National Cathedral In Fiscal Squeeze

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Last Days for Cathedral Greenhouse

Due to limited resources, the Washington National Cathedral is closing its greenhouse.

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Lloyd has used bequest funds to help launch an array of new programs with international, national and local reach that have given the cathedral a more activist bent.

"We came to believe that because we are the nation's church . . . certainly at critical moments in our life, we're then granted an opportunity to be a big public voice -- a public megaphone -- for a thoughtful, generous, respectful Christian faith that has important things to say in the public conversations of the day," said Lloyd, who came from Boston's Trinity Church to the cathedral as its 10th dean.

As part of its new international outreach, the cathedral has opened the Center for Global Justice and Reconciliation, which describes itself as focusing on poverty, social justice and peacemaking initiatives around the globe.

The cathedral has held interfaith conferences on global warming and started an effort to reach out to clerics in Iran. It raised hundreds of thousands of dollars to bring in participants for an interfaith conference on women and global poverty in April that featured former secretary of state Madeleine Albright, former Canadian prime minister Kim Campbell and former Irish president Mary Robinson. Lloyd has also launched a Sunday forum that has brought in high-profile guests such as Rick Warren, a megachurch pastor and best-selling author, and Archbishop Desmond Tutu of South Africa. Cathedral leaders say the series attracts an average of 400 to 500 people each session.

Locally, the cathedral has increased its involvement in the city and added a staff person for D.C. projects. Among other efforts, it has joined the Washington Interfaith Network, a consortium of 48 congregations involved with a variety of issues, and works with other Northwest Washington churches to increase affordable housing.

It also started its own congregation, which now has about 500 members.

Cathedral leaders say some of the recent cutbacks, announced last month, are the result of pruning to rid the cathedral of programs that do not fit its new strategic vision. But budget realities have also intruded on Lloyd's plans.

"I think that we're in a process of narrowing that focus," said Craig McGee, who sits on the cathedral's governing body, known as the cathedral chapter. "But I still think that it will be a broad mission going forward that will have some international elements, certainly some national elements and always local elements."

Cathedral leaders say donations -- which make up about 60 percent of the church's budget -- have climbed 12 percent in two years to a projected $14 million in the current fiscal year. Donations might have increased more, but the number of visitors to the cathedral plunged for two years during construction of its underground garage.

Further straining the budget are payments on the $18.5 million debt for the garage.

Cathedral leaders and some former fundraisers say the organization faces considerable challenges in its effort to increase donations. Although it has 30,000 donors across the country, most contribute only small amounts. They are also elderly: A 2006 survey found that the median age of a cathedral donor was 71.

Most of its big donors -- those who give $5,000 a year or more -- come from "old money" Washingtonians. Cathedral officials say they are ramping up efforts to reach out to Washington's younger, new-money elite, such as high-tech entrepreneurs, and expect that to bear fruit in the near future.