Southeast Florida's Venture Gets $1 Million Gift
Episcopal News Service. March 20, 1980 [80093]
MIAMI -- The Episcopal Diocese of Southeast Florida's Venture in Mission campaign has received a significant boost with the announcement of a $1 million advance gift by an anonymous parishioner of Bethesda-by-the-Sea Church in Palm Beach.
The $1 million gift represents one-third of the total goal for the diocese's fundraising/renewal campaign which it hopes to complete in about a year.
The anonymous donor said about his gift: "This is something I have wanted to do all my life." His cash gift -- the result of the sale of stock in a family company -- was undesignated.
The diocese's initial six-week phase was completed March 7. The parish campaigns are slated to take place late this fall and winter and will be completed by February, 1981, according to the Rev. Canon Hunsdon Cary, Jr., advance gifts chairman and rector of the donor's parish.
Canon Cary said that the diocese's Venture program includes three main mission areas. One-third of all that is contributed will support mission opportunities in the national Venture in Mission program. Those projects will be selected by a diocesan committee with final approval by the diocesan convention next October.
A second area of support in the campaign will be the construction of a conference center on five acres of property the diocese already owns at the St. Andrews Prep School complex in Boca Raton.
A third thrust of the diocese's campaign will be to add to its revolving loan fund which will help purchase building sites for new congregations and assist existing congregations to expand their facilities.
Canon Cary reports that the diocese's Venture program is "off to an enthusiastic start."
Doyle Rogers, a parishioner at Bethesda-by-the-Sea, is general chairman of the campaign.