Faith-Based Organizations In Community Development

by HUD USER

Faith-Based Organizations
In Community Development
U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development
Office of Policy Development and Research

Visit PD&R's Web Site
www.huduser.org
to find this report and others sponsored by
HUD's Office of Policy Development and Research (PD&R).
Other services of HUD USER, PD&R's Research Information Service, include listservs;
special interest, bimonthly publications (best practices, significant studies from other
sources); access to public use databases; hotline 1–800–245–2691 for help accessing
the information you need.

Faith-Based Organizations
In Community Development
Prepared for
U. S. Department of Housing and Community Development
Office of Policy Development and Research
Prepared By:
The Urban Institute
Avis C. Vidal
August 2001

The contents of this report are the views of the contractor, and do not necessarily
reflect the views or policies of the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development
of the U.S. Government.

FOREWORD
Recently, there has been greater recognition and value given to the contributions of faith-based
organizations (FBOs) in providing social services. Historically, FBOs have been particularly prominent
in providing food, clothing, and shelter to people in need.
Faith-based organizations have also assumed a role in helping promote housing and community
development. Some fourteen percent of community development corporations (CDCs) are faith-based.
The activities of Habitat for Humanity in providing homeownership opportunities are well-known.
Nearly half of all sponsors of housing for the elderly developed by HUD are faith-based.
The importance of faith-based organizations in our communities is underlined by the Bush
Administration’s creation of a new Office of Faith-Based Activities. The initiative will take advantage of
the energy, experience, and commitment of such faith-based organizations by expanding their role. As a
federal agency with a long history of working with FBOs, HUD has a great deal of interest in this
initiative. Not only have FBOs been deeply involved in the development of housing projects such as
those indicated above, FBOs are important to the cohesion of neighborhoods and the development of
local communities.
Unfortunately, the extent to which these organizations have undertaken social service,
community development, and housing programs is not well understood. In order to address this
fundamental lack of information about the activities of faith-based organizations, HUD sponsored
research on FBOs which was conducted over the course of the past year. As result, I am pleased that we
are able to publish this report, “The Role of Faith-Based Organizations in Community Development.”
This report provides some useful guidance as this Administration’s initiative moves forward.
The report tells us some important, rudimentary information. First and foremost, community
development activities administered by faith-based organizations are going on, and will go on. We are
given working definitions of different types of FBOs, and the report lays out clearly some advantages and
disadvantages of FBOs doing community development and housing work. The report also confirms what
many already understand—we don’t know a lot of basic facts about what these activities entail, who they
serve, or what their impacts are.
Faith-based organizations are viable organizations doing important work, well-positioned to do
even more. This, then, is a great opportunity for us to learn more about what these programs do, and how
we can help them be more effective. These organizations are too important to ignore, and they are too
important for us not to know what they are doing.
Lawrence L. Thompson
General Deputy Assistant Secretary for Policy
Development and Research

TABLE OF CONTENTS
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY .............................................................................................................i
CHAPTER 1: FRAMING THE REPORT ....................................................................................1
Defining Terms................................................................................................................1
The Nature of the Literature..………………………………………………………………… 3
A Roadmap to the Report................................................................................................5
CHAPTER 2: FAITH-BASED PARTICIPATION IN
SOCIAL SERVICES AND COMMUNITY DEVELOPMENT ........................................................6
Congregations.................................................................................................................6
Housing Development ...............................................................................................8
Economic Development.............................................................................................9
Which Congregations are Most Likely to do Community Development?..................10
National Denominations and Their Affiliates and Networks ...........................................11
Housing Development .............................................................................................11
Economic Development...........................................................................................13
Freestanding Faith-based Organizations.......................................................................13
Conclusion ....................................................................................................................16
CHAPTER 3: What Do Congregations Bring to Community Development?.......................16
Requisites of Successful Community Development ......................................................16
Congregations Bring Distinctive Advantages to the Table.............................................17
Congregations Also Encumbered by Some Disadvantages ..........................................18
When Congregations and Community Developers Join Forces: A National Example ...20
Conclusion ....................................................................................................................20
CHAPTER 4: IMPLICATIONS FOR RESEARCH AND POLICY .............................................21
The Issue of Faith .........................................................................................................21
Do Faith-Based Organizations Bring Distinctive Advantages to Community
Development?...............................................................................................................23

