Numbers and All

At the end of a fiscal year, I’m tempted to count.

Ok. I count.

If you ask our team, they would probably tell you I’m doing a lot of counting these days. Did we hit our one-year objectives? How many scholarships have we awarded? Do we have more donors than last year? Did we raise more dollars?

Numbers matter, particularly for a nonprofit president—and for our board. They are evidence of the success of our work and signs of the opportunities still in front of us. In fundraising, finance, and any well-structured strategic plan, we should think in terms of numbers. We should set targets. We should measure ourselves against them. Then take a step back and do it again.

Then we should take a break from it all.

As much as I have been thinking about year-end numbers—our fiscal year ends June 30—I’m still trying to process the moments that made FY26 one we will not soon forget. Some were joyful. Some were tragic. Some were unsettling. Some were quiet, humble, gracious, and beautiful. All of them reminded me that the real story of this year could never be explained by numbers alone.

My mind drifts to a conversation I had with a volunteer at one of the Catholic schools we serve. He was speaking about inheritance.

At some point, 50, maybe 100 years ago, someone looked at a neighborhood and decided its children needed a Catholic school. They built it before they knew the children’s names. They built it without knowing which families would one day walk through its doors, which teachers would spend their lives there, which children would learn to read, pray, forgive, lead, and begin again within its walls.

Then another generation received that gift. They kept the lights on. They repaired the roof. They hired the first lay teachers. They painted the classrooms. They updated what needed updating and protected what needed protecting. They added their sacrifices to the sacrifices that came before them.

Ricky Austin is the president of the Aim Higher Foundation.

And then they handed it on.

That is where we are right now. That is where I am, at least.

Amid all the numbers, I am spending these last hours of the fiscal year reminded that we have inherited something beautiful. And inheritance is never only a possession. It is a responsibility.

A school can be built of brick and stone, but ensuring that it thrives and remains accessible requires a continued commitment. We can measure that commitment in numbers. But the commitment itself is deeper, more intentional, and carries more significance.

This is the work you have helped Aim Higher do this year. If you are reading this, it probably means you have given us a moment of your time. You have opened a letter, taken a call, attended an event, read a story, listened to a need, and allowed the life of a child you may never meet to become real enough to matter.

Those moments became scholarships. They became a child in a classroom. They became a tuition bill paid. They became one more family able to say yes. They helped keep the doors we inherited stay open.

Thank you. I am grateful to you for understanding that the doors others built with sacrifice should not become doors that only some children can open, and I am grateful for what lies ahead.

Because it is our turn now. We are caretakers of this thing called Catholic education. We did not build it alone. We did not receive it for ourselves alone. And now we have the responsibility to ensure it continues—not only as something beautiful from the past, but as something living, accessible, and ready for the children still to come.

Numbers and all.