Interfaith Advocate now a 501(C)(3) organization

It has been our dream for a number of years for Interfaith Advocate to become a 501(C)(3) organization. We have been working with the Foundation Group out of Nashville Tennessee for several years and in 2019 put together the structure of what would become this nonprofit foundation and developed our charter with my dear friends Holli Emore with whom I have served for number of years on the board of interfaith partners of South Carolina and for the last several years on the board of Cherry Hill seminary, and Reb Tzipi Radonski whom I met through our service together on the board of the Unified Interfaith Community Coalition of Beaufort.
 
For a long time what I perceived as the thrust of our work was the videoing I have been doing of events and interviews with individuals in the interfaith movement. This past year given the Covid crisis has all but halted those efforts. Although I did discover in doing the video interviews for Interfaith Partners of South Carolina's Interfaith Harmony Month that it is possible to produce videos in a virtual environment and I will pursue this. After a lot of thought I now see what I am imagining as a major effort of Interfaith Advocate to be interfaith chaplaincy. Most of the large organizations around here, hospitals, nursing homes, jails and prisons which utilize the services of chaplains generally have only representatives from one or two faith traditions, primarily Christian. It is my hope that I will be able to offer chaplaincy services for the under-served faiths in the area, especially Hinduism, Sikhism and Native American spirituality all of which I have spent some time studying and have worked with faith leaders in those traditions.
 
The purpose of this particular report is to share the news that the Internal Revenue Service has finally granted us our 501(C)(3) status! It has been a long time coming and I am grateful to all of you who have supported our work. And those of you who have the ability and are inclined to support our work financially now have the opportunity to do so with tax credits. Thank you.