CDCs.......................................................................................................................23
Community Development Financial Institutions (CDFIs)..........................................25
Workforce Development Organizations...................................................................25
Major Programs in Community Development ..........................................................26
Will Faith-based Organizations be Effective in Community Development?....................26
Congregations.........................................................................................................27
Faith-based Networks Formed Through Community Organizing .............................28
Denominational Organizations and National Networks ............................................30
An Integrated Faith-Based Portrait ..........................................................................30
Policy Implications and Challenges ...............................................................................31
REFERENCES .........................................................................................................................34
APPENDIX A

Faith-Based Organizations
in Community Development
Executive Summary
In recent years, policymakers have begun looking to churches, synagogues, mosques,
and other faith-based organizations to play a greater role in strengthening communities. Yet
little research exists on the role of faith-based organizations in community development. This
report summarizes the current state of knowledge and identifies the policy conclusions and
major questions that follow from what is known. Because the research is limited this report also
draws on interviews with knowledgeable scholars and practitioners in community development.
This report uses two key terms—community development and faith-based
organization—in specific ways:
• Community development is asset building. It centers around housing and community
economic development but also includes developmental efforts, such as job training, to
prepare residents for more productive lives.
• Faith-based organizations are of three types: (1) congregations; (2) national networks,
which include national denominations, their social service arms (for example, Catholic
Charities, Lutheran Social Services), and networks of related organizations (such as
YMCA and YWCA); and (3) freestanding religious organizations, which are incorporated
separately from congregations and national networks.
More than half of all congregations and many other faith-based organizations provide
some form of human services. Congregational participation in providing human services is
greater among worship communities that are larger (and hence have more resources), are
located in low-income neighborhoods, are theologically liberal, and are African American.
Supportive pastoral leadership is central.
A key finding of this report is that relatively few faith-based organizations participate in
community development activities. The most common participants are faith-based community
development corporations (CDCs), some national denominations and their affiliates, and
Habitat for Humanity.
Faith-based participation in community development is limited for several reasons:
• Congregations have two preferred approaches to service: they donate small amounts of
cash or in-kind goods to other service delivery groups, or they provide small groups of
volunteers to conduct relatively well-defined, periodic tasks. By contrast, community
development activities require regular and sustained involvement in a range of complex
processes and tasks.
• Community development is best done by independently incorporated organizations.
Establishing and fostering the growth of such affiliated organizations are the least
common mode of congregational engagement in services, and poses numerous
challenges.
I

• Congregational staff and volunteers typically lack the skills, knowledge, and time
required to successfully sponsor community development projects.
• Most congregations have not applied for government grants or undertaken the legal and
financial responsibilities required to sponsor community development projects, and
many lack the management capacity to do so.
No existing research compares how the outcomes of community development efforts
sponsored by faith-based organizations with those of secular organizations. Some information
is available about the challenges facing organizations that have tried to enter community
development, but little is known about the impediments faced by the minority of faith-based
organizations interested in obtaining government funds to sponsor community development.
These are among the questions requiring new research.
The implications of the report’s findings include the following:
• The community development field needs significant technical assistance to ensure that
faith-based organizations in community development spend government funds responsibly,
given the small size and inexperience of many such organizations. This is especially the
case for new entrants to the field.
• Faith-based organizations interested in community development may increase their
effectiveness by partnering with existing CDCs and other experienced nonprofit
organizations (even though such collaborations present known challenges) rather than
by sponsoring projects independently. These collaborations might be facilitated by
Federal technical assistance. Other forms of participation, such as securing new
vehicles for social investing, should be explored.
• Only a fraction of the organizations studied currently have the resources to successfully
engage in community development activities. However, when they do have such
resources, faith-based organizations are uniquely positioned to have a significant impact
beyond simply sponsoring community development projects. Congregations can
increase public support for affordable housing and other community development
initiatives in their communities by engaging in public dialogue and joining coalitions that
support social justice.
It is important to note, however, while this report suggests possible roles that faith-
based organizations can play in community development, it is built on limited research and
programmatic experience. There is still a great deal about this topic that is unknown or
uncertain; much more research and exploration is needed to built the base of useful knowledge.
II

