The Catholic Foundation for Eastern South Dakota is looking for agencies that qualify and apply for foundation grant monies.
Mark Conzemius, the Executive Director of the Catholic Foundation for Eastern South Dakota, says the grant monies have made a difference over the years. “As we have grown and matured as a foundation, we are securing more and more unrestricted and field of interest endowments,” said Conzemius.
In the past four years, the Catholic Foundation has distributed more than $11-million in grants to agencies and groups across the diocese.
The Catholic Foundation manages over 350 accounts, valued at $36-million to serve the 125,000 Catholics living in the diocese.
That does not mean anyone can seek the funds. There is a qualification policy and guidelines.
“We would like to let people know that the Catholic Foundation for Eastern South Dakota is here and we do have a grant application process,” said Conzemius. “It is a fairly simple application.”
The foundation’s grant committee reviews the applications and forwards the ones it thinks qualify and are worthy of receiving money to the full Foundation board of directors.
The board meets twice a year to conduct business and award grants. The panel meets in November and in May.
People can write, e-mail or call to get the process started and to receive the application information (see box at right).
The Catholic Foundation has limited requests to one time grants to this point. “Preference is given to one-time gifts to initiate new programs across the diocese,” said Conzemius. “Because we have had minimal dollars at this point, that has been the direction the grant review committee has gone.
Examples of past grant recipients include a parish nurse ministry. “We were able to help get a new and innovative program started in Pierre at SS. Peter Parish and at St. Lambert Parish in Sioux Falls,” said Conzemius.
That initial grant money led to a parish nursing ministry start-up in those parishes that now has been emulated in other parishes. “Part of our rationale there was to help get the program going because we had the sense that once this became successful, it could become a model for other parishes which indeed it has,” Conzemius said.
Another example is the grant money that helped get a kindergarten program started at Holy Cross School in Ipswich.
But to get started with programs like that, people need to apply. The application time-line is running short to be considered for the November Catholic Foundation board meeting. To be considered for that session, applications need to get their application in by mid-October.
However, the Catholic Foundation fields application requests and accepts applications throughout the year.

Does my group qualify and how do I apply?

All requests for financial assistance require the review and approval of the Board of Directors and/or the Grant Review Committee of the Catholic Foundation for Eastern South Dakota.

• Requests shall be limited to those that will better serve the spiritual, educational, health and social needs of the people served by the Catholic Diocese of Sioux Falls where other financial resources are not available.

• Grants are not made to individuals, i.e. individual scholarships, etc. but to ministry programs, projects and institutions.

• Preference will be given to:
1) One-time gifts to help initiate new programming
2) Programming that is diocesan-wide in its nature and impact
versus programming that is parish-specific.
• All requests will be review by the following committee
guidelines:
1) For requests of less than $10,000 the Grant Review
Committeee may approve/deny request;
2) For requests over $10,000 the full Board of Directors will
approve/deny requests at their semi-annual meetings.

To get an application, contact:
The Catholic Foundation for
Eastern South Dakota
523 North Duluth Avenue
Sioux Falls, SD 57104-2714
or call 888-246-3386
or e-mail: enawroth@sfcatholic.org