Howard Dayton (born October 7, 1943, in Albany, Georgia), was raised in Daytona Beach, Florida. After graduating from the School of Hotel Administration at Cornell University in 1967, he served two and a half years as a naval officer. In 1969, Howard developed The Caboose, a railroad-themed restaurant, in Orlando. In 1972, he began his commercial real estate development career, specializing in office development in central Florida.
In 1970, Dayton began to meet with a group of businessmen, who introduced him to Jesus Christ as his savior. Three years later his business partner challenged him to study the Scriptures to discover what God teaches about handling money. They discovered that the Bible contained 2,350 verses dealing with money and possessions, and Dayton's life profoundly changed. God gave him a passion to share the principles he discovered, leading him to write eight books and six small-group studies, which have been translated into dozens of languages.
Dayton founded Crown Ministries in 1985 and developed a small-group financial study. Dayton served, without salary,[1] as CEO of Crown. Crown Ministries merged with Larry Burkett's Christian Financial Concepts in September 2000 to form Crown Financial Ministries, the world's largest financial ministry at that time. During Dayton's tenure as CEO, the ministry taught Bible-based principles of handling money and operating a business to more than 50 million people in 88 countries. Dayton was named among the Top 20 CEOs of Christian Organizations, and the ministry was recognized as one of the “Best Christian Workplaces”.
Dayton served unsalaried as Crown's CEO until 2007, when he transitioned from that role. In 2008, he received an honorary doctorate from Asbury University.
In 2009, Dayton founded a new ministry, Compass - finances God's way, serving as the CEO in a full-time volunteer capacity. The vision of Compass is to teach people worldwide how to handle money and operate businesses God's way.
On March 28, 2014, Asbury University dedicated the Dayton School of Business.
Dayton has two adult children and four grandchildren and resides in Orlando, Florida.