CHAPTER 1: FRAMING THE REPORT
In recent years, policymakers have begun to look to churches, synagogues, mosques
and other faith-based organizations to play a greater role in strengthening communities; the
Charitable Choice provision of the welfare reform legislation is but one example. Policymakers’
optimism that faith-based organizations might take on a greater role has multiple sources: the
desire in some quarters to reduce the role of the public sector; the existence of a small number
of high-profile successes in housing and economic development sponsored by large churches;
the perceived paucity of other strong institutions in many disinvested neighborhoods; and high
expectations about the potential of faith communities to address problems that others have
found intractable.
The large size of the religious sector contributes to this optimism. Taken together,
congregations, denominational organizations, and other faith-based organizations represent the
third largest component of the nonprofit sector in the U.S., after health and education.
Congregations alone number about 350,000; collectively, their estimated yearly expenditures
exceed $47 billion (Hodgkinson, 1993). Numbers of this magnitude attract attention.
Substantial scale, coupled with the observation that congregations are often among the
strongest institutions in otherwise disadvantaged communities, has stimulated growing interest
in increasing faith-based involvement in community development. Yet the role of faith-based
organizations remains among the least well-researched aspects of community development.
The most recent national survey of community development corporations (CDCs) found that 14
percent of the reporting organizations consider themselves to be faith-based (National
Congress for Community Economic Development, 1999). Yet we know very little about how they
differ from, and what they share with, secular CDCs. Anecdotal evidence suggests that their
role in the CDC movement, both currently and historically, may be even more important than
this figure suggests. Information about the role of other types of faith-based organizations in
community development has been negligible.
This report responds to this paucity of information in two ways by:
• presenting an overview of the current state of knowledge, summarizing what we
know about the community development activities of faith-based organizations, the
factors that stimulate their action and enable them to be successful, and the
obstacles to expanding their activities; and
• identifying the policy conclusions that follow from what is known, and the central
research questions that must be addressed in order to better inform policies and
programs intended to facilitate effective faith-based engagement in community
development.
Defining Terms
The core issues addressed in this report center around two terms - “community
development” and “faith-based organization” - that are used widely but with a variety of intended
meanings. This report uses these terms in very specific ways.
1

