The Daily Signal - Businesses Are Going Woke. Here's What a Thoughtful Investor Needs to Consider.

Episode Date: November 29, 2021

More and more, it seems big corporations and even banks have become tools of the left. Americans have been fired from their jobs, deplatformed from social media, and have even seen their bank accounts closed, simply for not bending a knee to the left. This has prompted many conservatives to rethink where they spend and invest their money. John Coleman, a managing partner of Sovereign's Capital, a values-driven private equity and venture capital firm, joins "The Daily Signal Podcast" to discuss a more thoughtful way of investing in the age of "woke corporatism." "You've got this dynamic where progressives are much more likely to actually act on their political or cultural beliefs against a company than conservatives are," says Coleman. "And so, we've ended up in a situation where if you're a public company, those who hold more progressive values have much greater sway on what you are going to do, because you suffer the consequences more [directly] if you don't listen to that voice." Enjoy the show! Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This is the Daily Signal podcast for Monday, November 29th. I'm Virginia Allen. And I'm Christian Mislewik. On today's show, I talk with John Coleman, a managing partner of Sovereign's Capital, a values-driven private equity and venture capital firm. John is also the latest recipient of the Heritage Foundation's Distinguished Intern Alumni Award. We also read your letters to the editor and share a good news story to kick off your Monday morning. Before we get to today's show, Virginia and I want to tell you about our favorite way to get the news every morning.

It's called The Morning Bell. In each weekday, the Daily Signal delivers the top news and commentary directly to your inbox for free. You'll be able to read about the top policy debates shaping the agenda, analysis from Heritage Foundation experts, and commentary from leading conservatives like Ben Shapiro, Dennis Prager, and Cal Thomas. It's easy to sign up. Just visit DailySignal.com. and click on the connect button in the top right corner of the page. We'll start sending you the morning bell tomorrow. Now stay tuned for today's show coming up next. More and more, it seems, big corporations and even banks have become tools of the left. Americans have been fired from their jobs, de-platform from social media,

and have even seen their bank accounts closed simply for not bending the need a leftist ideology. This has left many conservatives rethinking where they spend and invest their money. With me today is John Coleman, who can help us think through this problem. John is a managing partner of sovereign's capital, of values-driven private equity and venture capital firm. He's also an alumnus of the Heritage Foundation's internship program. In fact, he's the latest recipient of Heritage's Distinguished Intern Alumni Award. John, thank you so much for joining me today. Yeah, Christian, thank you so much for having me on.

Absolutely. Now, John, since you're in the finance world, you probably have a very clear view. of the cultural shift that we're seeing in the business environment, particularly the rise of woke corporatism, this idea that businesses need to take a stance on political or social issues that have nothing to do of what they do as a business. So I wanted to talk to you today a little bit about that. But before we get into that,

I want to hear a little bit about you, where you grew up, your career, what you do now. Tell us about yourself. Thanks so much for the opportunity. So I grew up in the southeast, mostly in Georgia and Florida, a pretty middle class background, and was always interested in the topic of finance and economics. You know, it was very central to me to the way that the world worked in that the financial system touched almost everything in the world, right?

Whether that was government spending, whether it was someone trying to borrow money to build a house, whether it was infrastructure spending overseas. And so I was kind of infinitely fascinated with this idea that the financial system, was so central to the way that things worked. And in fact, you know, for those of us who believe in the capitalist system, it's one of the underpinnings of that, right? The effective allocation of capital to the right causes all over the world. And so I grew up really fascinated by that. I went to a small liberal art school in Georgia called Barry College, a wonderful place. One of my internships, as you noted, was with the Heritage Foundation while I was an undergraduate

there. And as I embarked on my career, I really spent time getting into both global business and financial institutions, particularly investment management over time. And that's where I've spent the better part of the last 20 years in my career. And you recently published an op-ed in the Daily Signal about how your Christian faith has a strong influence on your investing philosophy. Can you tell me a little bit more about that? Yeah, you know, there was a personal side to that journey. And then what I articulated in the op-ed, the personal side to that journey was around a couple of years ago, I started to think more in a disciplined way about what aligning my personal values and even my

personal faith with my professional orientation would look like. And I came across this wonderful firm called Sovereigns Capital, founded by two of my partners a long time ago that now I have the privilege of coming in to help lead. And Sovereigns is an explicitly faith-driven investment organization, meaning that we try and execute values-driven investments aligned with the values of people of faith. And there's just this long and storied history of that. You know, in the article I outline, if you go back far enough, there are biblical justifications in the Old Testament for aligning your investment dollars with your most fundamental beliefs. You saw that in the growth of all the monotheistic religions. So in Islam, for example, you have Sharia compliant finance where they pay a

