$100 million new initiative backed by the Kazarian family to revitalize U.S. Armenian Christian ecosystem

Khachkar Studios has announced a landmark $100 million investment aimed at advancing the Judeo-Christian faith—one of the largest philanthropic commitments of its kind in modern history. This unprecedented effort is primarily focused on revitalizing the Armenian Christian ecosystem in the United States, with a projected 6.1x social return on investment (SROI).

Backed by over 5,000 hours of senior management expertise and world-class benchmarking across 10 disciplines, the initiative represents a bold, data-driven push to close long-standing performance gaps in Armenian Christian communities.

The scale of the investment surpasses by 623% the combined religious spending of the four largest Armenian-founded foundations over the past 23 years.

To put its scope into perspective, the $100 million commitment is more than double the total annual spending of all 164 U.S. Armenian churches, and its media outreach arm will be 25 times larger than the combined media budgets of all Armenian religious institutions in the country.

Khachkar Studios’ plan identifies systemic challenges rooted in what it calls the “12 Body Parts” of the U.S. Armenian Christian ecosystem—11 of which show critical underperformance. Among the key issues: church attendance rates are far lower than many believe.

Contrary to the assumption that 35% of Armenian Americans attend church regularly, the real figure stands closer to 10%, placing them near the bottom of U.S. Orthodox Christian denominations.

The initiative sets three ambitious near-term goals: doubling the number of “Faithful” participants from roughly 12,900 to over 27,800; increasing daily Bible readers from just 1,000 to more than 41,000; and closing key performance gaps to achieve the targeted 6.1x SROI.

Pilot churches and ministries selected for the program will receive between $300,000 and $400,000 in funding over the first five years, which could equal or exceed 51% of their average annual church-related income.

These funds will be allocated across eight carefully designed activity areas, known as “The Pilot Menu.”

The program builds on 18 months of research, including the analysis of 69 years of Armenian Church data and extensive benchmarking studies.

It also identifies 10 pervasive traits that have historically produced zero or negative returns on religious investment—barriers Khachkar Studios intends to address head-on.

Khachkar Studios, a multimedia organization dedicated to empowering Christian role models through education, training, and retention, operates as an affiliate of the Charles & Agnes Kazarian Foundation, JI-Analytics, and Japonica Partners.