The Chalmers Center for Economic Development at Covenant College

As part of our current strategic plan, we are seeking to:
-> Inspire churches with the message of God’s Kingdom—and its implications for their ministry with the poor.
-> Equip churches with principles and practices to improve their existing ministries with the materially poor—and launch new ministries at home and abroad.
-> Train churches to live out the good news of the Kingdom in creative ways that go beyond Chalmers’ products.

We are seeking to increase our impact through goals aligned with our Strategic Anchors - Create, Distribute, and Sustain & Grow.

Strategic Anchor 1: Create tools that help churches improve or design new, contextualized poverty alleviation ministries where they are.

1. Create 2 new online courses: Fully online certification for Work Life and a video based course for Becoming Whole and A Field Guide to Becoming Whole (course name TBD).
2. Complete a 3-month EMPLOY Design Journey to explore how we might equip employment decision-makers to engage the materially poor in meaningful work opportunities.
3. Continue to develop, test, and deploy two new products: Restore: Innovation and Restore: Savings for Early Youth.

Strategic Anchor 2: Distribute our tools and framework widely and effectively across various channels.
1. Enhance, market and deploy our online learning platform to 413 churches and 2,092 participants.
2. Equip 200 churches and reach 2,750 people in poverty through Faith & Finances and Work Life, providing new coaching services to new and existing sites.
3. Support and equip West Africa direct partners to equip 520 churches, train 1,383 church facilitators, and launch 1,300 savings groups.
4. Expand partnerships with Tearfund, Compassion West Africa, and One Child Matters to equip 506 churches and launch 1,200 savings groups.

Anchor 3: Sustain and grow our work through increased revenue-generating activities
and contributions from a diversified mix of financial resource partners.
1. Develop enhanced metrics for internal/external use to more effectively capture data related to reconciling relationships (a core component of the Chalmers framework).
2. Upgrade Asset CRM to provide enhanced accountability and tracking of savings group activities in West Africa.
3. Transition all online training to an industry standard online learning platform.

Chalmers has a trusted approach to equipping churches and ministries with effective, biblical ways to love the poor.

Listen
We listen to the voices of the church, experts in the poverty alleviation field, and the materially poor to identify ways we can equip churches and ministries.

Design
We design and create biblically-integrated approaches and resources for churches and ministries that are tailored to the lives of people in poverty.

Test
We field-test and refine our approaches to poverty with our network of innovation partners in the U.S. and around the world.

Scale
When an idea works, we share it with others! We scale our innovations through like-minded partner organizations who integrate our approaches into their existing programs and networks.

For over 20 years, The Chalmers Center has equipped local churches to address the broken relationships at the root of material poverty, living out Jesus’ Kingdom today. Through resources like the bestselling book When Helping Hurts, The Chalmers Center has helped thousands of churches and Christian ministries in North America and the Majority World to discover new ways of thinking about poverty, reimagine their role in the Kingdom of God, and build transformational relationships with people in poverty.

As we pursue our goals:
- We will focus on structured innovation programs so that we can equip more churches with research, resources, and tools to implement effective, biblical poverty alleviation programs.
- We will continue to develop and advance quality content, curriculum, online learning opportunities, and programs.
- We will continue to establish collaborative partnerships providing exponential reach and avenues of access for churches of all sizes to help more people and communities.

-> In the US
Through our primary US-based training offerings, Faith & Finances and Work Life, The Chalmers Center equips churches and ministries to walk alongside the materially poor to discover God’s plan for their finances and to develop the skills and attitudes to find and retain work.

Through our network of Lead Trainers and like-minded strategic partners like Love INC. and Prison Fellowship, we have:
- Equipped 1,346 churches and organizations
- Reached 8,218 people

Additionally, Chalmers continues to expand our library of online resources and provide churches with tools and training to walk alongside the poor to break the bonds of poverty. To date, we have developed six online courses and released the Helping Without Hurting Online Library, a bundle of all of our non-certification courses. So far thirty organizations have purchased annual subscriptions, helping us to impact 2,154 participants. Additionally, we have certified 75 Faith & Finances facilitators and equipped over 200 volunteers through the online platform.


-> In the Majority World
For over twenty years, the Chalmers Center has been focused on economic development initiatives in the Majority Word. For example, our Restore: Savings curriculum has been developed, tested, and used throughout the world. What’s more, our work implementing that curriculum with indigenous partners in West Africa has reached over 75,000 people in the last 8 years alone. Using West Africa as a “showroom,” the Chalmers Center has been able to attract and equip larger organizations to scale Chalmers’ models, training, and curricula to many more churches across the Majority World, helping an additional 600,000 poor people through long-term, sustainable ministries.