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	Local Diocese Tries to Build Confidence with Clearer Budget By Frank Bentayou Plain Dealer [Cleveland OH] July 23, 2005 Ask any experienced fund-raiser, and the story's the same: Building confidence and trust means everything when you go to the well year after year. The Cleveland Catholic Diocese is trying to bolster both qualities as it moves toward a more transparent, better informed budgeting process, according to John Maimone, chief financial officer. The eight-county diocese, representing some 800,000 Catholics, still stings from a 2004 financial scandal. It also made more than $14 million in payouts for settlements and legal costs in response to priests' sexual abuse of children. Though many abuse charges surfaced only in recent years, reported events go back more than half a century. The diocese took a step toward managing fiscal credibility, it announced recently, appointing three new professional members to the finance council that advises Maimone and Bishop Anthony Pilla on budgets. Another step is a new commitment to provide more access for both church members and the public to details of donations to diocese parishes, which totaled more than $103 million in 2004. Making financial information available, Maimone said, is a requirement of church law, but "it hasn't always been shared or easily available." It will be more so in the future, he promised. The diocese is among many nonprofit organizations providing increased accessibility to financial information, said John Carroll University accounting professor Jerry Weinstein. "The law doesn't require them to," said Weinstein, also chairman of the accountancy department at JCU, "but making the financial process easier for people to understand is a good thing" in terms of building good will toward institutions that depend on members' generosity. And the diocese has every reason to fear its support could dwindle if practices don't change. A 2004 national survey of Catholic donors' attitudes found that 70 percent of regular Mass- attending Catholics agreed "the church should be made more accountable" on financial issues. A similar poll two years earlier reported that just 65 percent of the same sample agreed. The surveys were products of a lay group working with a consortium of polling and data assessment organizations, including Villanova University and marketing giant Zogby International. The new appointments to the Cleveland finance council are Sean Hennessy, chief financial officer and senior vice president of Sherwin-Williams Co.; Richard Marsh, chief financial officer and senior vice president of FirstEnergy Corp.; and Karen Kleinhenz, president of Skoda, Minotti Financial Services. Maimone said the 10-member finance council still could grow to as many as 15. He expects any new members would be finance experts and "more representative" of the diocese. New appointee Kleinhenz is the second woman to serve on the council. She said she and the other appointees might suggest additional finance professionals to volunteer on the advisory group. The Diocesan Fiscal Management Conference, a national organization of financial officers like Maimone, based in Waterville, Ohio, set a three-year agenda to develop common ways to report financial dealings of dioceses across the country. It's "really aimed at strengthening the church in terms of accountability," he said. Some financial and legal embarrassments in recent years made the effort seem more urgent. Maimone took his current position in September 2004 after the diocese suspended his predecessor, Joseph H. Smith. An investigation showed that an accounting firm for the diocese directly or indirectly paid Smith and companies he was affiliated with more than $750,000. Smith subsequently resigned. Beyond that, there's the diocese's share of the cost of the sprawling national Catholic sex- abuse scandal that has cost the American church more than $1 billion in recent years for often undisclosed fees and settlements to victims. "Things like that do become a factor in our wanting to be more transparent," Maimone said. One result of rendering diocese finances clear and accessible could be that Catholics more willingly open their wallets. The 2004 financial report showed an increase of $300,000 in parish contributions that year over the previous one. But that only amounts to a 0.3 percent gain, not enough to keep up with inflation. The number of Catholics here has been gradually dwindling, too. "We are in the same situation as most nonprofits in recent years," Maimone said about the scant growth in contributions. "Fund raising is a big challenge with the economy as it is, especially in Northeast Ohio, where we have an extended recession." Apart from parish contributions, the diocese raised $18.5 million in 2004, according to Tony Lang, executive director of the Cleveland Catholic Diocese Foundation. And he said the foundation is on track to reach its $23.1 million goal in contributions by the end of September. Still, the economy's ills, Maimone acknowledged, probably will be long term. "We are a church. We just have to continue to be mission driven instead of finance driven and stay focused on the work of the church."
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