Asset-Driven Development
of Chattanooga (ADDC)

What is an IDA?

Individual Development Accounts (IDAs) are matched savings accounts for the working poor. By pairing financial literacy training with goal-setting, IDAs increase the capacity of low-income households to build wealth.

As savers contribute to their accounts, their funds are matched by another party or ministry, similar to an employer-matched 401k account.

Participant Savings

Matched Funding

Participant Savings
+ Matched Funding
= Total Savings

ADDC provides to its partner ministries:

Training to develop their own IDA programs

Access to biblically-based financial literacy curricula and other tools

Networking and learning opportunities with other programs

Optional additional technical and financial management support

Local ministries will provide:

IDA participants from their own target demographic

Match funds for their participants

A working task force to attend training and administer their program

Facilities to house their program's relationship-building components

What is ADDC?

Asset-Driven Development of Chattanooga (ADDC) is a pilot project of the Chalmers Center for Economic Development to promote and support church-based Individual Development Accounts in the Chattanooga, Tennessee region.

Individual Development Accounts (IDAs) are simple tools that help the economically poor access and build productive assets. An asset base is indispensable for empowering poor households to cope with the income shocks that are characteristic of low-income earners. Assets also provide the stability that enables families to invest in their futures and to pass wealth from one generation to the next. As a product of recent social science research and practice, IDAs are designed to enable the economically poor to succeed over the long term.

How it works

The mission of the Chalmers Center has always been to equip churches and related ministries to conduct best practice community development that addresses the root causes, not just the symptoms, of poverty. This asset-driven development initiative is a Chalmers pilot project in which local churches and ministries identify individuals within their community who would like to join an IDA savings group (i.e., single mothers, ex-offenders, etc.). The individual savings are matched and used solely to purchase a pre-approved asset such as business equipment, education, or a house. During the multi-year savings process, participants receive biblically-based financial literacy training, relational mentoring, and additional training related to the asset purchased. Simultaneously, the host ministry will receive technical support and back-office systems management from the ADDC office. In return, Chalmers will capture critical, procedural, and programmatic information and conduct ongoing best practice research that will inform similar initiatives to be replicated throughout the county.

Why it works

Their ability to achieve lasting impact, their programmatic simplicity, and their relatively low cost make IDAs an attractive poverty alleviation tool that has become increasingly popular across the U.S. The Chalmers Center believes that churches and church-related ministries have holistic advantages over large-scale IDA programs operated with government funds – namely, the capacity to apply the gospel to the whole person, ministering to people’s spiritual, emotional, social, and physical needs.

Learn More

To learn more about ADDC or IDAs in Chattanooga, or how to start as asset-driven development initiative in your own city, please contact Jerilyn Sanders, ADDC Director: jerilyn.sanders@chalmers.org.

Click here to view ADDC blog or Click here to view ADDC Facebook