04/21/2026
We work with churches that are trying to house their pastors in some of the most expensive real estate markets in the country. The path to a closed transaction involves investors, lenders, underwriters, legal counsel, and a church board that has never done this before.
There is real process. There has to be.
But Nicole Bergeron, our CEO, published a piece in Nonprofit Quarterly that names something we hold in tension every day:
"The question is not whether you have drag. It is whether the drag matches the relationship."
The churches that come to us aren't risks to be managed. They're partners who've already done the hard work of deciding their pastor deserves stability. The investors who fund our downpayment assistance (DPA) transactions aren't line items in a compliance framework. They're people who trust us with real capital because they believe in what we're building together.
We try to match our process to that trust, not to our own anxiety about what could go wrong.
If your church is navigating pastoral housing, how much of the process has felt like it's working for you versus working against you? Drop your experience in the comments. We'd love to hear it.
Read the full article here: https://nonprofitquarterly.org/philanthropys-drag-coefficient-when-process-costs-more-than-failure/
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