A secure treasure

Charity | Charity can be recession-proof | Rusty Leonard and Warren Cole Smith

Sladjana Lukic

When shares of Wall Street powerhouse Bear Stearns lost over 90 percent of their value in one weekend, stock markets around the world shuddered.

So did some charities. About 1,000 of Bear Stearns' highly compensated senior managers have been required to give 4 percent of their substantial incomes to charity as a condition of employment. This unique policy has been in place since the 1970s, and in 2006 alone, Bear Stearns employees gave almost $50 million to mostly secular charities.

But what about Christian ministries? Will market jitters hurt them as well?

Daryl Heald is president of Generous Giving and senior program officer at the Maclellan Foundation, one of the nation's largest Christian philanthropic foundations. Heald says major ministry leaders are "very upbeat. . . . Last year was a very good year for Christian charity. For ministries with large and diverse donor bases, things are not bad."