do that too. And he went over to the school, visited, met with some of the teachers, decided, you know what, we can turn this thing around. And they have a parish now, a parochial school that's absolutely thriving. And I think that the number one reason that he has been as successful as he has is he looked at the school as an apostolate of the church, and he informed the rest of his parish to do the same.

Christopher Beaudet: Exactly. Yeah, it's a whole different paradigm shift that opens the doors to stewardship, to care for this school, this tremendous treasure that we have, tremendous jewel in the crown of our parish. So if somebody's listening right now and they're wondering, oh, I love all this. This is lighting a fire in my belly. But gosh, I have no idea where to start. How do I even begin the journey towards this turnaround of my own school like Father Sirico that you just described? Where do I start?

Kimberly Begg: You just have to start and you have to make it a daily part of the life of the school. So a really easy thing to do is to start writing thank you notes to your families.

Christopher Beaudet: Wait a minute, are you suggesting gratitude has something to do with stewardship?

Kimberly Begg: Saying thank you. So, it is starting with those who are already contributing in an extraordinary way. And even in little ways are really important. There's actually a story of a little old lady in the book who was giving teeny tiny amounts, maybe $25 for maybe five years, and then all of a sudden ended up giving a $900,000 gift. You know, little acts of gratitude are, they're not only just strategically important for fundraising, it's the right thing to do is to say thank you. It can form a culture in the school of gratitude and just the sky is the limit. Once you start thanking people and showing them how important their gifts are to strengthening a school community, it's just, it all goes from there. So I would say the most important thing that a school leader can do on day one is to start really every day practicing acts of gratitude, saying thank you, picking up the phone, making the call, but write that handwritten thank you note for a gift, even if somebody hasn't given in three years to sit down with a thank you note and say, I was thinking about you. made this gift. It made a difference to our school. This is what we're doing now. Just thank you. And a week or two later, asking for a cup of coffee, but really just having those conversations and not looking at fundraising as transactional, looking at fundraising as acts of gratitude and building relationships.

Christopher Beaudet: I wish we had a lot more time to explore even more, but I'm grateful for the time that you've given and for your own apostolate and speaking and sharing your wisdom and your insights so that the impact of faithful discipleship might be even more broadly embraced. We're really very grateful. So thank you for your time today.

Kimberly Begg: Well, thank you for having me on. It was a very enjoyable conversation.

Christopher Beaudet: Thank you. I hope you enjoyed our conversation today with Kimberly Begg about what she learned from successful Catholic school leaders who are guiding their communities of learning with passion for the church's mission. Understanding leadership as the ability to partner with people for a shared goal, as Kimberly described it, is a true gift. And when applied to the work of stewardship, can bring about dramatic growth and financial stability for our schools. To download a free copy of the Catholic School Playbook, simply visit www.catholicschoolplaybook.com. We've started off 2026 with a great episode and have many more lined up for the year ahead. Be sure to subscribe and tune in each month right here on Twelve Wicker Baskets.