Conceptually, community development is “asset building that improves the quality of life
among residents of low- to moderate-income communities” (Ferguson and Dickens, 1999).
Communities are defined physically, i.e., as neighborhoods. Assets may be of many types
(physical, economic, social, political, human), but all produce a stream of services over time.
For example, constructing an apartment building is development, since it adds an asset to the
community; that asset, if properly managed, provides a stream of housing services over a
period of many years. Thus, communities develop when investments of either capital or labor
produce changes in the ability of the community to foster and sustain productive community
members and a good quality of life for them. Community development helps communities and
their members get ahead, not simply get by (Briggs, 1998).
In general, the CDC movement has used the term in this way. In that context, it includes
a wide variety of specific activities, but currently centers around a core composed of housing
and community economic development (both real estate development and business
development). Especially in the context of welfare reform, it can also include developmental
efforts, such as job training, to prepare residents for more productive lives. Examining the role
of faith-based organizations in community development, understood in this way, is the primary
focus of this report.
1
The term “faith-based” has become widely used, but not embraced with universal
enthusiasm. Dionne (1999) notes that it sounds a bit antiseptic; Safire (1999) views it as a
euphemism adopted as a convenience by politicians, and urges what he sees as the more
honest and straightforward term “religion-based” or, more simply, “religious.”
In policy discussions such as this one, however, the term “faith-based” has at least two
important advantages. First, it is inclusive. “Church-based” would leave out synagogues,
mosques, meeting houses and other places of worship; “congregation-based” avoids this
problem but still omits the many non-congregational organizations engaged in significant public-
benefit activities (Dionne, 1999). Second, it helps ease concerns about the separation of
church and state. As Safire (1999) explains: “American political tradition...shies away from
religion in politics,” but not away from religious values in public life. By substituting faith (trust in
the truths) for religion (the organized set of beliefs), the new compound adjective gets around
the traditional objection. For both of these reasons, this report uses the term “faith-based”
throughout.
Faith-based organizations are more numerous and diverse than is commonly
recognized. Current public conversations about the possible role of faith-based organizations in
community life often assume that these organizations are local worship communities, commonly
called congregations.
2
In fact, many other types of organizations are faith-based. One useful
typology (Castelli and McCarthy, 1997) divides faith-based groups into three sets: (1)
congregations; (2) national networks, which include national denominations, their social service
arms (e.g., Catholic Charities, Lutheran Social Services), and networks of related organizations
(such as YMCA and YWCA); and (3) freestanding religious organizations (which are
incorporated separately from congregations and national networks but have a religious basis).
1
Note that members of faith communities often use the term much more broadly to encompass almost any
type of community-serving activity (including social service provision), variously known as urban ministry, social
ministry, or social justice ministry.
2
Although this usage is common and is adopted here, it is not always technically correct. Peter Dobkin Hall
notes that “... even familiar terms like “parish,” “member,” “congregation,” and “denomination” that non-specialists
treat as having simple meanings actually mean very different things in different faiths.” (Hall, June 28, 1999).
2

Each of these categories includes organizations that are quite diverse. Congregations
may be affiliated with more than 200 denominations, and vary in size, membership, and so
forth. Denominational organizations include entities directly involved in church governance,
such as a Roman Catholic archdiocese, and a variety of special purpose organizations such as
seminaries, religious orders, and pension funds for clergy. Their service agencies include both
decentralized multi-service providers such as the Jewish Federations and specialized service
institutions, e.g., a United Methodist Hospital, Notre Dame University. National networks
include special-purpose groups formed to mobilize the energies of individuals and
congregations around projects and specific goals like Habitat for Humanity and the Christian
Coalition (Hall, 1999), increasingly referred to as parachurch organizations. Freestanding
organizations can be as simple as an independent nonprofit organization spun off by a
congregation to pursue a particular ministry (e.g., a CDC or a substance abuse program) or as
complex as an interfaith or ecumenical coalition of congregations or clergy.
3
The Nature of the Literature
Most of this report draws from published literature about faith-based organizations. This
literature has several limitations that necessarily become limitations of the report itself, so
identifying them briefly is important. While the literature on these organizations, including their
secular social-benefit activities, is voluminous, it suffers from three problems when considered
from the perspective of this report: critical empirical analysis is in short supply; existing research
is highly compartmentalized; and little research has focused specifically on community
development.
Critical empirical analysis is in short supply. Most of the literature is descriptive rather
than analytical. It includes no comparisons of similar types of secular and faith-based activities,
no analyses of the outcomes of any of the activities conducted, and hence no assessments of
the factors that influence the scale or quality of outcomes.
4
Thus, it provides some information
on what is happening, but little on “why,” “how,” or “with what effect.”
Much of the literature falls into one of three categories. The first includes an abundance
of descriptions of particular urban ministries. They range from short magazine articles to
autobiographical books by pastors whose churches have active urban ministries. The second
consists of articles and monographs that urge congregations to become involved in ministries
that serve poor individuals and communities, and provide a theological rationale for such
involvement. The third encompasses numerous “how to” books that run the gamut from step-
by-step handbooks, e.g., on how to set up a nonprofit organization, to more technical works on
the real estate development process.
5
3
Ecumenical associations include different denominations within the same faith, e.g., Catholics,
Methodists, and other Christian denominations; interfaith associations, literally, include participants of different faiths,
e.g., Christians, Jews, Muslims, and Buddhists.
4
Both Castelli and McCarthy (1997) and Foley, et al. (1999) attempt a thorough reconnaissance of the
published literature; the former also reports on an extensive exploration of unpublished information. Both concur
with this finding about the state of the literature.
5
An excellent annotated bibliography of materials of this type is Elliot Wright (Ed.), An Annotated
Bibliography for Faith-Based Community Economic Development. Washington, D.C.: National Congress for
Community Economic Development, 1999.
3

