Mercury One Clarifies How Donations Will Be Handled; Some Restricted Donations Allowed

Last week, Mercury One, founded by Glenn Beck, announced that all donations would be consolidated into one fund. In the past, Mercury One created various funds to accomplish specific goals. Donations to those funds (e.g., the Nazarene Fund for rescue of refugees) had to be spent on fund purposes. For instance, funds donated to rescue refugees could not be spent on purchasing historical artifacts.

At the time, I took a skeptical view of the changes. In my opinion, charities are more accountable when donors can specify how their funds are to be used. In practice, I think a charity should have an all purpose fund as well as specific funds for specific needs. The balances in these funds should be known to the public.

The Changes Were Changed
Apparently, somebody at Mercury One decided that the initial changes needed to be modified. Today, on the same blog post, the wording of the announcement has been changed. See below for the current announcement. The new material is in bold print:

Mercury One stands for doing the right thing and throughout our five-year history, Mercury One has done just that. While the needs change from season to season, the constant is that Mercury One has been there to respond to those in need. We know that you, our family of supporters and donors, are vital to our mission. One of the reasons we have had so much success with our humanitarian projects and The Nazarene Fund is because people like you have trusted us to be effective and make a real difference in people’s lives. Thank you!

If you have supported Mercury One in the past, or have followed our journey through Glenn Beck, you may know that for each need, we created a separate funding campaign so that we could allocate every penny of your gift to support each specific initiative. It has been amazing to see the outpouring of passion and support for these projects, but it also prohibited Mercury One from immediately distributing funds quickly when a new and urgent need arose.

Beginning in March 2017, Mercury One is streamlining the way we receive and allocate donations. Going forward, all gifts will go directly to Mercury One. We want to be able to respond more swiftly, and to do this, we are consolidating future gifts (unless otherwise specified) to a single account so we can be more nimble and react immediately when a need arises.

Donor intent is very important to us. Any restricted gift made to Mercury One has gone to support that specific cause. Mercury One has no intent of reallocating funds on any active funding campaign where the need still exists. For example, if you gave a restricted gift to Disaster Relief, to Veterans initiatives or to The Nazarene Fund, your gift will still be distributed to support that campaign.

At any point, if a donor sends a restricted gift, Mercury One will honor the intent of the gift. If there are no projects that would fit that gift, then Mercury One will communicate directly with the donor and at the direction of him/her will either redirect the gift to another project or return the gift.

We have been extremely honored to be able to partner with you, our donors, to make an impact in the world, whether it be to support disaster relief, veterans, those in crisis through our grant programs, or assisting Christians and other persecuted religious minorities in the Middle East. Our mission remains constant. We will continue to support humanitarian aid and education initiatives throughout our nation and the world. What is different, is that we will no longer raise funds for single projects nor for a General Fund to support daily operations. What stays the same is that Mercury One will continue to be conservative in our administrative spending and open with our hearts as we provide assistance to those in need.

We thank you for your continued support and partnership in restoring the human spirit.

Looks like a lawyer(s) got involved and crafted some language that is an improvement over the prior post. This approach seems more reasonable and transparent. Donors can submit gifts with instructions and if Mercury One can accommodate the donor’s intent, the charity will do so. If not, the money will be returned. All donations not otherwise designated will go to the general account for use as decided by the charity’s leaders.

Last I checked Mercury One still had a link to the Nazarene Fund. Donors who want to give to that fund should ask what those funds will support. Furthermore, one should not assume that donations made from the Nazarene Fund website will go toward that purpose. I still believe Mercury One should either remove that page or make it crystal clear (not buried in a blog post) on the front page that donations will only go to the purposes of the Nazarene Fund if the donor explicitly designates the gift for that purpose.