How To Spot Red Flags in Nonprofits

In this episode, Ronald Blue Trust chief mission officer, Russ Crosson, sits down with Calvin Edwards and Nathan Staub from philanthropic consulting firm, Calvin Edwards & Company. Together they discuss how to maximize your giving and the potential barriers to generosity. You won't want to miss this conversation filled with practical tips and wisdom around being a good steward of your resources.

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Chapters

• 3:03 Meet Calvin Edwards & Company
• 7:45 Overcoming barriers to generosity
• 12:50 Hiring a philanthropic manager
• 15:32 How to know when to engage a philanthropic consulting firm
• 20:42 Charity Navigator
• 24:10 Areas of investigation in a nonprofit anyone can look out for
• 26:41 Red flags to look out for in nonprofits
• 34:16 How to maximize your generosity

Transcript

- [Announcer] Welcome to the Wisdom for Wealth for Life Podcast. Let's bridge the gap between your faith. And your finances. At Ronald Blue Trust, we apply Biblical wisdom, and technical expertise to help you make wise financial decisions. Our goal is to help you leave a lasting legacy. In this podcast, you will hear inspiring stories, practical tips, and encouragement from the Ronald Blue Trust Family with special guests along the way. Welcome to the Wisdom for Wealth for Life Podcast. The information in these podcasts is provided for general educational purposes only. It's not intended as specific individual advice. The clients' experience may not be representative of the experience of other clients, and they're also not indicative of future performance or success. Opinions expressed may not be those of Ronald Blue Trust. In this episode, we have Ronald Blue Trust Chief Mission Officer Russ Crosson sits down with Calvin Edwards and Nathan Staub from Philanthropic Consulting Firm Calvin Edwards & Company. Together, they discuss how to maximize your giving and the potential barriers to generosity. You won't wanna miss this conversation filled with practical tips, and wisdom around being a good steward of your resources. Let's listen in now.

- Welcome to the Wisdom for Wealth for Life Podcast. And I'm really excited today to be with two folks from the Calvin Edwards Company. Calvin Edwards himself, and Nathan Staub, but the reason I'm excited is just as our podcast title, Wisdom for Wealth for Life, you might not know this, but those five words have three meanings. Wisdom for your money. Wisdom for wealth. Wisdom for your life, which is to be purposeful and generous, and wealth for life, which is generational. So, what we wanna do today is really focus in on that wisdom for your life, the purposeful and generous part, especially, the generous part. So, the reason I'm excited is that for over 40 years, over four decades, Ron Blue, and Ronald Blue Trust has helped people free up resource, fulfill a great commission, right, that's our purpose statement to help Christians free up resource, fulfill a great commission, which is the generosity component and, but what we're beginning to find is that folks that have been blessed and they begin to accumulate money, and they know they wanna be generous, they wanna do what that, what they know they need to do from Scripture. 1 Timothy 6:17-19, our firm's verse, right here on my wrist. 1 Timothy 6:17-19 says, "Instruct those who are rich to be generous." And so, but it's, we're finding that people have trouble, actually, you know, following through on that generosity. And so, the Calvin Edwards Company, and Calvin used to work for us, so he goes way back. So, what was that, Calvin, in the '90?

- '96 to 2000.

- Yeah, so for those years you were with us. And then, you went out and started the company. And so, tell us a little bit about the starting of the company and then we can transition into talking about how what you all do, can help Ron Blue clients accomplish our mission.

- Yeah, well, it was about, it was over 20 years ago. After I worked at Ronald Blue and Company in those days.

- Yeah, Ron Blue Trust now, yeah.

- With Ron and with you, and many others. And I developed a sense that there were challenges to donors giving of their wealth, of their resources, of their means. And one of those challenges was a lack of information. We basically, I basically felt that donors had difficulty knowing in depth what ministries were doing, whether it's effective, the impact they were having, and so forth. And that so, often, a donor had to sort of basically make a guess, sort of place a bet, and hope that it all worked out. And I thought there needs to be a better way than this. And the same as Ronald Blue brings sort of, you must say, law and order, and systems and process, and sort of analysis to giving to, sorry, to investment management and to managing your finances. The same would be possible for giving.

