Some of society’s hardest problems are being addressed every day by rescue missions, addiction recovery programs, community organizations, and other ministries. Their leaders do not need research that sits on a shelf. They need better ways to strengthen their organizations, develop the next generation of leaders, and transform lives.
That is the purpose of City Vision University’s Doctor of Organizational Leadership and Innovation, or DOLI. Its vision is to address society’s great problems in Jesus’ name. The program brings together organizational leadership, ministry, nonprofit management, and practical research so that doctoral work can serve the people and organizations doing this work.
Key Takeaways
- DOLI connects doctoral research to practical challenges facing ministries and nonprofit organizations.
- Students develop leadership through interdisciplinary knowledge, hands-on skills, and character growth.
- Doctoral projects can take multiple rigorous formats designed for the people who will use them.
- The program aims to strengthen leaders, organizations, movements, and ultimately the people they serve.
Table of Contents
- A doctorate built around real organizational challenges
- From individual leaders to stronger movements
- Jesus, justice, and technology belong together
- Choose a concentration that fits the leader you are becoming
- Grow your head, hands, and heart
- What makes action research different?
- Nine ways to make a doctoral project useful
- Courses that build a broader set of tools
- From mastering one discipline to connecting many
- Tuition, partner scholarships, and next steps
A doctorate built around real organizational challenges
DOLI is a 40-credit program: 16 core credits, 15 concentration credits, and nine doctoral project credits. A full-time student can complete it in two years. Tuition is $333 per credit, approximately $1,000 for a three-credit course, or about $13,333 for the program. Start dates are offered in January, March, June, August, and October.
The distinguishing question is not simply, “What do you want to study?” It is, “What needs to change in your organization or field?” Projects are meant to connect with daily work. A leader might develop a succession strategy, redesign client training, improve an organization’s health, or plan a new service.
Our primary focus is on ministries serving people who are poor or experiencing addiction. Leaders from outside that area can also find a place here, but it is important to understand where we have built particular strength. We want our partnerships with ministries to create value beyond an individual credential, benefiting whole organizations and the movements they belong to.
From individual leaders to stronger movements
The program’s vision works at several levels. Movements such as rescue missions, city missions, the Salvation Army, Adult and Teen Challenge, and Christian community development need practical research and innovation that can spread. Organizations need a way to prepare internal candidates for senior leadership. Students need the knowledge, skills, and perspective to advance their work and careers.
At the center are the people those organizations serve. If a doctoral project helps a ministry become more effective, its ultimate value is not the project document. It is the lives the ministry can better support and transform.
That is why leadership succession matters so much to us. When a program director or development leader is preparing to become a CEO, a theoretical discussion of executive leadership is not enough. They must learn to weigh competing needs across an organization and build competence in areas outside their current role.
Jesus, justice, and technology belong together
City Vision’s mission is to transform lives through Jesus, justice, and technology. Those are not three unrelated additions to the doctorate. Together, they shape how we approach a problem.
Jesus: lead from a holistic Christian worldview
We want students to examine the assumptions behind their work and bring their research, strategy, and organizational practices into conversation with their Christian faith. That includes attention to organizational health, especially in parachurch organizations. A ministry should be able to improve its management practices without quietly losing the theology and values that gave it its purpose.
Justice: pursue practical transformation
Our use of justice is rooted in our biblical commitments and our work with leaders serving people who are poor or experiencing addiction. Problems such as homelessness and addiction require more than good intentions or interesting theories. They call for action research and practical projects that help organizations respond more effectively.
Technology: use tools to make good work travel
Technology can support rigorous research and help useful ideas reach the people who need them. That includes thoughtful uses of AI, systems thinking that examines the bigger picture, and ways to distribute project results beyond an academic audience.
A doctoral project should not disappear into a file that almost nobody opens. A book, a podcast, or a publication platform such as Substack might help share findings with a ministry network. The method of distribution should fit the people who can use the work.
Choose a concentration that fits the leader you are becoming
Leadership development is not one-size-fits-all. DOLI offers concentrations for different responsibilities and career directions:
- Executive Leadership and Fundraising: For current or aspiring CEOs who want to grow organizational impact, financial health, and relational health. Fundraising matters here because a CEO must be able to raise funds or effectively lead the people who do.
- Nonprofit Program Leadership and Social Entrepreneurship: For leaders who want to improve programs or social enterprises, perhaps as a chief program officer or head of social enterprises, without necessarily becoming CEO.
- Educational Leadership and Innovation: For City Vision faculty and staff, or others interested in our methods for designing practical, radically affordable online education.
- Organizational Culture and Change Management: For HR and executive leaders focused on organizational health, the people side of leadership, and adapting to change.
- Trauma-Informed Counseling Management: For licensed counselors interested in Christian methods, the management side of counseling, an organization-wide culture of health, or starting a center.
- Diversified concentration: For students who need to combine work across these areas.
There is an important distinction with the counseling management concentration. It is intended for the kinds of leadership and organizational goals described above. If your goal is to teach in a counseling program at a regionally accredited university, this is not the right program for that purpose.
