How Do Faith-Based Organizations Compare to Secular Providers? Nonprofit Directors' and Poor Women's Assessments of FBOs

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How Do Faith-Based Organizations Compare to SecularProviders? Nonprofit Directors' and Poor Women'sAssessments of FBOsRebecca Joyce Kissane PhD aa Lafayette College, Department of Anthropology and Sociology , Easton, PA, 18042 E-mail:Published online: 17 Oct 2008.

To cite this article: Rebecca Joyce Kissane PhD (2008) How Do Faith-Based Organizations Compare to Secular Providers?Nonprofit Directors' and Poor Women's Assessments of FBOs, Journal of Poverty, 11:4, 91-115, DOI: 10.1300/J134v11n04_05

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How Do Faith-Based OrganizationsCompare to Secular Providers?

Nonprofit Directors’and Poor Women’s Assessments of FBOs

Rebecca Joyce Kissane

ABSTRACT. Over the last decade, policy-makers have pushed faith-based organizations (FBOs) to increase their role in providing services towelfare-reliant and low-income families. Using data from qualitative re-search, I detail how poor women and nonprofit directors serving poor in-dividuals in Philadelphia have conflicting understandings of FBOs. Asubstantial proportion of secular nonprofit directors question whetherFBOs have the capacity to provide the range of services poor womenneed. Furthermore, nonprofit directors largely focused on how FBOsdiffer from other types of social service providers in four main areas:(1) individualized, caring treatment of clients, (2) religiosity in service de-livery, (3) connections to the community, and (4) professionalization. In-terviews with the poor women, however, counter many of the nonprofitdirectors’ assumptions and reveal that these women experience FBOs andsecular nonprofits in similar ways. These findings not only suggest dis-

Rebecca Joyce Kissane, PhD, is Assistant Professor, Lafayette College, Departmentof Anthropology and Sociology, Easton, PA 18042 (E-mail: [email protected]).

The author would like to thank all the collaborators on this project for their supportof this work. She would also like to thank Sarah Winslow-Bowe, David Shulman, andthe anonymous reviewers for their comments and suggestions on prior drafts of this ar-ticle.

Some of the data used in this article was collected under the auspices of ManpowerDemonstration Research Corporation’s (MDRC) Project of Devolution and UrbanChange.

Journal of Poverty, Vol. 11(4) 2007Available online at http://jpov.haworthpress.com

© 2007 by The Haworth Press, Inc. All rights reserved.doi:10.1300/J134v11n04_05 91

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continuity among nonprofit directors and their potential clientele but alsoraise important questions for the current policy thrust to increase FBOs’ rolein service provision to the poor. doi:10.1300/J134v11n04_05 [Article copiesavailable for a fee from The Haworth Document Delivery Service: 1-800-HAWORTH. E-mail address: <[email protected]> Website:<http://www.HaworthPress.com> © 2007 by The Haworth Press, Inc. All rightsreserved.]

KEYWORDS. Faith-based organizations, poverty, nonprofits, socialservice delivery

Faith-based organizations (FBOs) throughout our nation’s historyhave provided services to needy populations.1 While these agencies havealways held an important place within the social service environment,over the past decade we have witnessed a push for FBOs to increase theirwork among the poor. In particular, President George W. Bush has sup-ported increasing the role faith-based agencies play in the welfare state byfunneling more government and private dollars to them. The administra-tion has argued that FBOs are special and can accomplish things that thegovernment cannot. For example, the White House (2001) has claimedthat the government cannot “put hope in our hearts or a sense of purposein our lives”; rather, “this is done by churches, synagogues, mosques andcharities that warm the cold of life–a quiet river of goodness and kindnessthat cuts through stone” (p. 4).

Overall, President Bush and other policy-makers argue that thefaith-based service sector should not only expand its work among thepoor, but that it also may be more effective in providing services thanthe government and secular nonprofit sector. Academics and pol-icy-makers alike, however, continue to debate escalating our relianceon FBOs and the relative strengths and weaknesses of the faith-basedservice sector. In this paper, I contribute to this debate through explor-ing perceptions of FBOs from the vantage points of directors of secularand faith-based nonprofits and potential clients of these agencies. Forthe most part, nonprofit directors viewed FBOs as different from secu-lar and governmental service providers. In particular, they presumedFBOs to vary from other providers in their level of caring and individu-alized treatment of clients, religiosity in service delivery, connections tothe community, and professionalization. The potential client data, how-ever, suggest that poor women do not experience these differences at

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the local level, nor do they perceive faith-based agencies as a whole asbeing different from secular providers. These findings suggest not onlydiscontinuity among nonprofit directors and their potential clientele butalso raise important questions for the current policy thrust to increaseFBOs’ role in service provision to the poor.

LITERATURE AND BACKGROUND

As evidenced by the Charitable Choice provision of the 1996 welfarereform legislation (Section 104 of the Personal Responsibility andWork Opportunity Reconciliation Act; U.S. Public Law 104-1931996)and the more recent creation of the White House Office of Faith-Basedand Community Initiatives, the federal government has highlighted theimportance of FBOs’ providing services to disadvantaged families. Of-ten, proponents of FBOs focus on the presumed expression of faith inthe service delivery process, the importance of transmitting faith to cli-ents, or how faith inspires caring treatment of clients (Carlson-Thies,2001; Sherman, 2003; White House, 2001). Sherman (2003, p. 22) ar-gues, “For many participants in religiously affiliated initiatives, the pro-gram worked because it brought them into a faith,” “trained them in thepractical application of their faith,” or “connected them with a support-ive community of faith.” Additionally, scholars argue that some findfaith-based service delivery more compelling because of FBOs’ per-ceived accessibility to clients, trustworthiness, flexibility, constantcommunity presence, holistic treatment of clients, and ability to deliverservices with a personal touch and caring attitude (Ebaugh, Pipes,Chafetz, & Daniels, 2003; Lockhart, 2005; Sherman, 2003; Smith &Sosin, 2001).

