Working Faith: How Religious Organizations Provide Welfare-to-Work Services

This study examines how faith-based welfare-to-work programs differ from their government-run, for-profit, and secular non-profit counterparts in four American cities: Philadelphia, Chicago, Dallas and Los Angeles. It considers 500 welfare-to-work programs, and assesses how the faith-based programs differ from the other types of programs in three areas: (a) funding from, and contacts with, government; T (b) services offered; and (c) overall size and staffing. Among the key findings are:

• Government funding of faith-based welfare-to-work programs is extensive. Fifty percent of all faith-based welfare-to-work programs already receive government funding.
• Among those faith-based programs that receive government funds, the amount of funding received is limited, but significant. Government funds comprise 50 percent of the budgets of less-religious faith-based programs, and 30 percent of the budgets of those that integrate religious elements into the services they provide.
• There is some evidence of discrimination against faith-based groups in the disbursement of government funds. Secular nonprofits receive much more government funding than do faith-based groups, and 21 percent of all faith-based programs that have applied for government funding were turned down, compared with only 7 percent of similar applications from secular nonprofits.
• There is little evidence that faith-based groups have to reduce their religious emphasis or practices as a result of receiving government funding. Only 3 of the 60 faith-based programs receiving government funding reported having to reduce these practices as a result of receipt of these funds.
• Nearly 40 percent of faith-based groups have an internal policy of not applying for government funding. Most do so out of general fears of governmental interference with their operations.
• Most faith-based programs have many informal contacts with government agencies and are largely satisfied with those contacts.
• About 40 percent of the faith-based programs explicitly integrate religious practices into the services they provide. A majority of religious groups that run faith-based programs do not make explicit religious messages a central feature of their work.
• Over 40 percent of the religiously-integrated programs receive government funding.
• Government-run programs, for-profit firms, and secular non-profits are much larger in size than their faith-based counterparts.

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