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

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

Ronald Sider & Heidi Rolland Unruh

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 derived sixfold typology of social service and educational organizations and programs based on their religious characteristics: faith-permeated, faith-centered, faith-affiliated, faith background, 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.

Mapping Your Community's Faith-Based Assets

Mapping Your Community's Faith-Based Assets

An asset inventory tool for collecting and using data on the faith-based community organizations in your city

Spring 2006

Keeping Faith in the Faith-Based Initiative: From Formal Neutrality to Full Pluralism in Government Partnerships with Faith-based Social Services

Keeping Faith in the Faith-Based Initiative: From Formal Neutrality to Full Pluralism in Government Partnerships with Faith-based Social Services

This paper was presented at the 2005 Abraham Kuyper Lecture by Stanley W. Carlson-Thies