- Right?

- So, there was this sense that there was another level of information that could be available to donors if it were just made available. So, I set out back then, with a big step of faith, not knowing whether this was a crazy idea or not, whether people sort of would, you know, would want this, would step up and get it. But the Lord has blessed us, and now for 22 years, we've provided information to help donors give wisely.

- See, that's why I'm excited about partnering with you guys because our mission is to help Christians free up resources to fulfill the great commission. So, our advisors are good at helping clients draw finish lines and maximize their giving. But many times, these funds didn't just sit in a Private Foundation or a Donor Advice Fund. They don't actually get out to the actual ministries, which are accomplished in the great commission. So, we haven't done our purpose as a company, free up resources, fulfill the great commission unless it actually gets to a ministry. And that's what you guys do. So, Nathan, talk to us a little bit about your background when you joined the company, and why you're excited about being a part of this movement, if you would, to help people actually get money to the end user, the ministry.

- Yeah, thanks, Russ. When I tell my story, I have to go back to how I grew up. So, my dad started a children's home back in the '80s, and has run it and is just now transitioning out. But was a really faithful steward of what he felt like, yeah, was his calling from God. And through his experience and helping other folks start, I realized there was charismatic leaders who had three stories from 15 years ago, who were really great at raising money. And there were amazing servants who were terrible at talking about it, but were doing great work for a lot of people in the world. And I thought, "Man, if I can ever figure out how to help money get to those people and not those people, that's something I'd want.

- So, get it to the ones that weren't so charismatic, they were actually having an impact. So, that's interesting.

- Yeah, there's just not that, I call it the refining fire of profit. There's no correlation between the money in and the work being done necessarily in ministries if you don't ask questions, right? So, I looked for folks, I was in an investment world in a boutique kind of investment firm in Atlanta, looking for folks who were doing what Calvin is doing. And talked to Calvin, Calvin was in Australia during COVID stranded at that time. And we started talking and learning how he had done it for 20 years, I thought, "That's something I wanna join and help with.

- So, you mentioned an interesting word there and a correlation between financial investment, people do research to pick out the right places to invest their financial capital. And so, really what you guys have done for 20 years is help people make sure because people worry about am I being a good steward. Am I getting a good return on my giving dollars here? And so, that's really at the core. I mean, there's other reasons why people don't actually, give money, but would you say, you mentioned information, Calvin, that's really kind of at the core, you help people get through that barrier to feel like, well, am I giving too much or are they, is it really being effective or whatever. So, maybe tell us some stories about that, what you've seen and-

- Yeah, oh, yeah, look, there's a number of barriers to generosity and information is one of them. It's the one that we feel we can tackle wealth. Another one that we also tackle is planning, It's just helping Christian donors think through, plan what they want to give to, where they want to give, how they want to give, how much over what time period, where they want to put their focus. The kinds of organizations that we call are sort of in or a out, which helps you sort of limit the universe and make it sort of more practical. So, there's the planning side and there's the research information side. So, yeah, there's all kinds of stories for us. The most interesting ones are the sort of the negative ones. And let me say this, when we look at organizations and do due diligence on we'll measure the impact, by far the majority of them come out great. You know, they come out-

- You have a great way of green, red, yellow, you have some really great reports.

- We try to make it sort of easy and I don't know whether you say fun, but you know, at least easy and straightforward to read and understand. And we do wanna do serious reports, but to present them in a easy-to-read way. But the thing, asking, sort of about stories, you know, one I think of was a major donor who's, you know, really sort of in a class of his own. He had a big, he sold a pharmaceutical company and he had a big philanthropic trust, and he was giving away about 12 million a year to a ministry in India. And he sent us to India. This was in the early days, one of the early big jobs. Three of us went to India for 12 days each. So, we were there for over 30 days. And we checked out exactly what that ministry was doing. We went to the people they served, knocked on their door, and basically said, "How's the service?"

