Typology of Religious Characteristics of Social Service and Educational Organizations and Programs

Abstract

The general term faith-based organizations is inadequate because no clear definition exists of what it means to be faith-based. This article proposes an inductively derivedsixfold typology of social service and educational organizations and programs based on their religious characteristics: faith-permeated, faith-centered, faith-affiliated, faithbackground, faith-secular partnership, and secular. The typology is divided into two sections, organizations and programs, recognizing that the religious characteristics of an organization may differ from the programs it operates. The analysis of religious characteristics focuses on the tangibly expressive ways that religion may be manifest in a nonprofit entity. The article provides examples of each type based on case studies of 15 congregations with active community-serving programs. This framework, once empirically tested, can add clarity and precision to research, public discourse, and funding decisions concerning community-serving organizations.The debates over the faith-based initiative have underscored the critical need for a new vocabulary that more accurately reflects the complex realities in contention. The current catch-all term faith-based organizations confuses and Note: The authors would like to thank the members of the Working Group on Human Needs and Faith-Based and Community Initiatives, and in particular the members of the editorial committee, for their input and feedback on the typology and comments on drafts of this article. Ronald Sider may be contacted at

Faith-Based Organizations: A Potential Partner in Rural Transportation

“…), two questions about the general orientation of the congregation to community outreach activities designed to help classify the congregation using the Sider and Unruh (2004) We conducted a small pilot test with 20 FBOs selected from the area of the CIL located in the smallest metropolitan area to compare phone versus mail-based survey procedures. We found that making a connection with respondents by phone was very difficult and time consuming, and produced few responses compared to the mailed survey.…”

“…Pragmatically, researchers also point out that several of the largest social service providers in the United States are FBOs and that they are among the largest recipients of federal funding. Sider and Unruh (2004) note a lack of agreement on what constitutes an FBO. They describe the characteristics of six types of human service organizations, ranging from faith-permeated to secular programs.…”

Unpacking Donor Retention: Individual Monetary Giving to U.S.-Based Christian Faith-Related, International Nongovernmental Organizations

“…These NGOs justify their actions as being inspired and guided by the teachings and principles of Christianity or from a particular interpretation or school of thought within Christianity ( [27], p. 1). In essence, Christian faith-related NGOs are those [28,29] in which:…”

Small Faith-Related Organizations as Partners in Local Social Service Networks

“…What counts as meeting these different standards can be a moving target, varying according to which funding source or to which specific network players the organization must relate at any given time. Using the terminology developed by Sider and Unruh [16], the two organizations that were not sustained were categorized by the CFBI evaluation as "faith-background" as opposed to the "faith-centered" approaches in the three more successful cases. All three of the sustained organizations insisted on staying true to their faith commitments as the essential grounding for their work and as essential to participant outcomes, even while abiding by the spirit of church-state restrictions that accompanied their state grant.…”

“…On the other hand, their characteristic ways of working with program participants-marked by adaptive relationship-building that meets clients where they are rather than deployment of static, pre-set programs-fit uneasily into a social service world increasingly marked by bureaucratic norms, standardized programs, and rigid accountability metrics. While much attention has focused on how government can partner with these organizations within church-state legal restrictions [15,16], the larger question posed is how to integrate these types of organizations into reciprocal network relationships governed by prevailing professional norms and standards. Many of the same issues are raised by partnerships with secular nonprofits of limited size and capacity, although they are not the focus of this analysis.…”