A donor-advised fund can make charitable giving more strategic — but only if your plan turns committed assets into timely grants. The donor-advised fund has emerged as the new darling of the charitable giving world. Nonprofits are seeing a surge in DAF gifts and are even organizing, Giving Tuesday-style, to promote more DAF grant recommendations. DAFs have become mainstream, growing 30% year   [Read More …]

"Sabbath means the recentering of human life on being rather than doing. That is hugely important in a culture like ours where most of us get our identity from what we do, from the job we have, from the money we spend, from the stuff we buy, from the way we change the world." — Ched Myers In 1988, I went on my first silent retreat at Dayspring. I was in my mid-20s and relatively new to   [Read More …]

Jonathan Welle is the co-founder and lead organizer of Cleveland Owns, a economic democracy incubator that equips grassroots groups to build wealth and power through collective ownership. There, he works to show, not tell, ways to organize the local economy more democratically through worker ownership, community ownership, and community decision-making. Over the past few years, after studying   [Read More …]

When we're feeling overwhelmed or filled with despair about the state of the world and our earth, what do we do? Pour our lives into whatever it means to be as close to the earth as possible, suggests Lydia Wylie-Kellermann. Here are some ideas… do one. Do them all. Write your own list. Change a few things. Change everything.   [Read More …]

“When we fight together, we become closer. I would just love the world to know how amazing Jane is in this selfless act. People who she will never meet are going to benefit from the gift of this land.” Jane Branham has been in a lifelong relationship with the earth in Appalachia. It’s where she was born and raised in Wise County, Virginia. It’s where she returned in adulthood, shocked and   [Read More …]

Chris and Chrissie Drape are longtime south Seattle residents. They’ve been married for 35 years and have two grown sons who both live in California. After a career as a nonprofit accountant, Chrissie now works part-time with small clients and volunteers as a tax preparer with United Way at her local community center. Chris, a career educator, has also downshifted to part-time work, training   [Read More …]

Laura Kind McKenna lives in Philadelphia, where she’s "trying to get bored and eat bonbons" in her retirement, she jokes. She lives with Marc, her husband of 47 years, and has four grown children and 11 grandkids scattered across the country. She’s participating in the Sabbath Economics household covenant small group that began in January 2025, after learning about Faith and Money Network   [Read More …]

Dave and Judy Osgood first discovered the then Ministry of Money in the late 1990s. Dave retired early from a biology professorship at Butler University to take up a second career running a company making electronic monitoring devices for use in animal research. Selling that company in 2005 provided the capital for Dave and Judy to become modest philanthropists, and they sought out the guidance of   [Read More …]

Lowdy Brabyn, a UK-based friend of Faith and Money Network, gave this spoken reflection at a contemplative gathering on New Year's Day and generously agreed to allow us to share it here. Recently, I’ve been thinking about matter. Matter as in stuff.  Matter as in ‘what really matters?’  Matter as the fundamental expression of the divine: our material existence as the   [Read More …]