SPO

Saint Paul’s Outreach (SPO) is an exciting national nonprofit that fulfills a crucial need to support and build a more robust Catholic life on America’s college campuses and cities. Since 1985, SPO has been working with college students and young adults from across the country.

SPO’s model is simple but effective. SPO Missionaries are trained and sent to campuses around the country where they dedicate their time as leaders of the Catholic life on campus and within student SPO Households. Missionaries cultivate relationships with students, inviting them to learn more and go deeper into the Catholic faith.

By inviting students to live with our missionaries in SPO Households, we form small communities of dedicated Catholic young people who encourage each other in their faith. SPO Households provide a comprehensive, round-the-clock Catholic lifestyle through which young adults receive the encouragement of an ardent Catholic community and emerge stronger and more confident in their faith. Many of the young people who participate in SPO not only grow in their faith and remain serious Catholics after college, but go on to evangelize their peers in every walk of life, including many who go on to full-time service to the Church as priests, religious, SPO Missionaries, or other ministry professions.

With up to 90% of young Catholics falling away from their faith during their college and young adult years, SPO is needed more than ever. With a proven approach that reaches thousands of students annually, SPO is working to reverse this trend. We know that in order to establish a way of life that will be sustained beyond college and young adulthood, comprehensive solutions are necessary.

SPO has seen tremendous growth in recent years. Currently, we have waitlists for a number of households and new campuses nationwide are requesting an SPO presence. SPO is a nonprofit corporation with 501(c)(3) status, governed by a Board of Directors under the ecclesiastical vigilance of the Archbishop of St. Paul and Minneapolis.