- Mm-hmm.

- You know, it was, that's pretty much what it was. So, we did that for, like I say, for 30 days worth of it. Well, we found out that there was some good intentions, but there was lots of falling short. And when we told the donor, he said, "You know, I've got all kinds of people were asking me for my money. I think there are better places I can put it than with this organization that is so far away that I don't really know what they're doing. I don't have good access to them. And when we check them out, we find out that they're falling short." So, he changed his priorities and he's giving. Now, as I say, that kind of negative story is actually not what usually happens, but it does show what can happen. And it, I think we are called on to be good stewards of money that is not ours, and that means some kind of due diligence, some kind of, you know, checking, the basic level of checking even for the, you know, the average donor amongst us.

- And, Russ, I will add to that. So, profit, you know, and in the for-profit sector, successes is numbers pretty much.

- Right.

- In a nonprofit sector, we really believe, and this is one of the reasons I think Calvin and I work well together, is that we can't capture all the good that God is doing through a ministry. We can't.

- Mm.

- But we also believe that ministries need to put numbers to what they're doing. So, there's this mix of quantitative and qualitative analysis, there's a balance. And different folks will have different, come down on different sides of that balance, but the humility to say, "Listen, we can't capture what all of what God is doing, but we really want to be good stewards, so let's measure and count the things that we can and assess and follow God's calling with that information."

- Well, you know, I think as I've observed this and been in this industry for over 40 years, can't believe it's over four decades that many times, you know, people will hire a professional financial investment manager to invest a retirement plan or whatever and different asset classes, and whatnot. So, they'll hire an investment expert, and it just seemed, my observation is and in many cases, once you start having significant dollars to give and you might say to the audience where it starts, but I would say, you know, you have 50, 100,000, 200,000, and start going up from there. It might not be unwise to engage somebody like yourselves, that's why we're partnering with you to really maybe look at some planning, maybe vet some ministries that you're giving to already to make sure you still wanna give to them, and maybe even find some other ministries. Maybe you're interested in marriage or maybe you're interested in the 10/40 Window or sex trafficking or whatever. And so, these are the kind of services, I mean, I hire a financial investment manager, it sure seems like many folks should engage a philanthropic manager. That's kind of what you guys are, right? I mean, that's what I'm hearing here. And you could kind of because I've observed that people, they wanna be a good steward, Calvin, like you said, but then they're like, why, I gotta go check everything out. Well, no, they don't just hire you guys and you can kind of put your seal of approval on it.

- Yes, we certainly do that, and there are some, you know, Russ, to a fair degree, it's sort of a matter of personality. Some people are sort of do-it-yourselfers, maybe the level they're giving out, the time they have available, and the interests. They want to do it themselves.

- Check out the ministry as well-

- Yes, yeah.

- Be on the Board or whatever, yeah.

- I don't wanna suggest that it takes professionals and those people can't do it, they need us. There are people who can do that, and want to do that, and should do that. There are others who for maybe, out of interest, out of time, out of they're still running a business, they've got other family commitments, whatever it might be, and the amount they're giving, they want to be involved in due diligence, program evaluation, how effective is a particular ministry? And they, the scope they're working at in their capacity, they want to sub it out to someone else, and we're here to do that. We do that all day long, we love it, and we've done enough of it that we can humbly now say, we think we're good at it, you know, we've learned a lot. I can remember the very first job we did, it was checking out or finding, as you said before, finding a new organization for a client here in Atlanta that cared for the homeless. And I can remember that first job and sort of like how little we knew, and it's like, well, what is a good homeless organization and how would you know, and how can you be sure? And I'm gonna tell this client yes or no. Like how, you know, what if I'm embarrassed later on? So, from those early days, 22 years ago to now, we've checked out more than a thousand organizations around the world and you develop, I don't mean a, you know, arrogance or a cockiness, but sort of a sense of we, you know, you know how to do this. We feel confident in our judgment of the facts. And I'll say one other thing here too. And Nathan's already made reference to this. We're very objective. Like, what we don't do is say to people, "This is where you should give." We provide information and then we want people to work with, you know, work with each other, talk amongst family, pray about it, and decide based on the information where they should give. So, we are humble servants of the facts. We just serve up facts and information and then, people decide what they do with them.