We lack, however, a consensus on increasing our reliance on thefaith-based service sector (Carlson-Thies, 2001; Twombly, 2002).Some worry generally about our government’s increasing privatizationand devolution of the welfare state and see faith-based initiatives andCharitable Choice as illustrations of these troublesome trends. Othersfocus on how FBOs’ religious nature distinguishes them from othertypes of organizations and poses problems for the separation of churchand state. As Gwendolyn Mink (2001) states, “charitable choice crossesthe church-state divide by publicly financing institutions that convey reli-gious messages” and “invites government to express dangerous prefer-ences among religions, as government must decide which faith-basedprograms to fund” (p. 7). Furthermore, some critics wonder if faith-

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based agencies can meet the needs of poor individuals and provide con-tracted services effectively (see Twombly, 2002 for summary of thisposition).

Supporters and opponents of an increased presence of FBOs in thewelfare state often emphasize that faith-based and secular organizationsdiffer. New institutionalism theory, however, suggests that FBOs, secu-lar agencies and governmental providers are more alike than dissimilar.DiMaggio and Powell (1983) posit that once a field is established, thereis a push towards homogenization of organizations within the field.2 Ifwe assume the organization of social services to be an established field,then one might expect that various organizations providing social ser-vices to poor families would come to resemble one another and becomeincreasingly similar over time.

Recent empirical research identifies both similarities and differencesamong different types of social service providers (Ebaugh et al., 2003;Ebaugh, Chafetz, & Pipes, 2005; Farnsley II, 2001; Lockhart, 2005;Smith and Sosin, 2001; Twombly, 2002; Wuthnow, Hackett, & Hsu,2004). Evidence exists that FBOs differ from secular organizations intheir average age, sources of revenue, mix of human services offered,ability to apply for grants, and reliance upon volunteers (Ebaugh et al.,2003; Farnsley II, 2001; Twombly, 2002). Faith-based and secularagencies, however, rely upon paid staff at higher staffing levels to a sim-ilar degree, have similar expenditure patterns and clientele, and receivesimilar average effectiveness scores from clients (Ebaugh et al., 2003;Twombly, 2002; Wuthnow, Hackett, & Hsu, 2004). Moreover, Ebaughet al. (2003) discover that while FBOs may differentiate themselvesfrom secular organizations through using religious practices in their de-livery of services, they are similar to secular agencies in their “broadersocial service orientation.” Furthermore, Smith and Sosin (2001) findthat most of the faith-related agencies they studied were actuallymoderately to highly secularized.

While research on FBOs and faith-based initiatives is growing,more research comparing different service providers is still needed.As devolution makes the local context more critical (as different stateshave different welfare rules, programs, and funding, and differentneighborhoods have a different mix of service providers, capacities andresources), we need examinations of FBOs in many different localesand from multiple perspectives to gain a comprehensive understandingof the issues at hand. This study adds to this ongoing research literatureand policy issue by exploring how nonprofit directors and poor womenassess FBOs. All in all, we still know relatively little about what indi-


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viduals running nonprofit organizations (especially non-faith-basedagencies) and potential clients of service providers think about FBOs.Moreover, examining multiple perspectives in the same study can re-veal whether various local service providers and constituencies are dis-connected from one another as some previous research suggests(Kissane & Gingerich, 2004).

Organizational and professional interests may shape nonprofit direc-tors’ understandings of FBOs in interesting ways. Furthermore, non-profit directors may have a different take than policy-makers andpundits. Given their experiences in providing services and their work-ing relationships with other service organizations, these agency headsmay be particularly adept at assessing the capacity of FBOs and discern-ing differences among providers. Investigating directors’ views is alsoimportant in that their appraisals of other providers may impact theirability to partner and develop relationships with other agencies. Thoughunderstudied, research suggests that non-faith-based organizations fo-cus on developing partnerships within the secular nonprofit sectorrather than with religious groups (Silverman, 2002). As collaborationamong agencies requires trust (Silverman, 2002), if some directors per-ceive certain types of agencies as problematic, they may be less apt towork with them or even refer clients to them.

Equally important, though oft neglected, is exploring poor clients’experiences and views of nonprofit faith-based and secular service pro-viders. Clients have significantly less power than nonprofit directorsand may therefore have quite different dealings with and understand-ings of faith-based and secular service agencies. The views of disadvan-taged individuals may provide additional insights that can gauge theaccuracy of the assumptions that policy-makers, researchers, and non-profit directors embrace regarding FBOs. As Jeavons (2003) argues,“We need more and better information on the actual–rather than the pre-sumed–character, goals, operations, and effects of faith-based serviceagencies” (p. 34). Lastly, and perhaps most importantly, despite the factthat poor individuals are the focus of these faith-based initiatives andthe services these nonprofits provide, their views are too often ignored.This study allows their voices to be heard.

DATA AND METHODS

In order to provide a multi-faceted exploration into this topic, I incor-porate analyses from two separate sets of data: “Institutional data” com-


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prised of the second round of interviews from the institutionalcomponent of the Manpower Demonstration Research Corporation’s(MDRC) Project of Devolution and Urban Change (henceforth UrbanChange); and the “potential client data” comprised of interviews withpotential clients of social service nonprofits.

The Institutional Data

Urban Change was a longitudinal, multi-leveled, multi-city study de-signed to discover the effects of welfare reform on state and local wel-fare agencies, poor neighborhoods, and low-income families. Theresearch design involved numerous different types of data collectionwithin four large urban counties (Cuyahoga, Ohio; Los Angeles, Cali-fornia; Miami-Dade, Florida; and Philadelphia, Pennsylvania). In thispaper, I analyze data collected as part of the institutional component ofUrban Change in the Philadelphia research site, where I was projectmanager of the institutional component and a neighborhood ethnogra-pher for the study (see Quint et al., 1999 for details on Urban Changeand its various components). I restrict my analyses to the MDRC data inPhiladelphia, as I conducted interviews with potential clients in onlythis research site (details on potential client data appears in the nextsection).

In Philadelphia, the research team strategically selected three highlydisadvantaged communities in which to examine the impact of welfarereform. For intra- and inter-site comparison purposes, the team choseone neighborhood with a large white population and two with largeblack populations. Each of these neighborhoods had at least 30% of in-dividuals living in poverty and at least 20% of families receivingwelfare (US Census Bureau 1990).

