For
example, companies that process credit card payments are also pressured
from doing business with anyone deemed a “hate group,” whether they are
or not. Some of our close ministry friends have been refused services.
If a ministry you love and support cannot find someone to process their
credit card donations, that’s a huge blow.
A new strategy is to target
“Donor Advised Funds.” These funds manage charitable donations on behalf
of families, individuals, and organizations, carry along specific tax
benefits, and are offered by most of the major wealth management
organizations. Essentially, they allow a donation to be made now, with
the tax deduction, but distributed later according to the wishes of the
donor.
What many people who use
donor advised funds fail to realize is that they actually surrender
ownership of the assets they donate, and essentially become advisors as
to how the funds will be used.
Now there is now a move afoot
to persuade those who offer these funds to exclude “hate groups” from
receiving donations. All it would take is a stroke of a pen, and the
donor couldn’t designate his funds to the groups that he wants to give
to anymore. Thankfully, there are Christian based donor advised funds
through groups whose Christian worldview lines up with people of
orthodox faith. If you carry a donor advised fund with someone else, it
may be time to consider transferring to these providers. Two of these
providers, National Christian Foundation and Waterstone, joined Tedesco
and me on the webinar. And you can listen to a recording of that webinar here.
Look, these challenges are a
moving target and they are becoming more serious and more challenging by
the day. I don’t know if you noticed, but there were a lot more rainbow
flags flown by corporations during Pride Month this year. This new
“woke capitalism” means that corporate America could be an even bigger
threat to religious freedom than anything coming out of the halls of
government.