We have less than 50 'registered' families. Were they to fulfill their weekly financial obligation, we might be in better shape. However, only a small handful are considered regulars. The others come when the mood strikes; otherwise they go to a RC Church closer to home. No amount of cajoling or reminders to make up their weekly envelopes, has been effective.
As to women who sew, there are a few who can fix things up but none who can make vestments. We have a vestment fund but here again, that entails additional giving on the part of those who already don't attend on a regular basis. Abouna will look into a new set of vestments made by the nuns in Lebanon. There is also the question of who owns the vestments - the priest or the parish.
When it comes to fundraisers, those monies now go to keeping the existing facility up and running until we complete restoration of the future church. The big difference, K, is that the parish sold off its Hall about 20 years ago. Once we move, the current building will become the parish Hall which we expect will generate sufficient revenue for both facilities. Until then, the annual challenge is to keep everyone sufficiently motivated to sell their share of fundraiser tickets - no mean feat.
"We have less than 50 'registered' families."
There's the major part of your problem. When we were down around 65 pledging "units" we were up against it. I remember one year as moderator of the parish Geneneral Assembly telling the assembly that we were in the hole and bills were ue. I pulled out my checkbook and told them to get writing. They did and the bills barely got paid. Other times individual members simply paid, say, the light bill. Personally, I think 65 is about as low as one can go and still have a viable parish with a full time priest.
What you need to do is go to a pledging system in addition to the weekly collections (we have two) and even more important, grow the parish. The suppers and the festival and the annual Greek Dance attract all sorts of people and we pick up at least a family or two every year from the festival alone. We've also had a number of Lebanese families join over the past 6 or 7 years as they are still coming to America. I can remember years ago discussions at the General Assembly about how there was no more Greek immigration into America so the day would come when we would simply die out. We really thought that would happen. Well, a few new Greek families did show up, but the majority of the "new people" are converts (especially) or other types of ethnic Orthodox people from Eastern Europe, the Middle East or North Africa and Ethiopia. Now we are sort of a "multicultural" group.
I should think that growing your parish through conversions might be difficult, however. All of our converts have come from Protestantism or simply unchurched people. Roman Catholics don't seem to convert, which is understandable. We do have a Maronite woman, married to one of the Orthodox Lebanese guys but we just pretended we are in Lebanon and recognize the de facto communion for her! She was chrismated about a year after her wedding. :) For you guys, however, I should think that Protestants would either convert to the Latin Rite or become Orthodox all things being equal. The main source for people, I should think, would be Roman Catholics like you. But clearly your priest can't start on a campaign to "convert" Latins to the Maronite Church. That would lead to big trouble no doubt. In the end then, it will all come down to hospitality, to "philoxenia", friendship to strangers to such a level that people will want to be part of your community because you have a good community. It can be done. We did it, though it very nearly took a personality transplant to pull it off! :)