Cryptographic contribution? Engiven lets churches take cryptocurrency gifts

[ad_1]

Cryptographic contribution? Engiven lets churches take cryptocurrency gifts

Facebook Facebook logo Register on Facebook to communicate with Steve Rabey Unplugged religion

James Lawrence has long sought to work at the intersection of technology and faith, software engineering and the development of innovative new products, even if customers are not always ready to take the plunge into new approaches. .

Working with Matt Hayes, a business partner he met while the two volunteered for Young Life in San Diego, he launched Mogiv in 2008. The donor platform offered the first product to help churches and churches. departments to accept donations from cell phones.

When we rolled it out, some ministries were lagging behind and not even accepting credit cards, which was news for us, he said, recalling how some pastors have questioned whether to accept donations. using credit cards was a potentially sinful activity that exposed believers to the temptation to spend. and possibly get into debt.

In 2016, Mogiv was sold to Ministry Brands, a Tennessee company that operates two dozen software platforms serving 90,000 churches, paving the way for Lawrence’s latest venture.

When I was 30, I looked around and asked myself, what am I supposed to do now? Lawrence said in a recent interview.

The answer was Engiven, a cryptocurrency donation management platform that Lawrence and Hayes formed in 2018.

There didn’t seem to be a ton of demand at the time, Lawrence said. We asked 30-40 ministries that we had served through Mogiv if they had been approached by donors wishing to give crypto giveaways. Six to 10 of them said yes, they had.

At the start of 2020, Engiven was working with around 40 clients. Lawrence predicts that he will serve 1,000 clients by the end of 2021. His list of both religious and secular churches and charities includes major groups such as The Salvation Army, Compassion International and March of Dimes.

On October 4, the company announced that it had facilitated a $ 10 million Bitcoin donation to a Christian ministry, calling it the largest bitcoin donation known to date. The donor was a devout elderly man who, like Lawrence, started investing in cryptocurrency a decade ago when bitcoin could be purchased for around $ 100. They are now worth over $ 50,000 each.

Lawrence, CEO of Engivens, said the size of the gift and the age of the donor show that cryptocurrency is more than a flash-in-the-pan trend favored by millennials, and sophisticated philanthropists increasingly use these new currencies.

A donation of this size marks an important milestone in the evolution of Bitcoin as an asset and as a charitable tool, Lawrence said in a press release. Cryptocurrency is quickly becoming a major influence and impact on the nonprofit world.

While some cryptocurrency donations are made by young crypto millionaires, the reality is that most major crypto donations come from investors and philanthropists who own the crypto as part of their overall investment strategy.

Theoretically, churches and nonprofits could create their own digital wallets to receive cryptocurrency gifts. But historically, many groups choose to outsource more thorny aspects of philanthropy, like the management of donations and non-monetary trusts, to a growing number of consulting firms doing the legwork behind the scenes, which can be significant with cryptocurrency.

There are now over three dozen major cryptocurrencies in circulation, and accepting such freebies requires surviving a gauntlet of legal, tax, banking, and compliance issues that challenge nonprofits. MinistryWatch reported on crypto challenges for nonprofits this summer. Lawrence recently participated in an ECFA webinar on Demystifying Cryptocurrency and Blockchain.

Nonprofits wishing to accept cryptocurrencies on their own should set up an institutional trading account with one of the few regulated exchanges and receive a certified assessment of the cash value of the gifts, which can fluctuate significantly during the minutes or hours needed to make the donation.

Engiven currently offers an automated process that charges donation recipients a 4% processing fee, but large donations can be processed with a discount. New products and services are on the way.

Lawrence knows the churches and the ministries of the interior. In addition to his work with Young Life, he spent six years in full-time ministry, holding leadership positions at San Diegos Rock Church, founded by former NFL player Miles McPherson in 2000. Lawrence helped to deploy the multisite mega-churches strategy. It now has four satellite congregations.

His experience in church work gave him an intimate knowledge of the needs and concerns of congregations, and he tried to apply this experience to the intersection of technology and faith.

Most new technology is used for negative things, he admits, not always for life-giving things, and that’s very frustrating.

With videocassette players, it was porn. With the Silk Road darknet trading portal, it was drug sales and money laundering that put its founder in prison for life. Now, the anonymity of cryptocurrency allows drug lords and money autocrats to launder and protect their ill-gotten gains.

Each technology offers all kinds of good and bad things, Lawrence said. With crypto, I thought it could be used for good, and I have to figure out how to do it.

This article is republished with permission from MinistryWatch.

Steve Rabey is a Colorado journalist and author who has written over 50 books on religion, spirituality, and culture. His articles on religion have appeared in The New York Times, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, Religion Unplugged, and dozens of Christian publications. He is a former instructor at the US Air Force Academy and at Fuller and Denver Seminars.

Cryptographic contribution? Engiven Lets Churches Take Cryptocurrency Giveaways – October 17, 2021 Christian Adoption Center Divides Over Allowing LGBTQ Families – September 8, 2021 As US News Suffers In Decline, Amish Newspapers Flourish In Press – August 14, 2021 Big thing? – July 29, 2021 In India, Muslims Perform Final Rites For Hindus Who Have Deceased From COVID-19 – April 29, 2021 First Virtual MLK Day Aims To Renew Hope In America – January 18, 2021 The Story Behind Christian Flags Spotted At Trump US Capitol ‘Coup’ – January 7, 2021 In search of religious freedom, Christians flock to northern Idaho – December 29, 2020 Review of the year: Best religious journalism of 2020 – December 27, 2020 Pro-Trump protesters burn Black Lives Matter banners outside historic DC Churches – December 14, 2020View all posts

[ad_2]