Where does your donation go?
First of all, thanks for your interest! The short answer is that the two biggest budget items, by far, for the Church of the Guardian Angel are living wage for our two part-time staffers and food for the food pantry.
Here's a link to our donation page https://www.paypal.com/donate/?hosted_button_id=2SNPMK7DUYU9C , which does unfortunately have a fee. We're also happy to take checks or cash if you come by in person.
To go into a bit more detail, the parish has a half-time rector, Fr. Steve Holt, and our Food Pantry Director, Mike Brown, also works for us part time. He's re-inventing the role since taking it on a few months ago, so he's still working out what it actually means in terms of hours.
In addition to individual donations and contributions from other area congregations, we also receive support from the Diocese of Maryland and from Baltimore City HUD's Community Development Block Grant. That latter one is used exclusively for the Food Pantry Director's salary.
In many ways, money is fungible. But because of those two support streams, an accurate way to think about it is that donations to our general fund mostly go toward buying food to distribute at the food pantry and operating expenses like energy, water, internet, and pest control that support all the users and uses of the buildings and grounds (the food pantry being the most intense of those uses). Liturgical expenses like candles and communion wafers are a small sliver, and we also support or particpate in a handful of other programs and events around the community.
We're grateful that you're considering supporting our work especially now. In the beginning of 2023, we expect our costs for the food pantry to increase sharply. The MD Food Bank received federal pandemic relief funds and used that to discount or completely cover the food they provided to us and many other area food pantries, but those funds are running dry.