May a 501(c)(3) parent organization or church create a nonprofit LLC and may it receive tax deductible gifts in a similar fashion as a non-profit organization?

Nonprofit and Church Legal Trends - Free Edition - November December 2007 (free edition)

Whether a gift to a charitable LLC is deductible as a charitable contribution is still undecided by the IRS. If the LLC has obtained its own recognition of exemption under Section 501(c)(3), the answer appears to be Yes. However, repeated requests for such a definitive answer to the IRS have gone unanswered for many years. If it is a single member LLC of which a charity is the single member, the LLC is "disregarded" for tax purposes. By all logic, a gift to such a "disregarded" entity should be treated as a gift to the parent charity and deductible, but the IRS has to date refused to rule on the question.