Diego Zalbidea: "I hope for a new springtime in the Church".After 10 years working in Oceana and be your Vicepresident of Global DevelopmentCardinal Dolan asked her to become the Executive Director of Development of the Archdiocese of New York. He has been there for six years and in that time has led such major campaigns as the Renew and Rebuild Campaign which raised more than $240 million to support the Church's activity in New York, as well as others for the repair of Saint Patrickthe cathedral of the Archdiocese located in Manhattan.
What are generous people like?
I would distinguish those who are generous with money, with time and with talent.
Those with money?
The ones that give until it hurts a little bit. I always wonder if I should have asked them for more. There are people who impress me because they give. up to the shirt. In poor neighborhoods it is very common. If the priest needs something, they give everything.
What about time and talent?
There are people who are very involved, who dedicate a lot of time and who put all their abilities at the service of the parish. In the end, in any of the three dimensions, what defines generous people is that they feel privileged and grateful to God for all that they have received. They understand that they are very lucky and that they have been chosen by God. Here from the time they are very young they have this vision. I think true generosity manifests itself in all three aspects.
What can a priest in a parish do to involve the faithful in support?
Ask, ask and ask. When I have trained the priests to make requests they have all responded very positively. At first it seemed impossible for them to ask for what we advised ($25,000). They were afraid to ask, but they realized that people were much more open than they thought.
The panic that the faithful would be offended disappears when they ask them and what they imagined never happens. We may be wrong in the amount we ask for, but any conversation bears fruit, even if sometimes it is not immediate.
And does that also work with time and talent?
Of course. Now we are having training sessions with the seminarians to teach them how to ask and we give them exercises on how to ask for talent and time from the faithful. It is fantastic. They are very creative. The perspective is the same.
What if someone finds it hard to order?
If a priest finds it difficult to ask for money, which is usually the most difficult thing to ask for, we recommend that he find someone in his parish to do it. There are people who do not suffer from asking, on the contrary. Besides, we like the request to be intentional. It is like saying that it is "directed to a specific purpose".
We like the request to be intentional. It is like saying that it should be "directed to a specific end".
It is not good to ask in general. I learned this from Cardinal Dolan. We encourage parish priests to ask concretely. That way the faithful don't give what they can spare, what they have on them at the moment. The Cardinal told me how he learned from his father. They would all pray together and then sit down and decide how they were going to share their time, talent and money with the Church. That's an offering intentional.
How are the faithful asked to collaborate?
The first thing we have tried and are trying to get the priests to understand is that asking for money is not just a financial matter, but something deeply pastoral. So it can't be done in a general way. It's best to be able to do it in the context of a broader conversation.
It has happened to me that a priest was going to have one of these conversations and forgot to ask for the money. I congratulated him. Very good, Father, you have done what you had to do. Now leave me the contact and I will call them to ask for their collaboration. I understand that in other countries there is no such support from the diocese, but thank God the priests are understanding the pastoral dimension of these donations of time, talent and money.
What are these people who enjoy asking for money like?
They are usually people who love people, very sociable and passionate. They are people who have a very genuine conviction and who ask not for themselves, but for other people, for a community in need. I always recommend before asking to practice a little bit. Here we call it the role playbecause everyone will have his or her own style. Everyone is more passionate about some subjects than others and it is good that everyone asks for what they are passionate about.
I have seen people asking with great passion to put in air conditioning, windows, etc. They spoke of an experience of connection with the Lord that occurred in the parish because one is not distracted by the heat, for example. It was wonderful to listen to them. It is also very helpful if it is someone creative to connect with the donor.
Do you think this can be done by the bursar of the dioceses?
I don't think so, because we are two very different profiles. Those who work with me laugh at me because I am not able to read any contract and I could sign my death warrant without any problem. When I meet my CFO, the other side of the coin, he usually tells me that I exhaust him. He really likes Excel and he crunches all the numbers, he knows where everything is... Finance people have a message that is interesting for those in finance, but we have to put the donor back in the forefront: he is the protagonist.
Asking my mother for money is very different from asking a 23-year-old nephew of mine. Not only is it a generational difference, but the reaction is also different.
Asking my mother for money is very different from asking a nephew of mine who is 23 years old. Not only is it a generational difference, but it's also different what we each react to, what is important to us. When a priest has two or three parishes, asking for money becomes very low on the priority list. They are all day long running from here to there.
I am concerned that numbers and money have too much influence on the mission of the Church. I told the Cardinal this and he responded enthusiastically. We have gotten into a dynamic in which we are always trying to balance the books. That's why we talk all day long about cutbacks, closing parishes and making savings.
The Cardinal told me that he was thinking a lot about the Gospel passage in which Jesus tells Peter to put out into the deep. The fish are not on the shore. That implies a risk. We cannot feel safe in our glass tower. Sometimes we have to take on debt. We lack conversations on evangelization, for example, on how to bring people back to Mass. It is true that a lot of people follow us because of streaming and we have to take advantage of that. St. Patrick's Cathedral has 25,000 followers of the Mass in streaming on Sundays.
And how do you connect with the donor?
In the beginning, I tried to learn everything very well and to know the life of the potential donor inside out. I would make the bigger requests. Now I've realized that it's much better to let the donor lead the conversation. I want to listen to them so I can respond to what he or she has in his or her head and heart. I try not to have a pre-fabricated outline of what they are like and try to be guided by their will. It's like an adventure.
I have come to this conviction after many years. I cannot insist on my ideas. My opinions are not relevant. Sometimes I don't have the answers to what they ask me, but it is always good to listen and you come up with very creative solutions.
How has the pandemic affected the support of the archdiocese?
We have had to reinvent ourselves. We have made a great effort to learn how to connect humanly through technology. In this department we work with about 40 people and we have discovered that we could improve a lot in the use and exploitation of social networks. We discovered that 15% of the parishes did not have a website and 88% had outdated data.
What has happened and how we have learned would not have been possible without the pandemic. In addition, we have asked those who have kept their jobs to contribute more. Many people could no longer commit as much because of the economic situation they have been left in. People are being very generous.
Any recent specific strategies?
Yes, of course. There are various groups of people depending on how much they participate in the life of the parishes. There are those who always come and they need a concrete message. There are also those who will never come and finally those who participate sporadically. An example of this last group are those who come on Ash Wednesday, Palm Sunday or Easter Sunday.
The use of technology is very exploitable. We were caught totally unprotected by the pandemic.
This year we have made a campaign for those people. How can we connect with those people who only come on those days? We want the pastors to send them a message like this: "I see a lot of new faces. You are here for a reason. I don't know what it is, but I would love to see you again. You can take the QR that is at the entrance and send us your name and phone number because we want to stay in touch." The use of technology is very usable. We were caught totally unprotected by the pandemic.
A book?
I will say three: "Sostiene Pereira", I try to read it every 5 or 6 years, in it a journalist in Lisbon is challenged not to look at life from the sidelines; "The Four hour week" is about time management and encourages to have a little balance and not go running all day; and the last one is one of Cardinal Dolan called "Who do you say I am" and are daily reflections on the Bible, the saints and the answer that is Christ. I love it because I listen to it on Audible every day. It is very short and again this man demonstrates what an inspirational genius he is.