- And-

- Go ahead.

- I'm excited about, one of the things I'm excited about with our partnership with Ron Blue Trust is a lot of the experience that we've gained, you know, our clients typically are giving away significant sums of money, right, and we know that there's a lot of people who-

- Where would you say, Nathan, sorry to interrupt you there, but where would you say your observation is that if I'm giving away this much or more, I might wanna engage the services of a philanthropic consultant or philanthropic advisor, just like, it's kinda like me. When I, if I didn't have any money, I didn't really need a professional, I'd do it myself.

- Yeah.

- And go buy a few stocks or a few mutual funds. But then it's, is you have a little more, you've hired professional investment manager, and it's kind of similar with the giving.

- If you pin me down and make me say a number, I would say around $250,000 of annual giving. Now, if there's a strategic investment, kind of a long-term, I don't know if you've read the "Gospel Patron" book, but-

- Mm-hmm.

- A long-term relationship, and there's significant questions or there's vetting that needs to be done, we have small products that make sense for folks who are giving less than that. But a general rule of thumb, about $250,000. So, those are our clients who fit for our traditional services. And one thing that we're really passionate about is taking the learning that Calvin's done over 20 years, and I, we have a library in our offices where all of the reports that we've ever done are there, and there's so much information. I know at the old office, they had walls back before, you know, there's Dropbox, walls of all the research that went into those products. And I, there's so much learning that's happened there. And so, one of the things I get really excited about is taking some of those insights and providing them to RBT clients and other folks who wanna be good stewards but can't, who don't have the resource there or may not at their level.

- So, you guys have a lot of stuff you can draw from. So, if I'm a donor and I've got a ministry, you may have already researched it so you can bring some data to bear there, so it's interesting, we're using this higher professional investment manager illustration and they have built-in internal fees into their funds. And I think it's important for the listeners to understand that as you provide these services, the fees for your research and whatnot can be paid out of their Donor Advice Funds.

- Yes.

- So, basically, they're just taking some of what they're gonna give away and they're investing it to make sure it's going to the right place or, to me, it's just to help it get out. I mean, I'll invest some of this money to make sure I'm being a good steward by actually getting the money out, not just sitting there in my Donor Advice Fund or my Private Foundation. So, I think I'd like to think that this, the expenses of this service are really irrelevant. Just like you don't really see those internal investment management fees, you know, you just pay 'em because you know, there's professional managers behind the scenes picking the actual stocks and bonds and whatever. Same way here, you're professionals picking and researching and whatnot, and so, the fees should really become like a moot point if a person's concerned about what's this gonna cost me.

- Yeah.

- And we're, I don't know how many NCF has approved now, but we're one of the only advisory firms that can be paid out of NCF accounts.

- Okay.

- Yeah. And most of our fees are paid out of a Donor Advised Fund or a foundation, the majority of them are. And I just wanna say, again, and Nathan really already said this, but we, in our partnership with you, Russ, Ronald Blue Trust, we're keen to, you might say lower that $250,000. That's traditional, so the way you might say sort of build a business, you know, because you need to have larger clients to sort of, you know, for things to work as a practical matter. But through this partnership, I think, we're going to be able to have more and more products and services that are for the average donor.