Data from Urban Change’s institutional study includes two waves ofsemi-structured, qualitative interviews with key organizational contactsat social service nonprofits in the three Philadelphia neighborhoods. Af-ter extensive canvassing of the neighborhoods generated a list of 113nonprofits, the research team purposefully selected a sample of agen-cies that primarily served community residents whom welfare reformmight directly affect (e.g., poor mothers), that provided the entire rangeof services in the neighborhoods, and that were founded before 1994.This process resulted in a sample of 28 private, nonprofit agencies atwhich we conducted the interviews.3 In general, the agencies weresmall to medium sized, with 60% employing less than five paid,full-time staff and 56% having annual budgets less than $200,000. The


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majority of the agencies (61%) was founded between 1975 and 1994.The sample included both faith-based agencies (N = 12) and secularagencies (N = 16).4 The agencies provided a range of services to poorfamilies including childcare, youth services (e.g., after-school pro-grams), basic needs services (e.g., food, clothing, shelter), educationprograms (e.g., GED, basic literacy, computer, ESL), employment-re-lated services (e.g., job readiness and placement), housing and energyassistance, and physical and mental health services. Most agencies,however, focused on one or two service domains. The largest group ofagencies focused on youth and daycare services (18%), followed byeducation programs (14%) and food assistance (14%).

This paper draws data from the second round of Urban Change wherewe asked questions about faith-based initiatives and FBOs, as well as awide range of other topics related to agency characteristics, program-matic activities, and welfare reform. We conducted these interviewsfrom August 1999 through March 2000 with 49 respondents.5 Most ofthe respondents held the position of executive director (27%) or pro-gram director (51%), but we also interviewed pastors (6%), an assistantpriest (2%), and two lower level staff (4%). Predominantly, the respon-dents were female (79%), held at least a bachelor’s degree (76%), andwere either non-Hispanic white (47%) or African-American (41%). In-terviews ranged in length from 45 minutes to 4 hours, with all inter-views conducted in person at the agency (at times in multiple sittings).

Using QSR NVivo software, I employed an inductive approach todata analysis where I analyzed the 49 institutional interviews for anydata on faith-based initiatives and FBOs, coded all relevant materialinto various levels of analytic codes, and searched for patterns acrossthe data. As 30 respondents were directly questioned about faith-basedinitiatives and organizations (about one person per agency), the bulk ofmy findings rest upon analyses of these interviews.6

The Potential Client Data

To provide another vantage point on FBOs, I also draw on interviewsI conducted between April 2001 and 2002 with 40 poor women wholived in one of the MDRC neighborhood research sites in Philadelphia. Igained this sample through a non-randomized, snowball method similarto Edin and Lein (1997), whereby I recruited respondents through refer-rals from local nonprofits and from each other.7

I targeted my sampling at the most disadvantaged women in the com-munity (those who might be most in need of services from local


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nonprofits), as well as the two largest ethnoracial groups in the neigh-borhood (non-Hispanic whites and Puerto Ricans).8 Half of the womenwere Puerto Rican and half were non-Hispanic white. All had annual in-comes that placed their families below the poverty line. Reliance onpublic welfare was quite high, with 65% of the sample receiving Tem-porary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) at the time of the inter-view. All of those who were not receiving cash assistance at that timehad received it within the prior five years. Most of the women (77%)were not employed in the formal sector. The majority (73%) had notgraduated high school (and had not obtained a GED). All had children,and 73% were single mothers. The women ranged in age from 20 to 49(mean age was 31 years old).

I questioned the potential clients on their knowledge of social ser-vices and social service providers in the neighborhood, their use ofthese services, their experiences with them, and their service needs. Ialso gathered data on their social networks, the help they received fromfamily and friends, and their experiences with network and public aid.The interviews lasted from 45 minutes to upwards of 4 hours in length,with some of the longer interviews conducted in multiple sittings. I ana-lyzed the transcribed interviews in QSR NVivo.

FINDINGS

The majority of nonprofit directors (both secular and faith-based)held negative opinions regarding faith-based initiatives, such as Chari-table Choice (unpublished data). While largely suspicious of faith-based initiatives, the respondents were rather evenly split in their as-sessments of FBOs’ capacity to provide services to low-income andwelfare-reliant families. Half of the directors were less than enthusedabout FBOs, and in particular about FBOs’ ability to provide employ-ment-related services (e.g., job readiness and placement) and educationservices (e.g., GED, basic literacy, etc.). The other half of the directors,however, were confident in FBOs’ ability to provide services across allareas (e.g., job training, education, childcare, and/or emergency ser-vices). Furthermore, half of these respondents (a quarter of the totalsample) believed that not only could FBOs provide all types of services,but they would actually outperform other types of service providers.Not surprisingly, the directors who worked at FBOs were much moreoptimistic about FBOs’ capacity and viewed FBOs in a much more pos-itive light than those working at secular agencies. In fact, all of the di-


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rectors who argued that FBOs could outperform other types ofproviders across all service domains worked at an FBO.

In analyzing the directors’ views of FBO capacity, it became readilyapparent that they saw FBOs as a set of agencies that differed from othertypes of service providers, both positively and negatively. While we didnot ask the respondents directly if or how FBOs were better, worse, ormerely different from other types of service providers, the directors fre-quently discussed FBOs in these terms. I discovered four main areasthat the directors saw as distinguishing FBOs from secular or govern-mental service providers: (1) their personalized and respectful treat-ment of clients, (2) their religiosity present during service delivery,(3) their connection to the community, and (4) their level of profession-alization. In the following sections, I briefly describe each of thesethemes that emerged from the nonprofit interviews and assess each inlight of the potential client data. As will become clear, the nonprofit di-rectors and potential clients viewed FBOs quite differently. The poten-tial clients did not perceive FBOs as a distinct collection of agencies, asthe nonprofit directors did. Moreover, the women’s experiences withFBOs did not differ appreciably from their experiences with secularagencies.

