The Catholic Church in Washington is going to accept cryptocurrency donations on behalf of its archdiocese. The project sponsored by Parish Support Initiative, an organization supporting the U.S. parish, has been developed in partnership with Engiven, a platform specifically focused on donations to religious and charitable institutions. The charity organization is involved in social issues, with actions aimed at the poor and those in need of health care. So we see cryptocurrencies and humanitarian causes together once again, this time working for the Catholic Church.
The archdiocese, which has 655,000 members in the District of Columbia and five counties in Maryland, will use a donation services company to process the donations to several Catholic ministries, including the Parish Support Initiative, which helps fund food pantries and hot meal projects. The church institution also counts 90 schools and several centers where it gives care, education, and physical as well as spiritual help and support to the most in need.
The organization raises funds for social causes, and due to its recent partnership with Engiven it is now able to use the blockchain for its work. In addition, Engiven’s platform will also allow the church to get flexible access to crypto donation pages with a menu of ministries and pages targeted to programs like the Parish Support Initiative.
These are the words of Joseph M. Gillmer, who is the Executive Director of Development for the archdiocese adding that the operation of the platform is quite intuitive. Donors can select on the platform the program they want to join, choose their favorite cryptocurrency, and send the amount, also in anonymity. Any donations will be turned into cash immediately and sent to the church.
“The number of gifts received may be small relative to traditional ways of giving, but the average amount of each gift is likely to be many multiples higher,” he said.
“I see crypto giving as yet another way for donors to support charitable causes,” Mr. Gillmer said. “It is part of a philosophy of making it easier for donors to accomplish their philanthropic goals by being as flexible as possible.”
The site supports Bitcoin and more than 90 other cryptocurrencies, including Ethereum and Shiba Inu. It displays the fiat currency equivalent of the selected donation sum and instantly converts it. A simple and easy system that makes it possible even for those with no experience to be able to contribute to the cause.
Definitely an inclusive system for an enterprise that once again has the entire industry supporting real and true humanitarian causes. This is not the first time we have written about worthwhile works in support of the most in need: one recent example is the fiat/crypto hybrid fundraising organized by the winners of the last Eurovision Song Contest in aid of the Ukrainian population.
On that occasion, donors were awarded NFTs offered by the winners, for an operation that shows analogies with what was organized by Chevrolet, which auctioned a one-off Corvette Z06 through an NFT auction. All sale profits were gifted to DonorsChoose, an American charity that promotes education in the country’s public schools.
Now it is the American church’s turn to take on a worthy project, or rather to turn its work into a Web3 key, with the Vatican pioneering by making its huge collection of art available to everyone.
