Where the work of building, funding, and sustaining Catholic mission becomes a path to holiness — received, each day, as a new gift.
A New Gift™ Center for Catholic Philanthropy and Nonprofit Excellence connects mission leaders, nonprofit staff, fundraisers, and philanthropists with leading trainers, trusted experts, and outstanding resources. Through education, coaching, and professional services informed by Catholic faith and social teaching, we help those who build and fund missions recognize their work, abilities, and resources as gifts entrusted to them by God — and respond with excellence, generosity, and love, ordered toward the good of persons, the Church, and the common good.
At the heart of the Center is a simple conviction: each day brings a new gift — an invitation to receive God’s love and let it shape how we lead, serve, raise funds, and give. This work flows from faith and becomes a way of living it — a response to God’s generosity, and a path toward holiness.
Our name, A New Gift, echoes God’s promise through the prophet Ezekiel: “A new heart I will give you, and a new spirit I will put within you” (Ezekiel 36:26). This renewal begins with God’s gift and calls for our free response. Even amid darkness, God offers a new beginning; each day can become one — a gift to receive, and a grace to put into practice — as we accept the work entrusted to us as a vocation and offer ourselves through it.
Everyone drawn into this work — leaders and staff, fundraisers and philanthropists — is invited to rediscover a vocation within it. Work is more than a way to earn a living; it can be a share in God’s own creativity, and a real contribution to the common good.
Fundraising and philanthropy, then, can become forms of Christian service. Through them, people come to see that their abilities, resources, and responsibilities are gifts received — entrusted to them for the good of others. Each takes part differently: some awaken generosity, some discern and direct resources, and some receive what is given. When the work is rightly ordered, all are drawn into one shared service to persons, the Church, and the common good.
In this way, philanthropy becomes a new gift for everyone it touches. The giver and the fundraiser grow in charity even as the one who receives is served. No one is reduced to a financial resource; giving instead creates relationships of responsibility, gratitude, and mutual service.
Raising money, giving money, leading organizations, and stewarding resources need not be distractions from the spiritual life. Rightly ordered toward God, the dignity of every person, and the common good, they become ways of loving — places where we learn generosity, trust, sacrifice, stewardship, courage, justice, and love.
Financial resources are not ends in themselves. They are entrusted gifts, to be governed responsibly and directed toward the dignity of persons, the service of mission, and the common good — their right use asking for prudence, justice, generosity, and honesty. In this way, stewardship becomes part of discipleship: it asks not only “How much can we raise?” but “For whom, for what purpose, and in what spirit are these resources received and used?”
Following Saint Paul, we understand giving as a grace and a form of service. The Macedonian Christians gave freely, according to their means, and first gave themselves to the Lord; Paul presents their generosity not as compulsion but as a share in the grace of God.
Christian giving is therefore voluntary, proportionate, cheerful, and ordered toward the needs of others — “each of you must give as you have made up your mind, not reluctantly or under compulsion, for God loves a cheerful giver” (2 Corinthians 9:7). It arises from freedom and love, and from a desire to share in the good of others. Its model and source is Christ, who “though he was rich, yet for your sakes became poor, so that by his poverty you might become rich” (2 Corinthians 8:9). In Him, giving becomes more than a transfer of resources; it becomes a gift of self.
As Peter Harris and Rod Wilson observe in Keeping Faith in Fundraising, this work belongs to ordinary Christian life — sustained by right relationships with God, with one another, and with ourselves, and best practiced with truth, integrity, gratitude, and care.
The Center gathers the people called to this work and gives them access to excellent resources — in mission strategy and execution, nonprofit governance and law, fundraising and development, philanthropic stewardship, organizational leadership, resource management, and spiritual formation.
Our purpose is not only to strengthen the work, but to form people and institutions who can pursue excellence while staying faithful to vocation, truth, justice, human dignity, and holiness. Excellence is placed at the service of the mission — ordered toward charity and the common good — never made an end in itself.
Before it is a place to give, the Center is a place to receive. We gather to be renewed — in God’s love, in sound formation, and in the company of others answering the same call — and then we go out to serve.
The Center gathers nonprofit leaders, fundraisers, philanthropists, entrepreneurs, and trusted advisors as partners in one mission — relationships grounded in trust, shared responsibility, transparency, and a common commitment to the good. At this table, giving is received, discerned, stewarded, and directed toward the flourishing of persons and communities, and fundraising is not only the work of connecting real gifts with real human need — it is itself a path toward holiness, lived out in relationship with both the giver and the one who receives.
We hold one conviction above all: this work is God’s before it is ours. We cannot do it by our own strength alone; everything we do is for Him and with Him, ordered toward the service of persons and the building of the common good.
The work is holy because it concerns human persons — their dignity, their responsibilities, and their freedom to give themselves in love. And it is urgent: not only for the missions and people served, but for the fundraisers, leaders, and philanthropists whose own lives are formed through faithful stewardship. Rightly ordered, philanthropy becomes a new gift for all it touches — those who take part grow in charity even as they serve others; resources are directed toward genuine need; and people, relationships, and institutions are strengthened for the common good, bearing fruit, as Saint Paul says, in “many thanksgivings to God” (2 Corinthians 9:12).
Begin with God. Order everything else around Him.
“Strive first for the kingdom of God and his righteousness.” — Matthew 6:33
Grounded in Sacred Scripture (2 Corinthians 8–9; Ezekiel 36:26; Matthew 6:33) and in the Catholic tradition on work, charity, and the common good; informed by Peter Harris & Rod Wilson, Keeping Faith in Fundraising (Eerdmans, 2017).