great deal of attention to investments in the way the financial institutions are structured. In Jewish law, you see admonitions about different types of investments. And certainly in the history of the Christian Church, you see a lot of emphasis on making sure that your investments are aligned with your values, your values as a person of faith. One of the more interesting examples of that was back in the 1970s, the early 1970s, when the Episcopal Church was actually a leader in fighting apartheid in General Motors policies overseas, where they only held 0.004% of the Episcopal Church,

the shares of GM, but made it a voting issue at a board meeting, GM's practices in in apartheid South Africa, backed by the lone black board member of GM at the time, a person named Dr. Leon Sullivan, who was a Baptist pastor out of Philadelphia. So there's this long and storied history of people of faith, really acting according to their values. What I think is interesting is the last 20 or 30 years of investment management, however, have been dominated by more mainstream, institutions overseas and in the United States trying to exercise their values in companies. And this is manifested largely in what people call environmental, social, and governance investing, ESG today or values investing. And we can get into where that came from. But it's basically

become the dominant part of values investing today, around $35 trillion in assets right now are ESG compliant out of the 120 or 30 trillion in managed assets around the world. that's growing incredibly quickly. And one of the things I point out in the article is how important it is for people of faith to participate in that, to exercise their own values through their investing, knowing that very rarely are their investments neutral and that others are trying to express their values. And so it's only right that people of faith reclaim that historical mandate they've had to make sure that their investment dollars align with their faith.

Right, right. You know, a great line from your article was how if the more best, biblical view of investing is if you're blessed with resources, you have a opportunity or even a duty to grow and to steward that correctly, those resources. And so I think that kind of speaks to what your faith-based investing is all about. But tell me a little bit how that's different from ESG. Like, how is ESG different from, first of all, neutral investing and also from your philosophy of investing? Yeah, such a great question to unpack. So I think that, let's see, to first address, how is that different from ESG? I think it would be different in the types of things

that it emphasizes, right? And so ESG, environmental social governance investing, there's nothing per se wrong with it on its face, right? I think we would all agree that good governance, the G, part of ESG, is an incredibly important thing. to making sure that we're investing in companies that are sustainable. And in fact, good governance historically has proven to be a signal of outperformance. So companies with good governance outperform, companies with bad governance underperform. To some extent, environmental, you know, I think most Christians or conservatives or others would agree that at some level we want to preserve the environment for the future.

Now, we may disagree on the emphasis of that, on tactics, et cetera. And then on social, I think most of us would agree. For example, just as the Episcopal Church lobbied General Motors about their support of apartheid South Africa, there are a number of more Christian or conservative groups right now, which are putting an emphasis on public corporations about their involvement in China, right? Particularly given all the human rights violations that are happening within China right now and how unacceptable those are to people of faith. And so to some extent, I think that values-based investing for Christians or other people of faith,

is similar to ESG, but just with a different set of focuses, right? And it's us encouraging people to try and express their values in how they invest. Now, how is that different than neutral investing? So, you know, the title of the article is all investing is impact investing, meaning, you know, everything we do has an impact. I would say one thing that I would emphasize is you don't have to fight every battle, right? So I think one of the more challenging things in culture, right now is this idea that corporations or business have to be a battlefield for every single political or social dispute. And I would say that that is unnecessarily divisive, right? We can adopt pluralism in the way that corporations operate and understand that corporations are

publicly traded corporations or staffed by people with very different values, that they are there to make money for shareholders, that they're there to make products. And so them having to take stances on a bunch of unrelated stuff, I don't know that that's helpful, right? At the same time, you know, we probably should hold our publicly traded corporations accountable for certain things. And values-based investing is a way to do that. So if you are invested, for example, in a technology company where you feel that technology company has enabled monitoring of people in China or suppression of people in China, then I think every investor of good conscience has certainly has the opportunity to speak up about that and use their investments as a way to. you have a voice in that. And so I'd say it's, I'd say it's more a difference of degree and focus, Christian, rather than a disagreement about the idea that our investments inherently kind of

