Faith-Based & Community-Based Organizations

In 2000, leaders of established FBOs from several faiths approached nonprofit researchers seeking information on how their organizations connected to their founding communities today, especially when they received government funds to provide services and the people they served were often not from their faith.  They wanted research that showed the complexities of faith based service, but in a form that they could easily turn into evidence based practices. The Faith and Organizations project emerged to address their concerns.    The project involved six universities and many organizations across the country in two projects sponsored by the Lilly Endowment, Louisville Institute and Bradley foundation.  The project developed a series of strategies documents, webinars, workshops, reports and articles for faith based organizations and faith communities. It also created a policy statement and briefed staff from federal government agencies, including Health and Human Services (HHS), the Small Business Administration (SBA) and others. It was the only national project to use multi-methods research to compare faith based service across religion, size, and type of organization. See http://faithandorganizations.umd.edu.