Mr. George Weigel asks why Catholics in the United States, overall, give so little.[1] It is in many ways an interesting question. As the collection baskets circle the Church, donations of a few dollars seem to be the norm. Father Pollard asks of us that we give our first hour's wages each week, something that I would tend to guess averages out fairly well to the $20/week/household that he cites the Witchita, Kansas diocease as giving.[1] He is correct, such a low rate (something like 2.5 percent of the yearly salary), probably does boggle the minds of many Protestants or Jews.
An equally good question though is what the Pastor is and would do with the donations. One Pennsylvania parish is providing free tuition to parishioners because a number of families (something like 700 of them) agreed to tithe to provide the parish with funds to run the school. This stands in marked contrast with the attitudes of some Arlington Diocese parishes, notably St. Joseph's, but I have heard there are others, that expect the school to contribute funds to the parish. When a Catholic family is struggling to find the money to pay the tuition at Catholic Schools for several children, it is a bit much to expect them to then find the budget to tithe. They are already giving to the Church: via the school. Similarly the Knights of Columbus do great things in many parishes, but do so on their own budget, a mix of volunteer hours and council funds, using parish facilities (and thus electricity), but otherwise providing the means themselves. This is need not be a problem of chicken and the egg, rather, the Pastor could do, as the Pennsylvania Pastor noted above did, create an increase in giving by clearly stating where that money will go. When St. Joseph's needed a new school, the parish was able to raise the amount. Other parishes have seen the same thing, and Mr. Weigel notes that a metropolitan diocese will, for example, raise more than the $135 million it needs from its five year capital campaign.
[1] http://www.eppc.org/publications/pubID.2378/pub_detail.asp