support or don't support certain values in companies. At the Heritage Foundation, we're strong supporters of free market principles. And so I think a free market expectation of a financial service organization would be to maximize the investments of the shareholders. So, So if you are not boxed in, but if you are investing thoughtfully and in a value, values-driven way, do you have to expect less returns, like the standing for your principles requires you to forgo maximum profits? I think in some cases that might be the case. We think that faith-al-on investing actually can help enhance returns. The way that we think about it at sovereigns is, you know, culture is the greatest competitive advantage in business,

great cultures will outperform poor cultures every time. And it's a sustainable competitive advantage in a world in which building a culture is quite difficult. And so we think cultures built on great values are on their face going to outperform. And so from our point of view, there really is no trade-off between the ability to exercise your basic values through that and support good cultures and performance. And certainly in some of the other areas of ESG, the data is pretty clear. So, for example, governance, you know, if a company has really clear accounting standards, they have good boards of directors, they have leadership teams which are held accountable and not corrupt, you know, those are great for outperformance.

I think where you get into more challenging territory is when companies have to make stands that are, that actually do involve some financial tradeoffs in the short to medium term. And those stands are values based. And I think a lot of companies are being put in that position now, whether it be environmental regulations that they need to support, whether it be certain types of social justice causes, which may cost more. The question I think we'd have to ask is, you know, there are lines. I think everyone would agree there are actually lines where you wouldn't want people to cross in terms of making a profit. So we do want corporations to maximize profits for shareholders, for sure. That's their fiduciary obligation. But there are also certain lines and values we wouldn't want

them to cross. So in retrospect, you know, looking back, Henry Ford's involvement with Nazi Germany was a real black stain on the Ford Motor Company, right? And one that I think almost everyone could agree, even if it resulted in greater profitability in the short term, was actually damaging to the company long term and unethical in the short term. And so the question today is, where do issues cross the line to having that level of importance. And where do we want to allow corporations to kind of stick to their knitting, to do the thing they're primarily responsible for doing, rather than trying to get involved in every modern political issue of the day. Now, going back to this idea of the rise of woke corporatism, first of all, would you say

it's fair to say that more businesses, especially big businesses, have gone left culturally? Yes, for sure. So, And, you know, a quick explanation for that, to some extent, at least from my perspective. Yeah. The history of ESG is, you know, modern ESG movement. I highlighted, you know, religious institutions actually shape this early on. But if you look at the modern ESG movement, a lot of it actually started abroad and with large public plans in the United States. So it was big foreign sovereign wealth funds or superannuation schemes.

For example, in Australia, New Zealand, they have these big, what are called superannuation, superannuation schemes, which are almost like publicly run defined contribution plans in the U.S., where they were very adamant about exercising their values and values investing. The Nordic sovereign wealth funds, based on oil money in places like the Netherlands, became very progressive in terms of their values and started to require that the firms managing their money, firms like BlackRock or Vanguard or State Street or others, really adhere to those values or enact those values, whether those be UN standards or standards enforced by these sovereign wealth funds. And so there was this general movement towards a more progressive set of

values in ESG driven by these large institutional investors, including some U.S. investors, right, state teacher pension plans or firefighter pension plans, on the whole tended to have a more progressive set of values. And that drove asset managers to begin to enact those values more progressively in their companies. The other thing that I think is interesting, and I'm going to forget the exact numbers, but I saw a survey recently of political divisions in the United States, and it turns out that progressives, by and large, will actually vote with their dollars, right, in that if you're a progressive, if you think a company has violated your values, like Chick-fil-A, for example, you're more likely to then actually go spend money somewhere else and not spend money

at that company than a conservative by something like a four to one margin, right? And so you've got this dynamic where progressives are much more likely to actually act on their political or cultural beliefs against a company, right, than conservatives are. And much of the modern ESG movement was driven by more progressive organizations. And so we've ended up in a situation where if you're a public company, those who hold more progressive values have much greater sway on what you are going to do because you suffer the consequences more directly if you don't listen to that voice. Interesting. So in Europe, we saw that these centralized regulators were encouraging asset managers to adopt more ESG policies. Was that imported to the United States and now

are U.S. regulations encouraging asset managers to be more ESG friendly? Yeah, 100%. I mean, you can see this. And not everything, remember, not every regulation is a federal one, right? So the federal government has done certain things, but a lot of this even happens at the state level, right? So, for example, there are a number of big state pension plans. These are, again, great organizations. They perform a really meaningful task in that they typically manage the pension assets of teachers or firefighters or police officers, something we want to do, right? We want to ensure a great retirement for our firefighters and police officers. But often those states or the entities within those states have begun to