Personal, Respectful Treatment of Clients

Akin to the previously described views of the general proponents offaith-based initiatives, about a fifth of the directors argued thatfaith-based agency staff was particularly likely to handle clients with re-spect and provide them with caring, personal service. Not surprisingly,those who held favorable views on FBOs’ capacity and who worked atFBOs were more likely to argue that caring, personal treatment of cli-ents was a key difference between FBOs and other types of providers.For example, the director of a faith-based food pantry argued, FBOs“take more interest in the person as an individual [than others do] . . .Faith-based agencies have a better capacity to serve across the board.People prefer to go somewhere where they are treated as a person.” An-other respondent at an FBO claimed, “People come to churches for [so-cial] services because they believe that the people in the church aremore kind-hearted and caring. They will have more sympathy. This isthe value of faith-based organizations as opposed to non-religiousgroups.” A director at a secular agency claimed, “Maybe a faith-basedagency would be more likely to listen to people [than others types of


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providers] to treat them like a person, not just a number, or at least theywouldn’t treat them as a number as much.”

While proponents of faith-based initiatives and many of the nonprofitdirectors believe FBOs treat clientele with more respect and care thanother types of providers, the potential clients did not describe the treat-ment they received at FBOs as more or less respectful, personal or car-ing than what they received at secular agencies. Jessica, a 31 year oldmother of four, for example, thought she was treated with more respectat a secular nonprofit than she was at an FBO:

They [secular nonprofit employees] are great. I mean it’s not somuch what they did for me; it’s how they treated me when I went.They didn’t treat me like I was beneath them, below them. Like,they didn’t condemn me for going to them for help. Some people,they just have like an attitude . . . I’ve called, for instance, [the Re-demption House, an FBO], they just put you through the ringer toget a little bit of help . . .

Amy, a 24 year old mother of one, also contrasted the personal treat-ment she received at a secular agency to what she received at a localFBO,

[The secular agency staff] really got personal with you–like yougotta give in your child’s social security number and the card, and[staff would say,] “Oh, you have kids, I have kids too.” Then, theytake out a picture [of their kids] and talk a little about them andstuff. Where in the [FBO], it like nothin’ like that.

Not only did the women fail to see FBOs as treating them with morecare and respect than other nonprofits, they also differed from the non-profit respondents in how they discussed such agencies. The women,like Jessica quoted above, did not lump all faith-based or all secularagencies together when discussing them; rather, they spoke of their var-ied experiences at different faith-based and secular agencies. From thewomen’s perspective, neither secular nonprofits nor FBOs cornered themarket on giving an attitude or being personal and caring–staff workingacross different types of providers did this. For example, Koria, a 31year old mother of four, claimed that some faith-based agencies she hadused delivered services in a personal way, while others did not. Sherelated her experience with two different FBOs,


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[Staff at St. John’s] can just relate to what we’re going through andto hard times like that . . . [The woman working at St. John’s] evenshared what she went through with you, I mean more on a personalrelation. She makes you more comfortable. As for me going to[Redemption House], I felt like just, I didn’t like it. But at [SaintJohn’s], she made me feel more comfortable while I was in there,which is better.

While there was a great deal of consistency overall in how the womentalked about their treatment at agencies, there were still times wheresome women claimed to have experienced personal, caring treatment ata particular agency whereas others claimed they did not. This suggeststhat variation exists not only between different FBOs but also within or-ganizations–something the nonprofit directors did not express in theirinterviews. Eileen, a 44 year old mother of four, for example, contraststhe attitude she perceived at some churches in the neighborhood withthe caring, personal service she received from Redemption House–theFBO that both Koria and Jessica, quoted above, disliked. Eileenasserted,

I was embarrassed at first [to go to Redemption House] but thewarmth that is there, they make you not feel uncomfortable. Imean everybody is entitled to have little situations here andthere–this is the way they tell you anyway . . . [Other places], likesome of the churches down [on the Avenue], I don’t know why, itjust seems they give you an attitude, like this [what you tell them]really can’t be happening.

The potential client data analyses also call into question two other as-sumptions implicitly (and at time explicitly) held by the nonprofit direc-tors and proponents of faith-based initiatives: (1) poor women preferpersonal service to other types of service delivery and (2) they will acton this preference by turning to “caring” agencies for guidance and as-sistance over others. In fact, the women did not always prefer personalservice to other types of service treatment. Some respondents wanted toget in and out of agencies as quickly as possible and retain as much ano-nymity as possible (especially when dealing with highly stigmatizedservices such as emergency services). While they certainly did not wantto be treated rudely, they did not dislike being treated in a business-likemanner or as a “number.” For example, Kathy, a 30 year old mother oftwo, argued that she felt less embarrassed using public welfare than she


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did going to nonprofit agencies, in part, because she could remain moreanonymous at the public welfare office. She explained, “Welfare never,no one knows you . . . Agencies, you go there, you might run into some-body you know.” Naomi, a 22 year old mother of two, similarlydescribes how she tried remaining anonymous when using an FBO runsoup kitchen,

I would cry sometimes in the line, and like I would always hold myhead down and imagined myself being somewhere else, like in thefairy tale or something . . . Get my mind away from where I reallywas standing, and I would hide, like wear hoody sweaters over myhead so that nobody would know.

Eileen refused to receive aid from the local church where she attendedchurch services because she knew the staff there too well and wanted tomaintain an air of self-sufficiency around them. When asked why shehad not used her church’s food pantry over the last couple of yearsdespite considerable material hardship, she replied, “I guess in my head . . .I had to prove to myself–to prove to them that I could do it [on my own] . . .”

The data also reveal that even those who desired personal service de-livery did not generally rest decisions about where to go for aid on thisbasis. Rather, convenience (particularly in terms of distance from home,operating hours, and estimated wait time) trumped preferences for staffthat “got to know you on a personal level.” Amy, for example, after not-ing at length that she appreciated the personal attention she received at asecular agency, claimed, “It [personal service] really doesn’t matter aslong as I’m in and out. What matters to me is timing. Timing is a virtue.”So, even if we put aside findings from the potential client data and as-sume that FBOs are more personal and caring than other types of orga-nizations, this does not necessarily mean poor women will choose themover alternatives.

