Consulting Projects:  Some Recent Examples

• A local pro-life ministry approached one of our ICS members to obtain help surveying their Christian community’s beliefs and attitudes about abortion. A survey was carefully designed and administered to over 1500 members of this community. The data analyses led to conclusions that were used to modify the communications going to this community about abortion and the services that the ministry provided.

• In order to complete a Doctor of Ministry degree program, the student, a seasoned pastor, had to assess the persuasiveness of a presentation he would give regarding the defense of the reliability of the Gospels.  He turned to an ICS member-friend, who helped him to design a survey of observers of the presentation.  The results led to insight into the effectiveness of the presentation and the strongest and weakest arguments in the defense, not to mention the successful completion of the DMin degree program.

• A world relief organization that serves 3rd world countries with micro-finance services was interested in minimizing the loan losses among their loan activities and making more informed and data driven decisions for loans. A logistic regression analysis identified the key factors associated with loan delinquencies and a credit scorecard model was built to help them implement the solution. Also, many discussions took place to help with changing the culture around what data to collect, how to better collect the data, and how to store the data in a more centralized manner. This led to more organizational change around the data management structure to help improve processes at the organization.

• A local Methodist church asked one of its members (also an ICS member) to assist the church’s leaders in long-term, local missions planning. Our member took the leadership through an all-day “visioning” retreat, designed and conducted an internal survey of the church members, and conducted interviews of neighbors. The ultimate result was a decision to aim new church ministries at the place where the gifting and passions of the church members best matched the needs in the church’s neighborhood.