Designing Better Futures Initiative DBFI
An emerging interdisciplinary research initiative investigating how character formation shapes institutional design — and how institutions can be built with structures, incentives, and cultures that reinforce virtue and contribute to human flourishing across generations.
Leadership education has formed better people.
It hasn't taught them to build better institutions.
Leading research centers — including the Harvard Human Flourishing Program and the Oxford Character Project — have expanded scholarship on how character contributes to ethical leadership and human flourishing. This focus has strengthened the formation of individuals.
Yet comparatively little attention has been given to how character formation influences institutional design — how the leader's formation shapes the structures, incentives, and cultures of the organizations they build and lead.
DBFI was created to close that gap.
Character
The existing focus
Leadership
The current frontier
Institutional Design
The missing discipline
Culture
The downstream effect
Human Flourishing
The generational outcome
What DBFI Investigates
How does character formation shape the way leaders design institutions?
Does formation strengthen institutional foresight, discernment, and organizational decision-making?
How can institutional structures, incentives, and cultures be designed to reinforce virtue and contribute to human flourishing?
How does this model transfer across theological education, higher education, nonprofit leadership, and other organizational contexts?
Five Formation Domains, One Integrated Architecture
DBFI is structured around the Shift Framework. Participants move through five sequential domains, each producing practical design artifacts that build upon one another into a comprehensive Formation Portfolio.
Identity Formation
Clarifying who the leader is before addressing what they build.
Ideas & Discernment
Developing the capacity to evaluate ideas with wisdom, not just intelligence.
Institutional Integrity
Designing organizations that remain congruent with the values they claim.
Power & Human-First Design
Learning to steward authority in ways that protect human dignity.
Institutional Design & Cultural Renewal
Producing the architecture for organizations that contribute to flourishing across generations.
Participants leave not simply with new ideas, but with a complete architecture — the Future Stewardship Canvas — integrating their formation into a single visual framework for stewarding their life, calling, leadership, and institution.
Outputs Across Four Dimensions
Research & Evaluation
- Assessment instruments and evaluation framework
- Qualitative and quantitative research datasets
- Published research findings and academic publications
Educational Innovation
- Interdisciplinary curriculum across five formation domains
- Formation Portfolio methodology and the Future Stewardship Canvas
- Shift Framework implementation and facilitation model
Institutional Implementation
- Pilot participant cohorts
- Institutional implementation guide and partnership toolkit
- Formation Director training resources
Knowledge Mobilization
- Conference presentations and academic publications
- Practitioner resources contributing to scholarship on character, institutions, and cultural renewal
- Transferable model adaptable across diverse institutional contexts
An emerging field. A critical moment.
The conversation around character, leadership, institutional integrity, and human flourishing is accelerating. Institutions across higher education, philanthropy, theology, and organizational leadership are recognizing that developing better leaders is only part of the challenge.
The other part — and the gap DBFI addresses — is helping those leaders design organizations whose structures, incentives, and cultures reinforce the virtues they hope to embody.
DBFI is uniquely positioned to contribute to this emerging field through its integration of virtue development, humanitarian transformational development, theology, systems thinking, organizational leadership, and institutional design — an interdisciplinary approach built upon years of research, framework development, and institutional partnerships.
Core Research Team
DBFI is supported by scholars and practitioners spanning virtue ethics, theology, humanitarian leadership, organizational transformation, and applied research.
Dr. Ingrid Faro
President & Professor of Old Testament, Northern Seminary
Biblical ethics, moral decision-making, the nature of good and evil
Dr. Jamie Aten
Founder & Executive Director, Humanitarian Disaster Institute; Blanchard Chair of Humanitarian & Disaster Leadership, Wheaton College
Humanitarian leadership, trauma psychology, resilience, faith-based humanitarian research, systems thinking
Dr. Jamie Goodwin
Asst. Professor of Humanitarian & Disaster Leadership, Wheaton College
Philanthropy, faith-based partnerships, nonprofit leadership, applied research & evaluation
Miriam O'Bert, M.A.
Grant Writer, HOPE International
Humanitarian practice, program development, grant strategy
Dr. David Fitch
Professor of Character & Virtue Ethics & Betty R. Lindner Chair of Evangelical Theology, Northern Seminary
Virtue ethics, leadership formation, missional theology
Joe Reed
CEO, Exponent Group
Institutional transformation, spiritual formation, organizational health
Research & Funding Partners
DBFI is actively seeking research partnerships, grant funding, and philanthropic investment to develop, implement, and evaluate this interdisciplinary model. We welcome conversations with foundations, institutions, and individual funders aligned with the intersection of character formation and institutional design.
Individual Donors
Founding Partners are the individuals who give this initiative its first resources and its place in the world. Your gift helps establish the capacity needed to pursue the research, build the curriculum, and develop the partnerships that will allow DBFI to make a lasting contribution to this emerging field.