Spiritual Component to Service Delivery

Almost half of the nonprofit respondents saw FBOs as varying fromother providers in their attentiveness to spirituality, especially withinthe service delivery process. Some valued this facet of FBOs and be-lieved the government and secular nonprofit providers might fail to pro-vide effective services because they lack this emphasis on “thespiritual”–again, these directors were largely those working at FBOs


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and those who viewed FBO capacity in a positive light. One such re-spondent who worked at a faith-based agency claimed,

Churches have a great capacity to meet the needs of the poor–it isan extension of what the church is about. By giving out welfare inthe first place, the government has taken over work that is right-fully done by churches. Churches are more sensitive to the spiri-tual needs of the poor.

A director of a church that offers numerous social services argued,“[FBOs] bring a lot to the table that governmental agencies can’t bring.They bring faith–an element that change comes from the inside out andit’s possible because of God. The government only work[s] from theoutside.” Another respondent at a faith-based agency believed thatchurches were the “primary way to help welfare recipients” largely be-cause the spiritual aspects of service delivery target the “total well-be-ing” of the individual. He claimed that one could get a job and get offwelfare but “if God is not in your heart, you’ll be right back out on thestreet again.”

While these respondents saw FBOs’ assumed focus on the spirit oftheir clients positively, other nonprofit respondents (particularly thoseat secular agencies) worried about the implications of delivering ser-vices in a “faith-based” way, especially when funded by the govern-ment. Predominately, these directors expressed concerns involvingFBOs’ discriminating against both employees and clients on the basis ofreligious preferences. One executive director of a secular agency wor-ried, “[FBOs] may not work for all the population.” Another director ofa secular agency lamented, “Those [FBOs] with more money, like theCatholics, stick to their own parishioners and don’t help outside thatcommunity.” Still another secular executive director worried, “Thingsmight depend on the church’s beliefs–they might limit whom they serveto based on what people believe, while [a secular] organization canserve all.”

Some of these directors also saw FBO staffs’ proselytizing duringservice delivery as off-putting to clients and believed that their religios-ity might limit their vision, flexibility, and commitment to social justice.One executive director of a secular nonprofit claimed,

Generally FBOs, particularly those that would get the grants, aregood at preempting the organization of the poor. They make thepoor dependent on crumbs and their services. They do not promote


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social justice, and they will eventually get into reproductive healthissues and other kinds of questions–whether a woman is leading alegitimate life.

A program director at a different secular nonprofit was “very concernedabout religious service providers proselytizing” and asserted that“churches providing social services need to be closely monitored–someare kind of scary . . . [I have seen] zealots.” She went on to argue thatthese issues “involve basic parents’ and children’s rights.”

The interviews with the potential clients, however, reveal that the as-sumption that FBOs differentiate themselves by addressing the spiritualneeds of clients may not accurately describe the reality of how servicesare currently delivered, at least by FBOs in this study site. I talked atlength with the respondents about each agency they knew and usedwithin the neighborhood, and overwhelmingly the women did not per-ceive anything religious in how FBOs delivered services. For example,despite the fact that almost all of the places from which the women re-ceived food assistance were FBOs, the respondents consistently de-scribed only two (“The Rescue Mission” and “God’s Dwelling”) asdelivering services in a manner that could be construed as religious,spiritual, or faith-imbued. While the women did claim that they be-lieved individuals working at some organizations might be available forreligious guidance if a client initiated it, most times the women did notperceive or describe the faith-based staff as doing anything “religious”at all.

Where religiosity was present in the service process, how did thewomen feel about it? Was it off-putting, as some of the nonprofit direc-tors suspected, or uplifting? Overall, the women were rather evenly di-vided in their reactions to those agencies that attended to the spiritualityof their clients. Mevie, a 39 year old mother of one, was one respondentwho liked the religiosity of God’s Dwelling. She simply claimed, “[Thestaff is] very nice . . . they start talking about religion to the kids. [Inter-viewer: Do you like that?] Yeah, yeah. It’s like giving them little book-lets and things so they can read at home.” Similarly, Toni, a 34 year oldmother of three, did not “mind” the religious aspect of service deliveryat one food cupboard, “They were fine; they made me pray with them.Yeah, but I didn’t mind though.”

Those that disliked these agencies were much stronger in voicingtheir opinions (and did so at greater length) than were those that likedthem. Jessica, for example, was one respondent who reacted negativelyto her experience at the God’s Dwelling and subsequently avoided it.


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She spoke at length about the agency and provided some support for onedirector’s concern that some FBOs may question “whether a woman isleading a legitimate life.” Jessica explained,

[God’s Dwelling was] all right, as far as them giving me the food, Iappreciated it, but I don’t feel as if anybody should be pushed intoreligion . . . you don’t get anything out of them until you sit therefor like 20 minutes and listen to them . . . you have to listen to themtalk, talk, talk, talk . . . And they really, really push their religion onyou . . . when I picked up the basket for Christmas, oh, yes, I wasthere a good hour. I had like three people talking to me at once . . .[They asked me,] “Do you want to know if this is the Holy Ghostand the Spirit?” And I’m like, “Well, you know,” and then theyasked me and my [female] cousin if we were together . . . Well,you know, I busted out laughing ‘cause I didn’t know what to sayto them. And I was like, “No, I like men.”

Kelly, a 48 year old mother of two, similarly appreciated the food shereceived from God’s Dwelling (especially since they offered more foodthan others), but she also complained that the food came with a lecturethat made her feel uncomfortable and shameful. She told me,

I think [God’s Dwelling] gives you more food, but they kinda haveto give you a little lecture at the end of it. [laughs uncomfortably]They wanna make sure you’re goin’ to church, and they wannatalk to you about church for a few minutes, 10 minutes. And usu-ally whenever I’m [going to a food pantry] I’m in a hurry, whereI’ve gotten somebody to drive me down and I don’t have the extratime . . . I don’t mind what they say, it’s just, I feel like I take careof that by myself, I don’t need them to kinda preach to me. I getembarrassed, and I don’t wanna cut ‘em short, because they areright . . . They wanna tell ya what you’re doin’ wrong. And you’realready living it, you know?

