St. Charles Parish Council Planning Process and Tools

You can download copies of the Parish planning and budgeting forms here. Your Parish Council Representative also has paper copies.

The forms are available as Microsoft Word (7.0) documents or Adobe PDF files.

• Planning & Budgeting Overview and Calendar
  Overview (in Word) | Overview (in PDF)
  How will the planning process work this year to make it run more smoothly? What is due to whom, when? Who is available to assist me?
• Budget Development & Request Form
  Request (in Word) | Request (in PDF)
  What is your mission? What activities do you have planned to support your mission? How will you fundraise? Where do you need the parish's financial support?
• Ministry Goals & Objectives
  Goals (in Word) | Goals (in PDF)
  Definitions: Goals are intangible and are not meant to be achieved (immediately); rather, they are targets to help give you direction. Objectives are more concrete, can be measured, and are expected to be implemented. Goals may remain valid from year to year; objectives need to be updated.
• Event Summary Form
  Events (in Word) | Events (in PDF)
  You can list your events for the coming year if you already have dates set. We'll be able to see each ministry/neighborhood's events and avoid duplication or conflicts over dates and locations.

Remember, the Parish fiscal year runs from July 1 to June 30.

Ministries/neighborhoods are asked to review their missions in light of the parish mission and to set (or update) their objectives and goals for the coming fiscal year. From there, they can determine what kind of programs and activities they want to sponsor in order to live their mission. If some of the events will cost money, the ministries/neighborhoods are asked to describe which ones will be supported through fundraising (if any) and which ones will require financial support from the parish (if any). Lastly, there is the opportunity to suggest ways to improve the way the parish does business, including time- or money-saving ideas.

So, what is the end result? All of the plans will be compiled so we can see what we as a parish have determined to be important to do in the coming year. With the big picture in place, we can look for areas of cooperation, set priorities and remove conflicts well ahead of time. Once the final plans are approved, we will also be able to lay out our annual calendar. And, we will be able to measure how successful we are throughout the year. Best of all, we will have mapped out how we will live our parish lives for all to see.

PDF (for Portable Document Format) files can be viewed with the free Adobe Acrobat Reader. If you have not already downloaded this program, you can do so here

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