Two factors help to account for the dearth of both good quantitative analysis and
systematic, comparative case studies of faith-based organizations. The most pervasive problem
has been the lack of a comprehensive list of organizations from which to draw a representative
sample - a familiar problem in community development research. This compromises the
reliability of the quantitative research in the field. With the exception of the recent National
Congregations Study, discussed in detail later in this report, empirical studies at both the local
and national levels have struggled with the absence of a full listing of the population to be
studied. Even the analysts who have done the best job of trying to compile such lists
acknowledge that their results fall short.
6
In addition, efforts to survey congregations routinely experience very low response
rates. Many factors contribute to this problem. Some are resource-based: almost 30 percent of
congregations have no telephone, 32 percent have no full-time paid staff, and pastors (typically
the survey’s target) have many demands on their time. Other factors are attitudinal, e.g.,
privacy concerns, suspicion of the unknown survey sponsor. Taken together, they raise serious
concerns about the representativeness of data gathered through surveys of congregations.
7
Given these obstacles to serious quantitative research, one might still hope to find
strong qualitative research, e.g., thoughtful explorations of how different types of congregations
make decisions and the factors that help them move successfully into new types of activities, or
good ethnographies of effective faith-based services agencies. Some do exist, but they are
surprisingly few and far between.
Second, the existing research is highly compartmentalized. Researchers interested in
faith-based organizations have diverse professional specializations, e.g., sociology of religion,
the nonprofit sector, community-level social work, divinity. The members of each group
commonly see other members of their group as their primary audience. As a result, the writings
of these specialized groups appear in different journals, libraries, and publishers catalogs. For
example, the major research indices commonly used by social scientists and policy analysts do
not list many of the works written by participants in faith communities (scholars in divinity
schools, clergy, laity, and people writing for those audiences).
8
Relevant journals are even
more specialized. This makes the complete literature difficult to find, and often means that
research done in one area does not inform research done in the others.
The fragmentation of the literature appears to mirror actual fragmentation in the field -
Camong congregations, along denominational lines (which partially translates into separations
along lines of color and ethnicity), and between faith-based organizations involved in community
development and secular CDCs.
6
See, for example, Hodgkinson, et al., 1993, surveying congregations for the Independent Sector; NCCED,
1999, surveying CDCs.
7
For example, a survey of congregations in Washington, D.C. by the Center on Nonprofits and Philanthropy
at the Urban Institute made unusually extensive efforts to prod nonrespondents and still obtained only a 25 percent
response rate (Printz, 1998)Ca rate considered enviable by some who have attempted similar exercises, but
worrisome from a methodological perspective even when it is the best available.
8
Conversely, the American Theological Literature Association (ATLA) Religion Database, the most widely
used index to published materials about religion (including research in related fields such as sociology or history) is
found mostly in libraries serving seminaries and divinity or theological schools. Some other research libraries may
subscribe to the ATLA index; the Library of Congress is one exampleCbut probably an atypical one.
4