- Yeah, you told me about one just recently where they asked for a specific project. So, it's a lower fee, it's a lower, and they may only be giving away 50,000 or whatever.

- Well, it, just very quickly that was a Ronald Blue Trust client. They're giving about, I'm not sure what their total giving is, but this giving that we were talking about was about $75,000 a year to a small ministry. So, I think ministry was 1 million, 2 million, something like that.

- No. It's smaller than that. 'Cause they were 30% of the budget.

- Okay, oh, yeah.

- Maybe hundreds of, $200,000.

- A few hundred thousand dollars. A RBT client is giving 75,000 of that. He's like, got some questions here. I'm not sure about this. There was some newspaper reports, there was some questions that he had. There's basically, you know, they're in another state, he sort of a little bit outta touch and he said, "Can you go check them out?" He gave us two or three questions to take a look at. So, that's a small job.

- Yeah.

- We're delighted to do that. You don't charge, you know, big fees for that. Just go check something out, fortunately, that one, in our case, happened to be down the street, you know, 20 miles away, so we can do it quite easily. But that, the idea of making, building on what we've learned over the years, and making it available, sort of bringing it down to more of the common man, and give the common man, the average donor sort of more of the services that have sometimes, been more only available to the major donor.

- Yeah.

- Is something we wanna be doing in the years ahead.

- I'm gonna come back to you in a minute, Calvin, and talk about some of the things you've learned and as we're having donors and clients listening to this podcast, but talk to me about Charity Navigator a little bit, Nathan, and where that fits in, and what that is, and any comments on that.

- Yeah, thanks. I think when you say due diligence or you say vetting an organization for most kind of average donors, they think about Charity Navigator if they've heard of it. And Charity Navigator is great. We really, I think it's done a tremendous amount of good for the philanthropic sector. It is a blunt instrument. So, it takes basically information off of a Form 990 an algorithm does and runs it by a series of ratios and standards that Charity Navigator has done, and assesses ministries. So, it can find some important things that you need to know when vetting, but it falls short pretty quickly when you start looking at ministries. So, it's-

- It's all quantitative, just look at the numbers and-

- Yeah, and if you've looked at many Form 990s which we have, it's not exactly a precise document as well. And there's more things that I think are more important than whether it passes some sort of financial ratios. There's more to stewardship than that. What is the impact of what they're doing? You know, you can do something really efficiently, but if it's not helping folks, you know, I could build a lot of wells all around each other, but if it's not giving people water, what it, it's not-

- So, you guys really, you know, so basically Charity Navigator, a lot of numbers and those are great to have ratios, but you guys kinda have a soft side, the qualitative side in addition to the ratios. I know you guys look at numbers, I've seen some of your reports, they're absolutely great, and you can learn stuff from numbers if you're spending 90% on fundraising and 10% on ministry, that's probably not a good ratio. But you guys kind of go beyond the numbers. That's kind of part and parcel to what you do but then there's this whole other like you said, you went to India and knocked on doors and is this ministry really helping you? And so, I think as if you're listening to this podcast and you're wanting to be a good steward, it's like, you know, my observation is that many folks haven't even thought about the fact that I may need somebody to look at something I'm doing, like the person you just mentioned, or I really need to give away some more money and I've kind of been stymied. I need to kind of bust this open, and so I could get somebody to maybe, you know, go find me. I like Mary's Ministries, but I don't know of all the Mary's Ministries, and so, those are some things I think, that are exciting about what you all do, and why I'm excited about the partnership. I just want the money to get to the ministry because that's our mission. Free up resource, fulfill the great commission, and I'm seeing a lot of it get stuck, so.

- Yeah.

- Yeah.

- You guys can hopefully help unstick some of that stuff, right?

- Yeah.

- Yeah, we hope. That's what we long to do. You know, if I just meet someone in an elevator, a parking lot, or something, and they say, "What do you do?" And I give the one-sentence answer, something about philanthropic consulting that they will say, "Ah, so you look at the how much they spend on overhead and make sure that," they basically say two things. "How much they're spending on overhead, and that the CEO isn't driving a Lamborghini.

