Aid to the Church in Need-USA, a papal agency that supports the suffering and persecuted Church around the world, has embarked on a unique initiative: a turnkey, online parish-based crowdfunding campaign to benefit the Christians of Iraq and Syria.
The “United In Faith” initiative facilitates the creation of parish-based fundraising teams that can collect monies at a level and speed of their choosing.
“Crowdfunding has been a great success in the secular world—now we want to apply the model for the good of the persecuted and suffering Church,” said Edward Clancy, ACNUSA director of outreach. “We are hopeful that this model will catch fire,” he added, and “complement the tried-and-true direct-mail route,” which is becoming increasingly expensive.
A generous donor of ACNUSA will match every dollar up to the campaign’s target amount of $500,000 and cover all cost involved in the credit card transactions: the full 100% of every dollar donated will go to help fellow believers in Iraq or Syria.
Pastors and parishioners are invited to visit www.acnusa.org/unitedinfaith to see how a Fundraising Team can be created. Individual Teams as well as individual Team members can use the ready-made template provided or personalize their pages as they see fit. All the pages are maintained and hosted by Aid to the Church in Need. (If participants prefer, ACNUSA will create the Team pages on their behalf.)
“The very presence of ancient Churches in the lands where the faith was born is at stake,” said Clancy, referring to the murderous religious cleansing campaign by ISIS and other jihadists. “The needs are enormous—it was time to take a fresh approach.”
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For more information or assistance, contact:
Joop Koopman
Communications Manager
Aid to the Church in Need-USA
917 608 1989
joop@acnusa.org