Finally, little research has focused specifically on community development. Most
examinations of the secular activities of faith-based organizations focus on human services
because they are the most common secular activities. Housing, community economic
development, and job training are often not even identified as distinct activities. “Community
improvement,” when it is identified, encompasses a very broad array of activities. Most
research focuses on a limited geographic area, typically one city. Many analyses say nothing
about the type of community or congregation served; those that do typically focus on Christian
churches, particularly African American churches. Major gaps in the descriptive literature
include the activities of Latino churches, mosques, and Asian churches and temples.
Thus, the number of works that speak directly and helpfully to the topic of this report,
i.e., faith-based organizations’ involvement in housing and community economic development,
is very small. The literature gives more attention to the service provision activities of faith-
based organizations that are potentially germane to welfare reform. However, the issue of
whether services are offered in a way that helps households get ahead as opposed to getting
by (i.e., whether they are developmental in character) is rarely raised. Nevertheless, some of
this literature sheds light on issues of organizational capacity.
Given the limited treatment of faith-based community development in the published
literature, the scope of the research done for this report was broadened by conducting one-hour
telephone interviews with 27 researchers and practitioners (listed in Appendix A). They were
chosen because they are broadly knowledgeable about the subjects covered here, or because
they have specialized knowledge that could enrich the work. The interviews provided valuable
information not readily available in the literature: background, promising research topics, and
up-to-date information about the state of the field and the issues it confronts.
A Roadmap to the Report
The body of the report contains three chapters. Chapters 2 and 3 present key findings
from the literature review and interviews. Chapter 2 provides an overview of the non-worship
activities of faith-based organizations. It indicates the diversity of activities they have chosen to
undertake, and presents their community development activities in that broad context. It also
provides some insight into the organizational capacity of these groups and flags some of the
methodological problems involved in studying them.
Chapter 3 presents what the CDC movement has learned about the requisites of
effective community development practice, and compares those requisites with organizational
characteristics commonly found in congregations. It uses this comparison to characterize the
strengths and weaknesses that congregations bring to community development, and reflects on
what they imply about the opportunities and challenges of expanding faith-based participation in
the field.
Chapter 4 outlines promising research opportunities and highlights the policy
implications of what is currently known.
5

CHAPTER 2: FAITH-BASED PARTICIPATION IN
SOCIAL SERVICES AND COMMUNITY DEVELOPMENT
Optimism about the potential of faith-based organizations to engage in community
development is based in part on the active role many of them play in providing social services.
Collectively, faith-based organizations spend between $15 and $20 billion annually in privately-
raised funds on social services, in addition to millions of volunteer hours (Castelli and McCarthy,
1997). A close look at existing evidence reveals that despite their broad involvement in
services, most faith-based organizations are not active in community development.
Congregations, in particular, typically approach their service activities in a manner that appears
poorly matched to current community development practice. However, specific examples
illustrate that when they do become involved in community development, they can achieve
significant impacts. Faith-based organizations can also provide indirect support for community
development through their social investments.
This chapter presents the key findings concerning what is currently known about the
activities of faith-based organizations in community development, placing them in the context of
their broader involvement in services. The discussion addresses, in turn, each of the three
major types of faith-based organizations: congregations, denominational organizations and
national networks, and freestanding organizations.
Congregations
Many congregations engage in activities that extend beyond worship. The best available
evidence, from the National Congregations Study, indicates that 57 percent of congregations
engage in some type of service or community activity (Chaves 1999).
Although this figure makes clear that a majority of congregations are active in their
communities, some readers may find it surprisingly low. Until recently, the best available
information on congregational activity was from an earlier survey which found that over 90
percent of congregations were involved in service provision (Hodgkinson et al., 1993).
However, for methodological reasons, that survey over-represented large congregations, which
are the ones most likely to undertake service activities.
9
There is widespread agreement that
the more recent evidence is more accurate.
The range of these activities is enormous. Broadly speaking, human services and
health-related programs predominate (Hodgkinson, et al., 1993). In human services, the most
frequently offered are youth programs (including camps), marriage counseling, family
counseling, and meal services or food kitchens. Visitation or other supports for sick persons
and shut-ins are the most widespread health-related activities. When one looks in more detail
at specific activities, the most common ones are food programs, housing/shelter, and clothing
provision (see Table 1 taken from Chaves, 1999). Only 18 percent of congregations participate
in any type of housing program, which is the most common community development activity,
and only one percent engage in employment-related programs.
9
In developing its sampling frame for that survey the Independent Sector relied heavily on telephone
directories. They estimated that the nation had approximately 355,000 congregations, of which only 250,000 had
telephones. Those without telephones are disproportionately small.
6

