Special Funds

Special Needs Fund and Hunger Fund

Special Needs Fund

The Loretto Community supports innovative social change projects through the Special Needs Fund, which comes from a percentage of Loretto’s annual operating budget. Organizations are invited to submit grant applications for up to $7,500 for social change projects that exemplify the mission of the Loretto Community to “work for justice and act for peace because the Gospel urges us.”

Funds are disbursed twice per year. Grants are due on Feb. 15 and Oct. 15 for review by the Special Needs Committee the following month.

Download complete guidelines and grant application here. Contact Ruth Routten CoL through the form below.

Hunger Fund

The Hunger Fund, inaugurated by the Loretto Community in 1974 because of a growing concern for world hunger, is a fund to which Community members and friends make contributions.  These gifts often consist of small “sacrifice” moneys or earnings, for example, from recycling aluminum and newspapers, from dog-sitting, from special projects, etc. Some are memorials to deceased relatives or friends.

Three young women wearing aprons, sitting next to each other and smiling while working at pottery wheels creating bowls in a pottery studio.
St. Mary’s Academy high school potters Mengyuan Zhang, Carmen Garcia and Amairani Rodriguez throw bowls to sell for money for the Loretto Hunger Fund.
Photo by Regina Drey SL

Each fall the accumulated funds from that year are distributed to groups or individuals dedicated to feeding the hungry. These range, for instance, from soup kitchens and food banks to seed programs in Africa and nutrition programs for orphans in Haiti. Through the Hunger Fund, the Loretto Community reaches out to both distant and near neighbors.

You can contribute to the Hunger Fund here.