A prior master’s degree can help point toward a concentration, but it does not have to dictate one. Backgrounds in business administration, nonprofit management, or Christian ministry and leadership can connect with executive leadership, program leadership, or organizational culture. Addiction counseling backgrounds, including those of LPCs and MSWs, align especially well with trauma-informed counseling management.
Grow your head, hands, and heart
One theme runs through the program: what got you here will not necessarily get you there. A leader can be excellent within one division and still need a different set of capacities to lead an entire organization. We think about that growth in three connected ways.
- Head, or knowledge: Move beyond a single tool or discipline. Homelessness, addiction, organizational finances, culture, and leadership development do not fit neatly into separate boxes. Leaders need multiple lenses and a multifaceted biblical understanding of the reality they face.
- Hands, or skills: Develop the practical abilities required for the next role. A chief program officer preparing for a CEO position, for example, may need substantial fundraising experience. Courses can help, but an opportunity to work alongside the development team may be just as important.
- Heart, or character: Let go of the bias that can come from seeing everything through an old position. Broader responsibility requires discipline, intellectual humility, and a willingness to keep learning.
This is not only about adding more information. It is about becoming the kind of leader who can hold the whole organization in view and keep maturing as responsibilities grow.
What makes action research different?
Traditional research often advances knowledge one carefully made brick at a time. That approach is essential in many fields. But many ministry and nonprofit leaders are trying to build something larger right now: a program, an organization, or a healthier community.
Those builders need to understand more than the brick. They need to know how the tools work together, how people coordinate, and how plans change when they meet reality. Action research connects inquiry with the work of making change. Students still engage academic literature, but their doctoral project is developed for the cultural and professional context in which it will be used.
If you work in a rescue mission, for example, your project can speak to rescue mission leaders. You should not have to turn every useful insight into academic language and then translate it back before colleagues can put it to work.
Nine ways to make a doctoral project useful
The nine doctoral project credits are completed through three courses. Students choose a project form suited to the challenge and its audience. The options include:
- A book written for a professional or ministry audience.
- A workshop that equips people to put a substantial body of work into practice.
- Curriculum for training clients, staff, or students.
- An online learning experience with courses, modules, and lessons.
- An organizational intervention that designs and begins implementing a significant change.
- Applied research in a format closer to a conventional applied dissertation.
- A startup plan developed while building a new nonprofit, counseling center, or other initiative.
- A combination of two formats, such as a workshop and a book.
- A hybrid of three or more formats when the work calls for it.
Flexibility does not mean an easier doctorate. A short presentation is not a substitute for doctoral-level work. These formats are intended to support substantial, rigorously assessed projects comparable in scope to a dissertation, while allowing the result to be useful in the field.
Courses that build a broader set of tools
The core courses support that kind of project from several directions. Research Methods for Scholar Practitioners introduces action research methods for a practical topic. Innovation Networks, Thought Leadership, and Movement Building examines how relationships and technology help useful innovations spread through a community of practice.
Aligning Strategy with Theology and Values asks leaders to examine whether organizational systems and business practices reflect their mission. It includes the work of identifying mission drift and avoiding secularization. Strategic Management shifts attention from one division to the tradeoffs and choices involved in leading the whole organization. Social Entrepreneurship focuses on using innovation and technology to pursue organizational goals. The doctoral project courses bring theory, action research, and practice together around a challenge facing an organization or its wider field.
Think of these courses as building a toolkit. One student may rely most heavily on entrepreneurship for a startup project. Another may draw primarily on systems thinking and change management. Both should understand enough of the other tools to recognize when a problem demands them.
From mastering one discipline to connecting many
A master’s degree often helps someone become highly skilled in a particular field. Doctoral-level leadership asks for another shift: learning to develop others, advance practice, and connect disciplines when a problem crosses boundaries.
That interdisciplinary approach is central to DOLI. It does not mean treating every idea as equally useful. It means recognizing that one lens rarely explains an entire organization or community. A leader addressing addiction, for example, may also have to consider organizational culture, program design, funding, relationships, and the wider system in which a ministry works.
My commitment to this kind of work is personal. I grew up poor and saw many friends struggle with addiction or end up in jail. My path took me to MIT, where I worked with people doing research and innovation at a high level. I came to believe those abilities should be put to work for people and communities like the ones I came from. DOLI is one way we are trying to equip organizations and movements to do that work more effectively.
Tuition, partner scholarships, and next steps
We want the program to be accessible to the leaders and ministries it is designed to serve. For eligible partner organizations sending at least two students across City Vision programs, the doctoral scholarship is $250 per course. The program’s scholarship illustration shows a $1,000 course reduced by that scholarship, with a $50 technology fee, for $800 in tuition and fees for one course. Students can also discuss whether an employer will help pay educational costs.
If you are considering this doctorate, start with the challenge you hope to address. What does your organization need to build or change? What responsibilities are you preparing to carry? Who would benefit if your research became something people could actually use?
Those questions are a good foundation for a doctoral project, and for a conversation with City Vision. You can apply for free, request more information, or call to discuss whether DOLI fits your goals and your organization’s needs.