Articles from our E-Update

In addition to our annual conference, The Gathering takes part in many trips throughout the year. Several of us took a trip to Portland this past December to see what good things were happening in the relationships cultivated among the civic, corporate and religious communities. This October, we will visit Richmond, Va., and we'd love to invite you along.

Christianity Today featured Richmond in its "This Is Our City" initiative recently: "Richmond today hums with energy thanks to a thriving arts scene, up-and-coming colleges and universities, and innovative national corporations whose headquarters anchor the local economy. But on a still night you can also hear the humming of Richmond's past...Yet it's here that a multicultural and multiclass generation of Christian leaders are building new kinds of institutions that take Richmond's future as seriously as its past."

For more information about joining us for the trip, email The Gathering President Fred Smith.

Russ Hall is a board member of The Gathering. He is also cofounder of Legacy Venture and is a fellow at the American Leadership Forum of Silicon Valley. He is also a board member of a variety of philanthropic groups, including Stanford's Center on Philanthropy and Civil Society and the Global Philanthropy Forum.
"Hall is addressing how individuals and foundations can multiply their impact. After a successful career in marketing and sales in Silicon Valley, Hall cofounded Legacy in 1999, and its sister foundation, Legacy Works, a few years later. Highly influenced by Bob Buford's Halftime ministries, Hall and partner Jim Anderson wanted to harness venture capital-the early stage, high-risk investment so essential to Silicon Valley startups-with investors' desire to give back."

Russ and his wife, Debbie, are hosting a Gathering reception in the Silicon Valley on June 11. Please email Fred Smith if you would like more information.

Read "Stewards of Wealth Streams" from Christianity Today.

"In the first book to offer a practical, nonpartisan approach, Jeb Bush and Clint Bolick propose a compelling six-point strategy for reworking our policies that begins with erasing all existing, outdated immigration structures and starting over. From there, Immigration Wars details their plan for advancing the national goals that immigration policy is supposed to achieve: build a demand-driven immigration system; increase states' autonomy based on varying needs; reduce the significant physical risks and financial costs imposed by illegal immigration; unite Mexico and America in their common war against drug cartels; and educate aspiring citizens in our nation's founding principles and why they still matter."

Author and attorney Clint Bolick will join us at The Gathering Conference as part of a panel on Immigration Reform.

Read the Wall Street Journal review.

Read the Washington Post review.

Michael Cromartie (Vice President of the Ethics and Public Policy Center in Washington, D.C.) invites the finest scholars, and some religious leaders, to provide journalists with deeper and more nuanced views of people of faith. He aims to help "journalists who are liberal and conservative and work for important outlets to become better informed about this extremely important part of American life."

Read "The Shepherd" in Christianity Today.

Visit the Ethics and Public Policy Center website.

Listen (or read the transcript) to Dr. Timothy Keller's "Conservative Christianity After the Christian Right" from this year's Faith Angle Forum.

"Some charities achieve much more than others, and some donors are more helpful than others - some `help' actually hinders charities. Wouldn't you rather that your donations achieved a lot rather than a little?

"This book shows how to do that, explaining what you need to know and what you need to do. Packed with information, insights and examples - plus eclectic tales from Oprah Winfrey, Albert Einstein, Private Eye and Harvard Business Review - it's invaluable whether you're giving money, time or anything else, and whether you're a school-child, a company or a billionaire."

Read the Guardian review by Michael Green, co-author of Philanthrocapitalism.

Visit the author's website.

The Gathering is pleased to host a panel featuring the three winners of this year's Praxis Accelerator competition. We will hear from Alex Forrester of Rising Tide Capital, Justin Zoradi (shown right) of These Numbers Have Faces, and Hannah Song and Justin Wheeler of Liberty in North Korea. They won, respectively, $50k, $30k, and $20k in cash awards at Praxis' finale event recently in LA.

Visit the Praxis website.

Visit Rising Tide Capital, These Numbers Have Faces and Liberty in North Korea.