Table 1
Congregations= Social Service Activities
(Number of Congregatons = 1,236)
Program Type Participating Congregants in
Congregations (%) Participating Congregations
(%)
1
Food
Housing/shelter
Clothing
Homelessness
Health
Education (not
including religious
education)
Domestic Violence
Tutoring/mentoring
Substance abuse
Employment
All projects
33 50
18 32
11 18
8 16
4 10
6 10
4 7
3 4
2 4
1 2
57 75
Note: Congregations could give multiple responses
Source:
1
These figures are larger because large congregations are more likely than smaller ones to offer services.
These high levels of engagement may appear to imply the operation of formal
programs, but that is not the norm. Although the activities are numerous, the amount of money
involved is generally small. For example, Hodgkinson, et al. (1993) estimated that the more
than 236,000 congregations involved in human services/welfare activities devoted an
impressive $4.4 billion to them. However, Chaves and Tsitsos (2000) find that the “median
dollar amount spent by congregations directly in support of social service programs [by which
they mean all non-worship activities] is about $1200” not counting the value of staff or volunteer
time or donations to denominations.
High rates of participation supported by small amounts of funding are the product of the
approach congregations typically take to involvement in service activities. For example, while
33 percent of congregations support food programs (see again Table 1) they do so in many
different ways. Some donate money to a food bank or supply volunteers to a meal-making
project; others operate a soup kitchen or distribute holiday food baskets to the poor. In short,
“when congregations do more than donate money or canned goods or old clothes, they are
most apt to organize small groups of volunteers to conduct relatively well-defined tasks on a
periodic basis” (Chaves and Tsitsos, 2000).
This distinctive approach extends to participation in activities commonly considered part
of community development (see Table 2). For example, of all the housing programs for seniors
supported by congregations, 86 percent are actually conducted by other organizations; 73
7

percent of affordable housing programs are done in this way, as well. Chaves (1999) finds that
by far the most common form of congregational participation in housing is supplying volunteers
to Habitat for Humanity.
Table 2
Percentage of Congregations
Engaged in Activity Areas by Program Type
(Number of C ongregations: 257,648)
Participates in,
Supports, or is
Affiliated with
Program Program Programs in Other
All All Run within Separately Organizations or
Areas of Activ ity Congregations Programs Congregation Incorporated in Denomination
Housing/shelter programs
f or homeless people 38.7 43.6 9.9 6.9 83.3
Affordable housing dev elopment
or programs 19.7 22.5 13.8 12.9 73.3
Housing programs f or seniors 19.2 20.8 3.4 10.6 86.1
Programs in community, including econom ic
dev elopment, job training, etc. 20.2 24.0 16.7 11.3 72.1
Note: Congregati ons c oul d giv e multi ple res ponses.
Source: Hodgki nson, et al ., From Belief to Commitment, 1993 Edi tion, Independent Sector.
Relatively low levels of congregational participation in community development may be
explained, at least partially, by this preferred approach to service. Community development, as
currently practiced by CDCs and others, is best done by independently incorporated
organizations because this provides the greatest financial and legal security for the participants.
Working with or through a separately incorporated organization is the least common mode of
congregational engagement in services. The challenges congregations face in starting up a
separate nonprofit organization are discussed further in the next chapter.
Housing Development
Faith-based CDCs are the most common examples of congregational sponsorship of
spin-off nonprofit organizations that engage in community development. Although only a small
fraction of congregations participate in housing development by forming separately
incorporated entities, prominent examples illustrate the up-side potential of this approach. For
example, Abyssinian Development Corporation (ADC) was established by Abyssinian Baptist
Church in Central Harlem. During its early years, ADC received from the Church important in-
kind support, including rent-free office space, free telephone and telephone answering service,
access to xerox and fax machines, help from Church volunteers, and high-quality financial
management services from the individual who performed that function for the Church. ADC’s
first project was a 25-unit transitional housing development, with on-site services, for formerly
homeless families; they have now developed more than 400 units of housing as well as a
variety of economic development projects (Vidal, 1998).
Another widely publicized example is Allen African Methodist Episcopal (AME) Church in
Jamaica, New York. The CDC started by the church began its work by developing a $13
8