Explaining why some women feel more comfortable at places likeGod’s Dwelling than others do is a difficult endeavor worthy of futureinvestigation. It is not the case that those who disliked God’s Dwellinghad different religious preferences or were less religious; in fact, thosewho had an aversion to the agency were more likely to express that theyactively practiced their religion.9 The data suggest that other factors,such as characteristics of agency staff, may interact with religious ser-


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vice delivery to influence how clients receive it. For example, Eileeninitially liked God’s Dwelling but no longer went there because she wasnot comfortable with the new, younger staff that ran it. She told me,

I like the one lady that was there. I mean she got me into a lot of re-ligious stuff that I actually had torn away from . . . [But] I wouldfeel kind of awkward right now if I was going to somebody who isreal young, because I think they give you like an eye like “You areolder, you are supposed to be more wiser.”

It is also important to note that the concern that the directors voicedmost frequently in terms of FBOs’ religiosity–that these organizationsmight deny certain individuals services because of their religious pref-erence–was not supported by the potential client data. While a few ofthe women who dealt with the agencies described above claimed thatthey tried to avoid using them when in need, no one disclosed that anagency had turned them away because of religious preference or lack ofreligiosity.

Connections to the Community

Nearly a fifth of the nonprofit respondents believed that FBOs distin-guished themselves from other organizations by their degree of “con-nections to the community,” with both those working at secular andfaith-based agencies expressing this view. First and foremost, “beingconnected” meant that FBOs were well recognized in the community. Italso involved staff’s living in the community where the agency pro-vided services, knowing the residents, and understanding the commu-nity, its needs, and its resources well. For example, one director of afaith-based agency claimed that FBOs were “better than the govern-ment” because “they tend to be in the community and know people inthe community.” A director at a secular agency claimed, “Sometimesthey [FBOs] are better [than other service providers] because they areoften connected to the community.” Another director of a secularagency argued, “A lot of times families are isolated, and the churchhelps connect them to the community . . . They can act as a referralsource [because] they know the constituency.”

The nonprofit respondents quoted above (as well as many supportersof faith-based initiatives) often accept as true that FBOs are connectedto the community, yet we have little empirical evidence to support or re-fute this presupposition. While a difficult concept to measure, overall


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the interviews with the potential clients reveal that they were not moreconnected to FBOs than secular nonprofit or government services.

First, the potential clients did not know about the FBOs more thansecular agencies or public welfare. All of the women knew about thepublic aid offices in great detail (as would be expected given the sam-ple’s high attachment to TANF), but information on nonprofit (bothfaith-based and secular) agencies and programs was more varied andsparse among the respondents. As a group, after detailed questioning,the women identified 77 different nonprofits in the neighborhood. In or-der to see if the women were more or less aware of FBOs than secularnonprofit agencies, I classified these agencies as faith-based or secularutilizing information I had gleaned through years of fieldwork in theneighborhood.10 Of the 69 agencies I was able to classify, 32 werefaith-based and 37 were secular. Overall, the women were slightly morefamiliar with the secular nonprofit agencies in the community than theywere with the faith-based ones. The 40 women identified the 37 secularagencies 278 times in total (an average of 7.5 times each) compared to195 times for the 32 faith-based agencies (an average of 6 times each).Additionally, FBOs were less likely to be known by a large proportionof the women. For example, 11 of the secular agencies were identifiedby at least a quarter of the respondents compared to only six of thefaith-based agencies.

Second, very rarely did the potential clients discuss whether or notagency staff was “from the neighborhood”–one aspect of being “con-nected to the community” according to some of the nonprofit directors.Those few times that the women did mention this, they were not more orless likely to attribute FBO staff as being from or residing in the com-munity. Additionally, the interviews give no indication that the FBOsunderstood the community, its needs, and its resources better than thesecular providers. In fact, previous analyses with the institutional datareveal that both secular and nonprofit directors are largely disconnectedfrom community residents in their assessments of neighborhood needs(Kissane & Gingerich, 2004).

Third, the women were not more connected to FBOs than secularagencies in the sense of agency use. A similar number of women usedthe faith-based agencies as the secular ones. Of those agencies that wereused at least once by five or more women, nine were faith-based andeight were secular. Perhaps, however, the respondents were using theFBOs more consistently and frequently than the secular agencies; and,therefore, they might be considered “more connected” to them. It wastrue that a handful of the women were very attached to particular


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faith-based agencies. For example, Kelly was what I classified as a heavyuser of nonprofit agencies. In the five years prior to our interview, she hadused 16 different types of nonprofit services at 12 different agencies.Kelly, however, leaned on one small, faith-based nonprofit for the ma-jority of her service needs. This agency gave Kelly’s husband publictransportation tokens almost every week, provided cash whenever theyhad an emergency, consistently provided toiletries for the family, pro-vided the family with meals daily at its soup kitchen, delivered a foodbasket to their home each month, provided money for a down paymentfor a house, provided clothing yearly for the family, paid for privateschool for her two youngest children, took the children annually on trips(e.g., to Great Adventure), and, lastly, acted as an advocate for Kellywith the welfare department and court system.11 The majority of theseservices was done on an individual basis and not offered to most of theagency’s other clients.

Kelly, however, was an outlier among the sample. No other womanused a nonprofit agency or its services to the extent that she did. Addi-tionally, the women did not use the faith-based agencies more fre-quently and/or consistently than they did the secular nonprofits (andnote that they used faith-based and secular nonprofits much less thanpublic aid). Furthermore, the women spoke about the trust and connec-tion they felt to staff at faith-based and secular agencies in very similarways. This is largely because the women did not feel very “connected”to nonprofits or their staff at all, regardless of whether an agency wasfaith-based or secular. In general, the respondents saw nonprofits asplaces where one went when one needed help in some area, not placeswhere one developed long-term relationships and attachments.

Professionalization

Some scholars argue that nonprofits that receive government fundsare at risk of becoming “professionalized” and bureaucratic; character-istics they see as potentially spoiling the positive aspects of private ser-vice delivery (Smith & Lipsky, 1993). Furthermore, government grantsmight come with strings that can lead to the altering of the essentialcharacter of an agency and counter the personal, holistic care that manyassume occurs at these agencies. The nonprofit directors were not gen-erally concerned about this issue (though a few were); rather, they wereconcerned that FBOs were not professionalized enough to provide ef-fective, quality services, even with governmental money.


