Or perhaps you've seen us standing in front of your local shopping mall or grocery store raising funds for programs supporting people with mental retardation.

The Knights of Columbus uses its Annual Survey of Fraternal Activity to gather various facts on the work done by local units. Information collected through the survey includes the amount of money and volunteer hours donated by the Knights of Columbus to charitable and benevolent causes. All Saints Council has its own Scholarship Fund consisting of $2,000.00 per year which is used for the education of our priests and religious. In 1996,Knights Order wide raised and distributed $105,976,102 to charitable and benevolent programs and volunteered 48,966,132 hours of time.

These totals - the highest in the Order's history - are based on reports received from most Knights of Columbus councils, Fourth Degree assemblies, Columbian Squires circles and other jurisdictional entities responding to the survey. Over the past 10 years, the Knights of Columbus has volunteered more than 397 million hours of service and donated over $945 million to charity.

On a local level, if your community has an active K of C council, you'll find many ways that Knights are involved: serving as color guards and escort details at every major liturgical function where Bishop Nevins is the main celebrant; running youth religious education programs, delivering Communion to homebound and elderly shut-ins, painting classrooms in Catholic schools, volunteering at Special Olympics events or tending a community garden. We collect used eyeglasses for needy people at home and around the world. We put new roofs on senior citizens' homes and write letters to young men studying for the priesthood.

What we do at the local level is pretty much left up to the Knights in the local community. If they see a problem that they think they can muster the resources to solve, they attack it. No programs are mandated by the international headquarters, or Supreme Council office, in New Haven, Connecticut. No funds raised at the local level are sent to the Supreme Council, either. All funds raised stay at the local level, helping causes local Knights want to help. The principal areas of volunteer involvement through our "Surge...with Service" program can be broken down into the following categories: Church, Community, Council, Family and Youth.