- Yeah.

- But that's sort of the average. So, I wish to, what they said when they heard we do philanthropic consulting, their response was not, so you check out how much spend on overhead, but they said, "So, you check out whether they're having an impact for the money that they are receiving."

- [Russ] Yeah, that's good.

- That is so much more important. So, we have 11 areas we look at. Finances Charity Navigator is one. It's important, and Charity Navigator's helpful tools, Nathan said, but we look at 10 other areas. We look at governance, mission, strategy, fundraising, finances, legal, and so forth. So, we look at all of these areas. And I wanna say too, just for the, again, the sort of the man-in-the-street type of donor. These are things that anyone can do if you just sort of take time to, we love to do it and we do it sort of professionally through, sort of formal, well-structured, well-organized products. But for those listening to the podcast, you might say, "Look, I'm not interested in sort of you guys doing it for me. I really can sort of do this myself," and you can. But the important question is, goes beyond how much is spent on overhead. It goes more to what is the impact, and is this an organization whose strategy is sound and that I can trust. So, as you said, Russ, and as Nathan said, it's sort of not just the objective, but the subjective that, some of the soft things. And then, I wanna say one more thing is the objective, the factual things, the subjective, the qualitative aspects of the organization, who the leadership is and the way they function, their strategy, their sort of culture and all of that. And then, there's what does God say I should do about all of this?

- Mm.

- So, there's sort of, the third thing to consider, not just the facts, but, okay, now I've got the facts. Now, what would God have me do with this organization, whose facts I now understand?

- So, Calvin, you just, anybody can manage their own money too. I can go pick stocks and bonds, but should I really be doing that? Is that my expertise?

- Yes. Do I have the time to do that, or do I really wanna do that? I wanna make the changes when I need to make 'em. And so, I think there's a tremendous correlation here between, I hire a financial investment manager to manage my retirement plan and my financial capital. Why would I not hire a philanthropic consultant or a philanthropic professional manager to help me manage my giving dollars?

- Yeah.

- Let's come back a minute. You said you had those 11 points and I've seen some of your reports are absolutely incredible. But I know over time, there's probably some things that you've learned as you look at ministries, they just pop off that say this is kind of a, that if I'm doing it myself, I would miss, you know.

- Mm.

- Mm-hmm.

- That, you can call 'em a red flag or some warning symbols that, you know, maybe this investment isn't gonna be so good, so maybe unpack that a little bit. I know, I mean, you and I are both familiar with the ministry that you kind of proffered some issues years ago for a donor, and if people are listening to that and it kind of came to fruition. So, maybe just talk about that a little bit.

- Yeah.

- I mean some, I could do it myself, but I'm probably gonna miss some things that might be obvious to you guys since you do it, and you have all these reports, like you said, Nathan, up on the wall, you know, voluminous reports of over 20 years of ministry research, so.

- Yeah, so the basic idea here is this idea of red flags of, so, it's sort of the opposite of what's good about the organization, which is what we've just been talking about. They always sort of saying, well what's not so good about it? So, the premise here is that if there is a cluster of red flags, if there's sort of a group of them, then that might really be a red flag. So, I don't think any organization's perfect. So, if you set very high standards, and we actually have 75 red flags that we can look at. We don't always look at all of them, if someone wants us to, we can and they can pick from that list which ones they want us to look at. So, we've got 75 of them. Most organizations would flunk some of the 75. That's like a really, really high bar. The issue though is you don't want a cluster of flunking, you know, you don't want just sort of like, oh, they flunk here or there or there, there's a whole bunch of them.

- Yeah.

- You know, you want it to be sort of isolated, although this kind of, so they do that and they do it a bit differently and that's a bit, you know, they get a special case, that's okay. The cluster is the problem. So, the issue, the common issues in red flags, like what would be in the cluster? What are the common ones? And, Nathan, step in with any you've got in mind too. Probably, the number one, one is a non-independent board.