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Two-fifths of the nonprofit respondents saw the lack of profession-alized staff and resources as key detriments to FBOs’ providing effec-tive services (especially in the areas of job training and education) andas an important difference between FBOs and other types of providers.For example, a director of a large multi-service secular nonprofit arguedthat FBOs

have the needy population, but probably not the capacity. Blackchurches have been the “ground force” for a number of years, butthat doesn’t mean that they actually have the capacity to addressthe problem. They work with people and see the problems. Butyou have to have skilled workers, like an MSW . . . [they] needspecialized professionals.

Similarly, the executive director of a large secular nonprofit that fo-cused on education claimed,

I think that there often is not the capacity [at FBOs] to actually de-liver the services in the way they need to be delivered profession-ally. What we see happening in the literacy field right now is,because of ever increasing standards and outcomes that are tied tofederal requirements, little tiny agencies, volunteer agencies aredisappearing . . . they do not have the capacity to do the training,the data collection, data analysis that’s now required.

Interestingly, the level of education of the staff members at the secu-lar agencies in the institutional study sample was very similar to that ofthe education level of staff at the FBOs. In fact, in 67% of thefaith-based agencies at least half of those who worked at the agencywere college-educated whereas the same was true at 62% of the secularagencies. While level of staff education is not a direct measure ofprofessionalization, this finding does suggest that the assumption thatFBO workers are less professionalized than secular agency staff is inac-curate within this group of organizations.

Not surprisingly, the potential clients did not discuss with me thepresence or lack thereof of professionalized, paid staff at the varioustypes of nonprofits. There were instances in the interviews, however,where the women discussed their perception that employees at someagencies were of a different class or more highly educated than theywere and implied that this created some distance when dealing with the


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agencies. For example, Eileen alludes to the fact that a staff member at asecular agency she used was of a different class than she was,

They [agency staff] were very intelligent, some of the words[they’d use] I would have to say “Excuse me, can you break thatdown some?” You know, they are on a higher-class language . . .whenever I heard something that I really wasn’t comprehending, Imean I was like “Excuse me, break it down” and the lady wouldjust look at me and say “Oh, I am sorry” and I am like “Oh, that isokay, thanks.”

These few instances where the women referred to staff’s being well ed-ucated or from a higher class, however, were no more likely to have oc-curred at a secular agency than an FBO.

CONCLUSION AND DISCUSSION

In this article, I have presented findings on how nonprofit directorsperceive FBOs’ capacity to serve and their “unique” qualities. Overall,about half of directors viewed FBOs as capable or more capable thanother organizations in providing services to needy families, while theother half were concerned about FBOs, particularly their ability to pro-vide employment-related and education services. The nonprofit direc-tors often presumed that FBOs differed from other types of socialservice providers in terms of their caring and individualized treatmentof clients, religiosity in service delivery, connections to the community,and professionalization.

The interviews with the poor women, however, counter many of thenonprofit directors’ assumptions regarding FBOs’ distinctiveness. Over-all, the women did not perceive FBOs as treating them with more of a“personal touch” and care. Furthermore, they did not always prefer per-sonal treatment or base their decisions on where to go for services uponwhether they received such treatment. The women also did not experi-ence many FBOs that attended to their spiritual needs during service de-livery. When they did, half viewed these encounters in a negative light.The interviews with the women also cast suspicion on the notion thatFBOs are more connected to the community, as they did not know aboutor utilize FBOs more readily than secular organizations and generallydid not feel connected to FBO staff.


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Overall, this research demonstrates the importance of triangulatingdata from different sources and also points to avenues for future re-search. While not the original intent of the study, the findings reveal thatthe various players at the local level are disconnected from one anotherin their opinions and different constituencies may experience differing“realities” in dealing with and appraising nonprofit organizations. Notonly did the potential clients differ from the nonprofit providers in theiroutlook on nonprofit agencies, but the directors themselves were largelypartitioned in their views according to whether they worked at an FBOor not. These differences in outlooks are important for service deliveryfor at least two reasons: (1) they may create distance between clientsand providers and (2) they can potentially hinder collaborations amongorganizations that could benefit communities. For example, previousresearch suggests people “leery of religious organizations” may “ab-stain from entering into collaborative partnerships” with them (Silver-man, 2002). Certainly, secular providers in this community were leeryof FBOs and may therefore be unlikely to collaborate with them.

Furthermore, researchers examining whether various types of socialservice providers are different need to be cognizant that findings de-pend upon whom one interviews and how one examines the issue. Forexample, in this paper, the level of similarity in the women’s encoun-ters with FBOs and secular organizations suggests homogenization oforganizations within the social service field, yet the interviews withthe nonprofit directors point to distinctions among the different typesof organizations. Research that can specify the nature and implicationsof these differing attitudes and perceptions is needed. In particular,discerning what factors account for these disparities in views, whetherone group’s opinions more accurately reflect the “reality,” and whatimplications these differing attitudes and perceptions have at the locallevel would be fruitful areas for future research endeavors.

The findings also raise important questions for the current policythrust to increase FBOs’ role in service provision to the poor. First, halfof nonprofit directors in the study questioned the capacity of FBOs toprovide certain services, particularly those that are seen as critical inmoving welfare recipients toward self-sufficiency (e.g., employment-related and education services), and most were suspicious of faith-based initiatives. Interestingly, those working at secular agencies weremore likely to have these concerns. While surely secular providers mayvoice negative opinions on FBOs for self-interested reasons (e.g., theydo not want to share limited pools of funding with FBOs), they may alsobe accurately assessing potential shortcomings that we should consider.


