FACTORS INFLUENCING SUSTAINABILITY OF CHURCH FUNDED PROJECTS: A CASE OF THE CATHOLIC DIOCESE OF ISIOLO, KENYA
Ambrose Okeke Chigozie - Master of Arts in Project Planning and Management, University of Nairobi, Kenya
Munene Winnie Mwende - University of Nairobi, Kenya
Prof. Christopher Gakuo - University of Nairobi, Kenya
ABSTRACT
Church funded projects is a powerful global concept which describe those busi-nesses with primarily social and environ-mental objectives whose surpluses are principally reinvested for that purpose in businesses or in the community rather than to provide returns to owners and share-holders as profit. Financial sustainability is critical to church funded projects for sta-bility and enhancement of growth. It may necessitate the development of diverse resource bases for the Catholic Church as it’s becoming the case so that it can con-tinue its institutional structure and produc-tion of benefits for intended community after the cessation of financial support. However, church funded projects usually end their operations when funding stops. The scenario in the Diocese of Isiolo, the number of Catholic funded projects has been steadily increasing yearly. However, the sudden end of almost 50% of such projects with noble goals in the Catholic Diocese of Isiolo have seen the very hopes and lives that were already raised in the beneficiaries might suffer due to sustainability challenges of the church funded projects.The purpose of the study was to identify the factors influencing sustainability of church funded projects; a case of the catholic diocese of Isiolo, Kenya. The specific objectives are: to establish the extent to which community participation influences sustainability of church funded projects, to deterrmine the extent to which source of funds influence sustainability of church funded projects, to establish whether institutional capacity influences sustainability of church funded projects and to determine the extent to which project planning influences sus-tainability of church funded projects within the catholic diocese of Isiolo, Kenya. This study will be limited to Catholic Church organizations within Isiolo Diocese as there are a number of projects within Isiolo, Kenya and its periphery. It included all the management teams and project facilitators which are the CARITAS which oversees the catholic projects in Isiolo County. Although the headquarters of the Catholic Diocese of Isiolo is in Isiolo town, some church funded projects are located both within and outside the Isiolo town. This study adopted a descriptive research design which is concerned with describing the characteristics of a particular individual, or groups. The researcher focused on all the management teams and project facilitators which are the CARITAS which oversees the catholic projects in Isiolo County. There are 50 management teams and project facilitators from the CARITAS and these were used as the study respondents. The study adopted a census sample design which allowed the use of a sample size of 50 respondents. Data was collected through questionnaire. Descriptive statistic such as frequencies and percentages were used. Quantitative data is presented using tables while qualitative data is presented in narrative form.
