Teddy James
AFA Journal staff writer
April 2014 – Rob’s wife walked into their apartment and immediately knew something was wrong. The curtains were closed, the lights were out and Rob was on the couch with a blanket tucked around him.
“What’s wrong?” she asked.
“I think lunch made me sick,” he mumbled.
After checking his fever and giving him another blanket, Mary set out to make a light dinner that would make him feel better. She boiled noodles, cooked and cut up chicken and made Rob’s favorite chicken noodle soup. She made him a small bowl and placed it on a plate with crackers and a tall glass of iced water. She brought the meal on a tray to her ailing husband who took one whiff and jumped off the couch running in the direction of the bathroom. “I had chicken for lunch,” he screamed before slamming the door.
Even the best intentions can have undesirable results. That is true in small things like trying to cook chicken noodle soup for someone afraid of eating chicken, and in big decisions like investing for the future.
Because of this reality, several evangelical pastors – wanting to invest in mutual funds that did not support morally questionable businesses – approached Arthur Ally, a man well-known as a financial consultant and public accountant, to create America’s first pro-life/pro-family mutual fund.
Ally started small, with only a handful of investors in a limited partnership. He was inspired by his wife to name it the Timothy Plan. Ally initially focused on five major issues: abortion, pornography, alcohol, tobacco and casino gambling. Years later, he broadened his scope to screen for anti-family entertainment and alternative lifestyles.
Through the growth of the Timothy Plan and other connections, Ally became managing partner of a company that developed the eVALUEator, a tool to analyze any mutual fund’s moral integrity. It quickly became a necessary tool for investment brokers to see where thousands of businesses stood on moral and social issues. Brokers have found the tool invaluable in helping clients invest specifically in companies that share their beliefs, or at the very least, are not engaged in actions diametrically opposed to what they believe in.
Giving the investment away
It was this tool that led Steve Ensley, founder of Mobile Web Guard to set up a meeting with the Timothy Plan and AFA. Ensley saw an opportunity to take the tool brokers use every day and allow socially-minded consumers to benefit from its information. Through the newfound partnership, a slimmed-down version of eVALUEator was made available free to anyone with an Internet connection.
Ensley said, “We made this available for the guy who wants to build a house and needs lumber. He could buy it from just any company. But now he can buy it from a company he knows shares his beliefs and will use part of its profits promoting those beliefs.” That is the goal of eVALUEator and it does that well.
To see eVALUEator in action, visit screenit-cleanit.com. Currently, users are limited to five search queries per 30-day cycle. Ensley said the partnership between AFA and Timothy Plan plans to increase that limit in the future. But the information gleaned from each search will be invaluable to the concerned consumer. 