- Mm.

- Mm.

- So, the board that puts friends and family, particularly family, and family members and employees on the board, there's always a red flag. I've never seen that be a good thing, and-

- So, they say they're accountable with, they're really never accountable.

- Exactly, they're accountable to people that don't hold them accountable. So, it's a sort of fake accountability. Another one is transparency. So, making the financial statements or the Form 990, which is the Nonprofit's Tax Return readily available. Now, anyone can get the Form 990 from various public websites, but most people don't know where to get it, how to get it's not really easy to get. But the ministry itself should make either, preferably both, it's audited financial statements and the 990, so when they don't make those available or make them hard to get, that is a red flag. Another one that, and these are sort of, not all red flags are created equal, but here's another one I would just mention is hiring family members. Now, sometimes the best person for the job is a family member, and the family member ought to be hired. But I remember visiting a ministry one time, a very well-known ministry that subsequently had a big moral failure. And that ministry had an office for the wife of the founder.

- Mm.

- And we were doing work with the ministry. I went there many times. Never was the wife of the founder in her office. Never was the light on in that office. And after sort of seeing this time and time again, like, what's going on here? And I realized that basically, it was sort of a fake job but it's a way of funneling money to the family member. She didn't really work there, but she had an office with the name outside on the wall. But it was basically a means of just getting, you know, sort of getting additional salary without giving it to the founder, but giving it to the wife, and accomplishing the same thing. So, the, yeah, sometimes the family member is the right and the best person, but very often, particularly if there's numerous family members, and sometimes there's three, four, five family members working at the same organization, usually a red flag.

- And you know, the old adage where there's smoke, there's fire.

- Mm.

- You know, so these are, you know, there's nuance in all of these standards and cases where wisdom needs to be employed. I look at it, especially with transparency as, you know, it's similar to a publicly-traded organization for-profit organization, right? You have obligations to your shareholders. Now, you don't tell them everything, you know, but you have an obligation to your shareholders to say this is what's happening. This is what we're doing on a yearly basis. In this timeframe with this amount of money, this is what we accomplished. You know, and if an organization at any point, starts saying, "We don't measure what we do."

- Hmm, hmm.

- Or "We're not gonna show you our financials," or "We're not gonna be open with some of these other red flags that we look at." We start to ask questions and to me, that posture as well as these red flags, but that posture of transparency is something that it's really important, and I think it's healthy for organizations, you know, the light is a good septic.

- It's a septic, yeah. Yeah, one other thing I would add, and this is sort of very much on the soft side, and I think a bit harder to get hold of, but if you can get hold of it, I think it's very helpful. Culture of the organization, and culture of the Board.

- Mm.

- So, for example, is the Board a board that sort of is just "Yes, sir," to the founder or the CEO, and doesn't really have a mind of saying, it's a Board of Directors. The role of a Board of Directors is to direct, you know, it's not very complicated. Directors direct, that's what they do. So, if they're not directing, but in fact taking direction from the CEO, then something's wrong. So, the culture of the organization and the culture of the Board, if it's possible for someone interested in donating to get access to that or hear things like that's a good arena to look at. Don't underestimate the soft side.

- Well, I think as we're getting down toward the end of this podcast, let's just kind of wrap everything up with kind of a big picture. We hire professional financial investment managers to manage our financial capital. What I'm excited about with you guys, Nathan, you and Calvin, and, Calvin, thank you for starting this company over two decades ago, to help Christians better steward their giving dollars by providing information, by doing research. And you guys continue like you said, to develop new products. So, I think, you know, if you're a donor, listen to this, you're a Ron Blue client or you're an advisor, a Ronald Blue advisor, just know that we have an expertise here, we have a partnership with a group that can really help make sure that folks are stewarding while they're giving dollars. So, as we kind of wrap up, anything you would say to somebody listening to this podcast to kind of any final closing comments? I'll, my closing comment is, I'm just excited that somebody like you guys exists, so we can actually get this money out of the Donor Advised Fund, out of the Private Foundation to the actual ministry, whether it be in India or around the corner, the one you're evaluating here, 20 minutes away, or 20 miles away, so what would you say to the listener as we wrap up here as we've talked about this whole issue of philanthropic consulting and helping people maximize their generosity?

