Staff — Board — Interviews — Symposium — EoC Resources — Ambassadors — Engagements

The John Templeton Foundation has generously provided a $1.2 million grant to the Business, Faith and Common Good Institute to develop resources to promote the vision of business inspired by the Economy of Communion movement. The grant begins September 1, 2025 and ends Sept 1, 2028. The site for the project is at https://www.economyofcommunion.org/

Project Summary:

• Society is skeptical about business, in part because often it is thought that business tends to be self-interested, self-serving, and generally not concerned for others. The Economy of Communion (EoC) provides a fresh and inspiring alternative to this way of thinking about business by which entrepreneurs operating in free markets freely choose to leverage their business practices to help the poor and foster communion between people. EoC originated from the Focolare movement, a Catholic ecumenical worldwide movement whose fundamental value and charism is unity. So, EoC seeks to inspire unity among all people of all strata of society through free economic engagement and the natural societal power of business. ​
• Business need not be selfish. It can be a gift, a means of living out one’s values and spiritual commitments to humanity through our entrepreneurial business practices when one can choose to do so in a free market economy. Our project will promote the entrepreneurial values and practices of the EoC with a 3-year project at the Institute for Business, Faith, and the Common Good in our college of business at Creighton University. Through the development of a website, creation of online resources for students, faculty, and entrepreneurs, as well as the publication of three books, we will help spark the vision of faculty, students, and entrepreneurs worldwide to embrace the EoC approach to business.

Resources we will create and Deliver:

1. 10-12 interviews with EoC entrepreneurs.  From this 6-8 hours of footage we will create:

a. a 40-60 minute coherent interview

b. a variety of snippets of examples and stories which will be captured and edited, then paired with a case study and questions for students and professors to use. 

2. Intro essays: These will be written by experts for faculty who want to insert a one-off essay into their course introducing EoC.  Essays will be on topics such as “An EoC approach to Marketing”, “How EoC approach to economics differs from traditional economics”, “An Eoc Approach to Entrepreneurship”, “EoC approach to Leadership” etc etc. 

3. EoC Course: We are developing a course which will incorporate the above materials, plus a series of lectures by various EoC experts introducing EoC.  Sample syllabi and assignments and other materials will be provided and it will be offered free of charge to any school which wants to utilize it. 

Academic Impact:

•Symposium & Book: 14 key scholars will be invited to Creighton for an EoC symposium, writing essays engaging with EoC from their own specialty focus.  These essays will be published in a book.

•Academic conferences and publications: We will do presentations on EoC at academic conferences and support others to also do presentations at conferences on EoC related topics. 

•Sponsoring Speakers to Come to Campuses: We will bring EoC entrepreneurs and speakers to small colleges and universities free of charge in order to promote EoC to students and also promote our EoC course and teaching materials to faculty.