We want to see lives and communities transformed by the power of God. Working with Jesus we strive to be consistent with his words, his works, and his ways. We believe transformed lives lead to transformed communities and vice versa. While not diminishing the importance of individual lives being transformed, we are driven to see communities reach their God-given potential through integrated community transformation. The transformation we envision is exponential change in a community that goes beyond the typical aims of development. We will know when a community has reached the tipping point and moved from development to transformation because (1) Jesus' ways are at the center, (2) local assets are meeting local needs and there is an abundance, and (3) the community's influence is expanding and replicating itself elsewhere because it is so attractive to others. By 2020, we want to be in 100 communities (carefully selected where we bring clear value) where the authentic Gospel (not separating mission and compassion) is available to everyone. We believe that this access to the Gospel is what it will take to move towards the transformation we envision. Our role is to bring people together through partnerships (churches, governments, schools, NGOs) and to send teams on a temporary basis until the assets of the community are sufficient to move towards transformation without our presence. Our successful exit will be the ultimate measure of success.

We recruit specialized leaders who work in communities to bring together and help coordinate the activities of organizations and individuals for the purpose of community transformation. Our leaders around the world are responsible for leadership, management, and growth in their assigned area. They are supported strategically and tactically by expert catalysts who equip and educate staff in the communities. Networking with existing leaders in our target communities is key to success and we have developed various tools and training resources to help our staff do this well. We continually seek to be led to new communities and to work with leaders who have a similar vision, to see their communities restored. We only approve starting to work in a new community if we add value beyond what is already present. We enter into our work in a community with the plan to exit that community once its transformation is far enough along that external resources are no longer required to overcome the challenges they face.

We are driven by a common vision and mission across the world, allowing us to leverage resources and institutionalize our learnings. This makes us more nimble with the ability to move people into new roles or new places of need around the world. Everyone works under a common set of management processes and organizational goals so we move forward together. We have a core Philosophy of Ministry that gives us a solid foundation for our work while allowing for the proper contextualization for cross-cultural ministry effectiveness. We are constantly creating tools and processes to deliver on our commitments to integrated community transformation, including a performance evaluation process for our global staff that makes sure we have accountability to the mission to which God has called us, and to our donors. We have thousands of vital relationships with churches, organizations, and individuals both in the US and across the world. Many of these relationships have been created over more than 50 years of experience.

Starting from our clear vision and mission, we have created a broad business plan and set of course correcting initiatives to ensure that we are moving towards our vision. Every department and every team around the world has the same vision and mission, allowing us to set goals and move forward together. We have a dynamic set of three year goals (both quantitative and qualitative) that we review monthly to ensure we have the right priorities and that we are staying accountable to moving forward. Each team in the field has a strategic plan consistent with our organizational goals and those plans are reviewed regularly. Alignment is down to the individual staff member by adherence to a common set of values and regular performance evaluations. We work with leading and trailing indicators to gage the ongoing health of our organization and make any necessary course corrections. We set annual budgets and update that budget regularly through a quarterly forecasting process. Together, goal reviews and quarterly forecasting allow us to change plans and reallocate resources for maximum effectiveness. More specifically, our goal is to be working in 100 well-defined communities by the end of 2020. The measure of our effectiveness in those communities will be four key measurements—have we: (1) made sure that no one in that community is invisible to the systems and people in that community, (2) provided access to resources (created in-house or through partnerships) that meet all the needs of the poor, (3) ensured that issues of modern day slavery are being addressed and that everyone has access to justice, and (4) the works, ways, and words of Jesus are guiding all we do and being shared with others so they too can be reconciled with God and with each other through Jesus. While transformation will be taking place between now and 2020, we expect to see transformation really take hold once the access above has been put in place. We will know when a community has moved into transformation by three key measures: (1) the works, ways, and words of Jesus permeate and drive the community forward, (2) local assets are in abundance and the community no longer needs outside help to address its current and future challenges, and (3) the transforming community is extending (its borders) and expanding (replicating itself) because it is contagious to others who come in contact with it.

The great clarity that God has given us in our vision and mission has caused us to make many foundational changes to the organization's structure, systems, and management processes. Since 2010, some of these key changes include: (1) implementation of a matrixed organizational design, (2) creation of a new recruiting process, (3) implementation of a new performance evaluation system, (4) creation of new organizational values, (5) roll out of a Philosophy of Ministry to our staff to ensure we are working on the same foundation, (6) revamped training programs, (7) development of a new core system for strategic planning in the field, (8) overhaul of our website, (8) start of new donor development programs, (9) roll out of a new leadership development program, and (10) creation of learning forums and tools for community transformation. We still have work to do to create leadership and field metrics, and a new donor development system to manage our new donor development programs. There is also a significant ongoing change management effort due to the amount of change we are making to align the entire organization. All of these changes are critical to our ability to affect transformation in the communities in which we work, from equipping staff with the knowledge and tools they need to creating a sound financial system to sustainably fund our work. We have identified about 50 of the 100 communities we want to be in by 2020, many coming from a new integrated community transformation focus for teams already in place. The remaining 50 communities are going to be in new places. Asset and needs assessments are being created and implemented in existing communities, but not yet to the extent we want because we are still deep into change management and aligning everyone to ICT. We know we cannot effectively move the organization towards ICT by demanding from senior leadership. We have to cast the vision internally and let people move towards it so they are committed instead of just compliant. That takes time. We are constantly adjusting to what works and what doesn't. Since vision informs design which in turn informs implementation, we keep these three in front of us all the time. If something isn't working as well as we expected in implementation (which is largely the phase we are in right now), we first make sure we don't need to modify the vision, and then we check the design. This iterative process keeps us learning all the time and making the right adjustments while always grounding ourselves in our vision and mission.