- I would say that all giving is good. God commands us to give, God commands us to give generously. There's lots of folks in this space, and, Russ, you've been a leader in this that have encouraged Christians to give, you know.

- Mm. It's a dependable source of joy for us being generous. Our motto is maximize the good of giving.

- Hmm.

- So, we believe that all giving is good, and we believe if done with wisdom and intentionality, the good that happens in the world can be maximized. And so, that's what we're really passionate about. That's what we do every day, and what we hope. We're not perfect, but we work really hard to try to help people maximize the impact of their generosity and the amount that helps people.

- So, sometimes we make bad financial investments. You guys can help us not make a bad spiritual investment and maximize the good, I think that's a good, I really appreciate you sharing that. Any closing comments, Calvin, Founder Calvin?

- I think the parting words I would say to our listeners are to, if there's something you sort of take away from this and sort of do, it would be to be more strategic and more intentional. I think they're the, we facilitate that.

- Yeah.

- We facilitate that. But whether we facilitate it for you or not, I would just invite you, sort of challenge you to, here we are when we're recording this, right at the beginning of a new year. I'm not sure when it'll be when you'll hear it, but we're recording the beginning of a new year, and I think a good thing to think about in the year going forward is how can I be more strategic? How can I be more intentional? How can I be a wise steward? What can I do to just think through, plan and be intentional about our giving as a family more than we have in the past? And I think that that brings joy. I think that's where joy comes from, having a plan, knowing what you're doing, feeling like you're in God's Will, doing the right thing, having confidence, and then going forward boldly to execute that plan and that intention.

- I love the word joy. I love what you said about giving, being good, and I just think to Him and much have been given, much is required and part of that requirement, if I've been blessed with a lot is, I've gotta steward it well, and I think my observation is that your service is tremendously needed. Especially, the more wealth I have.

- Mm.

- You know, I mean you, we've got products that can help people not giving that much, but if I have to start giving away larger and larger sums, you mentioned 250,000 and up, then I may need to engage and probably should engage because what I've observed is people just kind of just like, it's just easier to make the money than give it away. So, they just go back and just keep growing the business, keep building the bigger pile and I'm excited about you guys because you can help that pile begin to be reduced and actually go to work. And so, that'd be my hope is that donors and folks listen to this would say, "Yeah, I really need to be intentional, Calvin, I like that word and I really need to be more serious about this. I'm serious about my financial capital investment manager. I need to be serious about my spiritual philanthropic side as well, so thank you, guys, so much for partnering with us. I'm excited, as you said, Calvin, a new year. I'm excited to see what 2023 looks like as we're able to engage more donors with your service.

- We have a website, calvinedwardscompany.com. So, that's the easiest way. Or you talk to your RBT financial advisor. And that's two easy ways to get ahold of us.

- So, thanks for taking time to visit about this.

- Thank you.

- Thanks for having us. so.

- [Announcer] Thank you so much for listening to the Wisdom for Wealth for Life Podcast. If you're looking for financial advice, please contact us. Please, visit ronblue.com. That's ronblue.com. Thank you for listening and please, subscribe to wherever you listen to your podcasts. Trust and investment management accounts and services offered by Ronald Blue Trust Incorporated, are not insured by the FDIC or any other Federal Government agency, are not deposits or other obligations of, nor guaranteed by any bank or bank affiliate, and are subject to investment risk, including possible loss of the principal amount invested.