be much more aggressive about the types of ESG standards that they act upon. They may require, for example, that the companies who manage assets for them provide a series of statistics about diversity within their companies, even about how people are paid according to those diverse categories, about their environmental stewardship. So how ESG compliant, meaning environmentally friendly, are the buildings that they invest in, or even the buildings that they occupy as companies, for example. They may rely on ratings of external parties about how friendly these firms are to various groups, whether that be diverse communities or LGBT communities, et cetera. And so what you see are a general emphasis amongst both foreign governments and foreign entities,

whether those be corporate plans or sovereign wealth funds, as well as domestic entities, to push asset managers and underlying public companies to share more information about how they're complying with various ESG standards and to be much more aggressive about adhering to those standards and continually ratcheting up that adherence. So once you meet a certain standard, new standards come along to kind of push you, push you further along, if that makes sense, Christian.

And so there are these variety of sources that are coming together, the drift which all kind of point towards a more progressive set of values in public companies and in the standards that state and local governments as well as federal governments hold those companies accountable to. Right. And we see what happens when those companies kind of embrace all of this. I mean, like, let's take personal banking. I mean, Chase Bank, Wells Fargo, PayPal, some other financial service firms. So they've recently been accused of canceling services to customers or apparently expressing conservative views.

So, you know, what's on my mind these days is if banks can fall to this kind of ESG mentality or woke corporatism, what are some ways that conservatives can cancel proof their financial assets? Yeah, it's such a great, it's a great, question. So, you know, one of the ways in which I encourage people in the article is, look, everyone should have some investment or purchasing according to their values, right? All investing is impact investing. It's just that some people don't understand the impact of their assets. Like most of us hold ETFs, right, that are managed by companies that have a particular set of values, usually quite progressive. But we don't understand that they're voting on our behalf and

that they're actually using our shares in order to express a set of values with corporations. So I'd say the first thing is to just actually begin to take a more active role in defining what your values are and how you want those expressed in the marketplace. The second, I think, is to really try and align yourself with institutions that you feel are reflective of your values. Now, Christian, to your point, maybe you only feel comfortable if an institution is truly neutral, right, that they don't have a set of values they're expressing. and that's certainly someone's prerogative.

You might feel more comfortable if the institution that you're dealing with is explicitly faith-based, for example, because those values are most important to you. But I would encourage everyone to think about from their ETF providers to their financial advisors and even to the banks with whom they do business, just what types of values those institutions have and making sure that they're doing business with people that they're comfortable with, share their values. The third is, I think, on a macro scale, for institutions and individuals to really try and express those values more publicly in the marketplace.

So a great example of this Christian recently, and again, I'll forget some of the specific details, but there was this movement about divesting in fossil fuels from a series of investment plans around the country, driven by a series of states in the federal government wanting to push banks to kind of not do as much business with fossil fuel companies and to divest fossil fuels from their portfolios. In a series of states' attorneys general representing those states which had fossil fuels, whether that be coal or oil or natural gas, to begin to communicate to those banks that they would no longer do business with them if they promoted this agenda that would be harmful to the residents of those states.

And so it was an example where institutions responded in kind saying, like, we have to represent the individuals for whom we're responsible, and we want to make sure that the institutions with whom we do business are not damaging them. And so that's an example where both individuals and institutions can begin to speak up and begin to really exert their own values within companies to make sure that they're not being left behind, overlooked, or denigrated. So what advice do you have for some of our listeners or if you could even share like your process at sovereign's capital about vetting?

a business that you think is more values based. Certainly. You know, my general advice, most investors, you know, most of the listeners out there are going to have most of their money in kind of money markets or ETFs, relatively straightforward tools that are low cost. And my encouragement to you is to really think about your values and how much you want them express, have a plan for what you really want to see in your portfolio. So from my perspective, you know, my faith is probably the biggest thing I want to see reflected

in my portfolio and the values that stem from that. At Sovereigns, we think of that as love of neighbor and human flourishing are the two things that we're trying to encourage. And so that's my first screen for the types of institutions I want to deal with. Secondly, once you've allied with the right institutions, you've got a financial advisor or a company that you feel reflects your values. Be very thoughtful about the investments that you're choosing, right? Think about the managers of the ETFs that you're buying, for example. Even if it's just an S&P 500 index, You know, if you're investing with, say, Black Rock, you need to understand that Black Rock is then going to vote your shares. Now, you may agree 100% with Black Rock, but it's worth understanding their politics and how they vote before you give them your voting rights effectively by holding their ETFs.

