“It’s God’s company. So we prayerfully ask how best to use His resources”

The Donor Advised Fund for Companies has become a much-valued tool for philanthropic businesses. It enables companies to efficiently direct funds to the causes that matter most to their owners and staff. 

We asked the director of one such organisation, which is using a Donor Advised Fund to support Christians around the world, about the heart behind this generosity.

“As a company, we see ourselves as stewards of resources entrusted to us by God. We view the work that we are involved with as an opportunity to serve Him. As this is His company, we prayerfully ask Him about how to use His resources!

We are passionate about seeing the Good News of Jesus shared with others – particularly in places where it is harder to publicly be known as His followers. The primary way to support such work is to pray and we try to do this faithfully. But we also know that financial resources can be used to facilitate such strategic work and are grateful to be able to give as well.

Music in the mountains

Central Asia is an area on our hearts. God is working out His purposes there – yet is a notoriously difficult place to reach with the Good News of Jesus, and to direct funding to support such projects.

Timur* had a remarkable journey to faith, meeting Jesus in a land where His name was rarely spoken. As a musician, music was his natural medium of communication. Timur set up a temporary studio in his bedroom to record songs that spoke of what Jesus has done: His death, resurrection and the new life to be found in Him. These songs were distributed through WhatsApp and soon thousands of people were listening to these songs of proclamation and testimony in their own language.

We wanted to help Timur to update his equipment, make a more permanent base and help others to record such music. Stewardship and their partners helped us to get the funds to Timur.

Today, Timur is recording new songs and helping to lead a growing church. The news of Jesus continues to spread and grow in the region.

Lifting the administrative burden

We used other avenues to give from the company before we ‘discovered’ Stewardship. I was using Stewardship for our family's giving and then investigated whether we could move our company giving to them.

The account greatly streamlines the administrative burden that would be associated with the gift being given directly to a range of charities. The ability to request for grants to be made to international NGOs and full time Christian workers is excellent.

The work that we would need to do to remain legally compliant when making such gifts would be enormous – we would perhaps need a member of team dedicated to this! Instead, Stewardship handle this for us and they are appropriately thorough without creating obstacles.

When we opened a corporate account with Stewardship, we were assigned a person to guide us through a simple application process and soon had our account opened.  The team share our passion to see God's resources handled well and for His glory.

The support received from the Stewardship Donor Advised Fund team has been superb. They are deeply committed to their work and are determined to help in any way that they can. It is always a joy to be in touch with them, and we are very grateful for them.

The online account interface is elegant, easy and intuitive and should there be a query, the Stewardship team are quick to reply and always helpful. Stewardship support both one-off gifts and long-term giving strategies – all with tax efficiency, low fees and excellent record keeping.

It is a great joy to be a very small part of the glorious work that God is doing as we give with Stewardship.”

If you are a business owner with Kingdom priorities or are looking for efficient ways to fulfil your Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) goals, a Stewardship Donor Advised Fund for Companies could make this an efficient and simple process.

Read more about Donor Advised Funds for Companies
 

* Timur is not their real name