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Second, the findings suggest that much of the rhetoric surroundingfaith-based initiatives does not play out at the ground level. At theheart of such initiatives is the assumption that FBOs offer somethingspecial that increases their effectiveness over other types of providers.Indeed, many of the nonprofit directors in this study voiced such atti-tudes themselves. The experiences of the potential clients, however,do not support this line of thinking. Not only did they experienceFBOs and secular agencies in relatively similar ways, they also did notsee the faith-based organizations as forming a distinctive set of agen-cies. From their perspective, FBOs did not offer something special andwere not more effective on the whole; rather, some FBOs were specialand effective (as were some secular agencies). Furthermore, in thosefew cases where the women identified FBOs as actually deliveringservices in a faith-based manner, half found them off-putting. There-fore, pushing FBOs to pay attention to the spiritual needs of their cli-ents during service delivery or increasing these types of agencies’ rolein service provision may add to the difficulties and shame alreadyfaced by some poor women.

To be sure, future research is needed to address some of the limita-tions of this research. As devolution makes the local level critical, re-search in other areas is needed to ensure these findings aregeneralizable to other locales and populations. For example, the po-tential clients interviewed were young to middle-aged adult non-His-panic white or Puerto Rican women. Research that examines otherethnoracial groups (particularly African-Americans), males, andother age groups (e.g., youth or elderly) is key as other populationsmay view and experience faith-based and secular agencies differ-ently than those I interviewed. Furthermore, interviews with lower-level staff at nonprofits might yield different opinions than what ispresented here.

A decade after welfare reform, much emphasis remains on devolvingresponsibility for meeting the needs of poor families to the private sector,including FBOs. While some FBOs may represent a “quiet river of good-ness and kindness” as President Bush suggests, the results from this studyadvise caution in assuming that FBOs are the answer to our nation’s con-siderable poverty. Not only did many of the nonprofit directors in thisstudy worry about aspects of faith-based service delivery and organiza-tional capacity, but poor women themselves failed to see FBOs as offer-ing something that was compelling and unique to their clientele as awhole. As policy-makers move forward dismantling the public welfarestate, it is time to pay heed to the varied views of poor individuals, non-


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profit directors, and others most affected by devolution. In doing so, wemay discover pitfalls in our policies, question our core assumptions, anduncover multiple and, perhaps, conflicting perspectives on this pressing so-cial issue.

NOTES

1. Jeavons (2003) and other scholars question using the term “faith-based organi-zation” as it “glosses over the substantive, fundamental distinctions between congrega-tions and other religious organizations” (p. 27). Despite this well-founded concern, Iuse the term throughout the paper to indicate congregations providing services as wellas religiously-affiliated social service organizations, since this was the language usedduring the interviews.

2. DiMaggio and Powell (1983) define a “field” as “those organizations that, in theaggregate, constitute a recognized area of institutional life: key suppliers, resource andproduct consumers, regulatory agencies, and other organizations that produce similarservices or products” (p. 148).

3. The original sample selection included 29 nonprofit agencies; however, the di-rector of a small health clinic refused to allow her agency to participate in the study.

4. We asked directors if their agencies were “faith-based” or not. I use theseself-categorizations to classify agencies.

5. We interviewed multiple respondents at some of the agencies to ensure that wegained thorough and accurate data.

6. We did not ask all respondents directly about faith-based initiatives and organi-zations in an attempt to minimize the length of interviews. FBO questions included:“Have you heard that, as part of the Federal welfare reform legislation, faith-basedagencies are eligible to compete for contracts and provide services to welfare recipientson an equal footing with non-religious organizations?”; “Have you heard about spe-cific proposals to channel more funds to churches and other faith-based organiza-tions?”; “What do you think about the capacity of faith-based organizations to meet theneeds of welfare recipients and low-income workers?”; and “What do you think aboutthe capacity of these organizations in terms of providing job training? Education?Child care? Emergency services?”

7. I disclosed to respondents that I was interested in understanding how they uti-lized local service providers and the role these agencies play in their lives. To maxi-mize heterogeneity, I recruited no more than two individuals from any one source.Respondents recruited from service providers did not vary in service knowledge or usefrom those recruited from other respondents. Given the ties between the agency-re-cruited and respondent-recruited groups, however, this sample likely includes more us-ers of nonprofit services than a random sample might have produced.

8. I did not interview African-Americans as this population was relatively small inthe targeted neighborhood.

9. All six of the women who used God’s Dwelling were Christians–half wereCatholic and half were Protestant. I found no pattern between how the women feltabout the agency and their religious denomination.


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10. For those agencies with which I did not have any previous contact while in thefield, I relied upon agency literature, their websites, and phone calls to the agency to de-termine whether it was faith-based or secular.

11. When Kelly had problems meeting the requirements of her parole, staff inter-vened to prevent her return to jail.

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Ebaugh, H. R., Pipes, P. F., Chafetz, J. S., & Daniels, M. (2003). Where’s the Religion?Distinguishing Faith-Based from Secular Social Service Agencies. Journal for theScientific Study of Religion, 42(3), 411-26.

Ebaugh, H. R., Chafetz, J. S., & Pipes, P. (2005). Funding Good Works: FundingSources of Faith-Based Social Service Coalitions. Nonprofit and Voluntary SectorQuarterly, 34(4), 448-472.

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(1999). Big Cities and Welfare Reform: Early Implementation and EthnographicFindings from the Project on Devolution and Urban Change. New York: Man-power Demonstration Research Corporation.

Sherman, A. L. (2003). Faith in Communities: A Solid Investment. Society, 40(2),19-26.

Silverman, R. M. (2002). Vying for the Urban Poor: Charitable Organizations,Faith-Based Social Capital, and Racial Reconciliation in a Deep South City. Socio-logical Inquiry, 72(1), 151-65.

Smith, S. R., & Lipsky, M. (1993). Nonprofits for Hire: The Welfare State in the Age ofContracting. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Smith, S. R., & Sosin, M.R. (2001). The Varieties of Faith-Related Agencies. PublicAdministration Review, 61(6), 651-670.


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Twombly, E. C. (2002). Religious versus Secular Human Service Organizations: Im-plications for Public Policy. Social Science Quarterly, 83(4), 947-61.

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Wuthnow, R., Hackett, C., & Hsu, B. Y. (2004). The Effectiveness and Trustworthi-ness of Faith-Based and Other Service Organizations: A Study of Recipients’ Per-ceptions. Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, 43(1), 1-17.

doi:10.1300/J134v11n04_05


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