And if you have a different set of values, find other institutions. There are such a wide array of ETF and mutual fund companies out there, many of whom have a more conservative set of values that you could choose if you so choose. You know, on our side, sovereigns primarily does venture in private equity investing. And so we have this benefit of being able to work with entrepreneurs and founders that we feel are aligned. So we explicitly see if their values align. We try and make sure that their companies are companies that are promoting the types of values that we adhere to. So we don't invest in businesses based on addiction, for example, gambling or alcohol. We try and emphasize companies that really take care of employees, right?

They show human flourishing and love of neighbor to others. And because we're private markets investors, you know, we take board seats. We have an ability to influence those and really partner with the CEOs. And it's just a much more meaningful positive impact than we could have over most public companies. Now, how does cryptocurrency play into all this? Does somebody who has a faith-based view of investing, can they, should they be looking into that? Yeah, this is such a great debate. So crypto is a very interesting space, I think. So in full transparency, I personally have dabbled in it. My firm does not invest in crypto right now. I have an account where I trade cryptocurrency and I have a little bit. I don't think there's anything misaligned about cryptocurrency in a conservative set of values or a liberal set of values or a Christian set of values. I do think you've got to be very cautious. It's kind of caveat in tour, buyer beware. You know, there are thousands of

cryptocurrencies out there right now. Not all of them have the same standards of governance as Souther's. And certainly they're all risky, right? It's a much riskier asset class. What I think is fascinating about cryptocurrency and potentially useful to people is it does begin to restructure our financial system in interesting ways. The first time I ever heard someone talk about this, it was a person from a country in Latin America. And he stood up five or six years ago and made the point that Americans couldn't fully understand the power of cryptocurrency because they lived in a world with such a stable currency, right? The U.S. dollar, even in times of inflation, maybe move six or seven percent. If you're in certain countries in Latin America or Asia

or Eastern Europe or Africa, you experience hyperinflation. You experience governments abusing their currencies. And so for him, he said, yes, it's volatile, but it's finally a chance to hold your capital in a place that the government can't control. And so I think there's something fundamentally liberating, at least for certain types of people about cryptocurrency. I think the caution I would offer is it is certainly a very volatile place. It's certainly a place where not every cryptocurrency company is the same as another. Not every token is run as ethically as another. And so I always tell people, you know, err on the side of caution if you're going to get involved, try and get in touch with people who really understand the space and the different coins. But on its face, I actually think

there's some really interesting, there's really interesting potential of the cryptocurrency market to do good in the world, assuming that it's managed appropriately. And lastly, we have a few minutes left. I just want to ask you about your time at the Heritage Foundation. Like, what do you remember about your internship? And how did it go? Oh, gosh, man, it was, it was fantastic. So I was there for a few months when I was a junior in college, I believe. It was really, really, my first time living outside of Georgia and Florida, first time in D.C. I mean, D.C. is an amazing city. It was beautiful. I think I went to museums every weekend and got to see all the monuments. And it was just overwhelming, you know, living there how much patriotism I felt, for lack of a

better term. I mean, just this idea that this country founded on a fundamentally different set of values was still alive and thriving and that normal people like me could be at the heart of that, right? We didn't have to be born into it. Normal people like me could. could participate in influencing the direction of our country, which was amazing. And Heritage certainly reinforced that. I mean, the intern program was extraordinarily well run. If you've got kids or grandkids or cousins who were thinking about it, it was an extraordinary program.

I got exposed to leading thinkers on a variety of topics. I got to really feel close to the issues drive in America and got the sense for the first time that an average guy like me could influence. influenced them. I got to hear from these remarkable people. And then I worked with just incredibly caring colleagues there. I remember everyone I encountered was remarkably kind to me. They were supportive of me. Some of them have remained mentors to this day. And so it was really an experience that was formative in keeping me interested in politics and also giving me the confidence that I could learn to participate in them in a constructive way.

And so if let's say there's somebody a young person who's listening or somebody who's about to who might be considering the internship program, and like you, they're interested in how wealth is moved around on the world, around the impact of investing. What resources can you suggest to them to kind of look into this topic some more? Yeah, gosh, that's such a good question. I think that, so for all young people, I think reading up on the different companies in which you're investing, Most companies now have ESG statements that they publish as part of their annual reports or somewhere separate on their website. And so if you're managing funds with an ETF company, the likes of which Vanguard or State Street or whomever, often they will have an explicit ESG statement that allows you to see how they're investing or what values they hold, even how they do what's called proxy voting, which is voting your shares for public companies. Most public companies have something similar now. And then a lot of the great consulting firms, whether that be Deloitte or PWC or McKenzie, will put out reports on ESG periodically that you can read and what that looks like within companies.

