Abstract
Recent U.S. policy regarding faith-based organizations (FBO) envisions “partnerships with government” that include both financial and non-financial relationships. This paper explores the current nature of a three-way partnership among faith communities, FBOs and government, proposing ways that government could more effectively partner with faith communities and their organizations. I use data from the Faith and Organizations Project and earlier studies of refugee resettlement and social welfare supports. The paper combines research and policy literature with research findings to describe how faith communities organize social services, education, health, senior services and community development through their FBOs, differences among religions and denominations and current forms of partnerships with government. Conclusions provide policy suggestions for U.S. systems.
Highlights
Faith communities and their organizations have been central to the U.S social welfare, health, human services and education systems from their beginnings, but White House initiatives starting in the Clinton and Bush presidencies highlighted faith community service provision.As discussed in several articles in this issue and elsewhere [1,2,3], the Clinton and Bush era faith-based initiatives encouraged small faith-based organizations (FBOs) and congregations to provide government-sponsored services through policy changes designed to provide support and make it easier for these types of organizations to participate in government contracting
Jewish values that the greatest Mitzvah was to offer the highest quality services that would lead to the best results. Like these Jewish institutions, we found religion embedded in the structures, strategies and programming of most Mainline Protestant, Catholic and Peace church organizations, which the standard typologies would label as faith related or faith background. These findings suggest that government needs to more carefully understand the diversity among religions and denominations it hopes to partner with, as well as the nature of the social networks that provide non-financial resources to both government and FBOs
As with other scholars who have attempted to apply universal scales in evaluation research [6,53], our research suggests that FBOs and their faith communities should be encouraged to clarify for themselves and their government partners how their faith plays out in their organizations
Summary
Faith communities and their organizations have been central to the U.S social welfare, health, human services and education systems from their beginnings, but White House initiatives starting in the Clinton and Bush presidencies highlighted faith community service provision. While some scholars have suggested that faith communities would rather partner with non-profits than work directly with government [1,5,6,7] and many others have documented faith community service provision [2,8,9,10,11,12], the idea of nonfinancial partnerships has not been explored in detail. This article explores the current nature of three-way partnerships and proposes ways that government could more effectively partner with faith communities and their organizations in both funded and non-financial relationships. I start by looking at both the rhetoric and research background of current relationships between government and either faith communities or FBOs. The paper uses key findings from the Faith and Organizations Project to describe how faith communities organize social services, education, health, senior services and community development through their FBOs, the differences among religions and denominations and current forms of partnerships with government. Conclusions provide an additional overview of policy suggestions related to the FBNI as a whole
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary Sign-in/Register to access full text options 
Free) 
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a call