If you're interested in faith-driven investor, I'll put a pitch. Two of my partners founded an organization called Faith-driven Investor, Faith-driven Entrepreneur, which are two different websites that talk about the ways in which people incorporate their faith into entrepreneurship and investing, which I think can be a remarkable resource, if that's something interesting to you. And there are a lot of other great firms out there that are doing good work as well. And so digging into the places that you do business with and some of the reports on the topic can be remarkably helpful. Very good. John Coleman, thank you so much for speaking with me today. Yeah, Christian, thank you so much for having me on. I appreciate it. Absolutely.

I'm Zach Smith. And I'm John Carlo Canaparo. And if you want to understand what's happening at the Supreme Court, be sure to check out SCOTUS 101, a Heritage Foundation podcast. We take a look at the cases, the personalities, and the gossip at the highest court in the land. Be sure to subscribe on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or wherever else you find your podcasts. It's SCOTUS 101. Thanks for sending us your letters to the editor. Each Monday, we feature our favorites on this show. Christian, who do we have first?

Well, in response to Rob Bluey's recent podcast interview with David Harsani, Gene Parker writes, Dear Daily Signal, the interview you did with Mr. Harsani was excellent. As I read it, I was reminded of a teacher I had in eighth grade in 1967. She would take articles from the national news, and once or twice a week, the class did a deep dive learning slash discussion on them. This article struck me as one worth going over, discussing, forming opinions, and strengthening our children. Thank you so much for a wonderful article that inspired me to think and share. Francis Marshall writes, Dear Daily Signal, thank you for allowing us to see behind the curtains of this failing U.S. government today. God help us before it's too late and we become lost in our abyss.

Your letter could be featured on next week's show as well, so send an email to Letters at DailySignal.com. Virginia, you have a good news story to share with us today. Over to you. Thanks so much, Christian. Thanksgiving and Christmas is such a special time of year across the nation. generosity is really in the air and so many of us begin to ask that question of what can I do to serve my community how can I help the people around me who are in need 44 years ago Marty Rogers asked that very question Rogers has lived in the South Bronx all his life he is 66 years old now when he was in his early 20s he received permission to serve a Thanksgiving meal to your citizens in the community fellowship hall of Immaculate Conception Church in New York City.

The event was such a success that he did it again the following year and again and again. It's been now over 40 years and Rogers has never missed a year. The Thanksgiving celebration has expanded from just serving senior citizens to now also feeding the homeless. Rogers says that he loves the event because he gets to play the role of Mater D. all night long asking the guests how their food is and if he can get them anything, as he told today in a recent interview. Rogers, two children, Joe and Maria, have also been helping with the event since they were just little kids themselves. Maria told today that she would describe her father as someone who truly embodies the spirit of giving in every aspect and just

knows the importance of community of treating people with dignity and respect. You know, as I read through Roger's story and thought about his generosity, I was reminded that tomorrow, November 30th, is giving Tuesday. After Black Friday, Small Business Saturday, and Cyber Monday comes Giving Tuesday, a day dedicated to supporting the efforts of charities and nonprofits who do amazing work all across the country. Our friends over at the Dream Center in Los Angeles are holding a special campaign tomorrow. to raise money for families in need. They are asking as many people who are able to give a one-time or monthly donation of $30 to help those who are just struggling to make ends meet.

The Pro-Life Organization Save the Storks is on a mission to raise $150,000 so that they can support more moms and crisis pregnancies and save more babies. These are just two great organizations, but there are so many out there that are doing critical. work in America right now and what an opportunity we have to slow down and think about the ways that we can support the work of these organizations. So today I'm really challenging myself to think about how I can be following Rogers example and step in and fill a need in my community, in my country, step up and support those who are doing great work. And I invite you all, I invite you all to join me this Giving Tuesday of thinking about how can we be a part of that change

and how can we really enter this holiday season in a spirit of giving. Virginia, thank you so much for sharing. We are going to leave it there for today. You can find the Daily Signal podcast on the Rickochet Audio Network. All of our shows can be found at dailysignal.com slash podcast. You can also subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Google Play, or your favorite podcast app, And be sure to listen every weekday by adding the Daily Signal podcast as part of your Alexa Flash briefing. If you like what you hear, please leave us a review and a five-star rating.

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