million, 300-unit senior citizens center with funding from the Section 8 and Section 202
programs; it is one of the largest faith-based elderly housing developments ever constructed
(Decaro, 1997). As in the ADC example, housing production marked the beginning of a steady
stream of community development activity.
New Community Corporation (NCC) is by far the largest faith-based CDC. It has
developed more than 3,300 housing units (permanent housing for both families and seniors,
plus transitional units for formerly-homeless families) and a number of economic development
projects in its Central Ward neighborhood of Newark, New Jersey. Through its affiliates, it also
provides a variety of social services. Although now it is sometimes seen as being associated
with St. Rose of Lima Church, where NCC’s leader Msgr. William Linder is the priest, that is not
the case. NCC’s origins lie in a coalition of urban and suburban churches formed in response
to the Newark riots in 1968 (Briggs and Mueller, 1997).
A collaborative faith-based community development venture is the Nehemiah Project
mounted by East Brooklyn Churches (EBC) through a separately incorporated entity. After
several years of discussion and exploration mainly organized by the Industrial Areas
Foundation, this partnership formed in 1981 to recreate livable neighborhoods in devastated
parts of East Brooklyn by providing opportunities for home ownership. The Nehemiah Project
built two- and three-bedroom row houses which it sold to families with average annual incomes
of $15,000 to $25,000, less than the cost of construction.
10
By 1996, Nehemiah had built and
sold 2,300 single-family row-house units (Thomas and Blake, 1996). Other well-known
examples with similarly structured sponsorship include South Bronx Churches Nehemiah
Homes and Harlem Churches for Community Improvement (HCCI), which spurred the
redevelopment of Bradhurst, a 40-block neighborhood in upper Central Harlem.
Economic Development
The most well-known examples of faith-based economic development projects are CDC-
sponsored commercial real estate developments. These include NCC’s strip mall anchored by
Pathmark Supermarket, a similar development recently completed by ADC, and smaller scale
retail development done by Allen AME on the block that houses their school. Equally prominent
commercial developments, such as CDC of Kansas City’s (CDCKC) two shopping centers, are
much less strongly identified with faith-based groups, even though a neighborhood coalition of
churches provided early financial support and raised seed capital for a limited number of new
businesses to occupy smaller storefronts in those developments.
Some congregations support community development finance, mainly credit unions
(Nowak, et al., 1989). For example, Concord Baptist Church in Brooklyn established Concord
Federal Credit Union (CFCU) after eight members of the congregation were refused credit by
conventional banks. CFCU is a separately incorporated nonprofit organization, accountable to
the Church through its 14-member board of directors; the board members manage the credit
union with the help of a part-time paid manager. CFCU, with almost one thousand members
and just under $3 million in assets, offers services that range from payroll deductions to auto
loans (Toussaint, 1997).
10
In 1987, the typical Nehemiah home cost around $53,000 to construct. The homes were sold for
$43,000. The difference of $10,000 was financed through a zero-interest second mortgage sponsored by the City of
New York and repayable upon resale of the property. Nehemiah homeowners paid between $325 and $425 monthly
towards repayment of the primary mortgage.
9

First African Methodist Episcopal Church (FAME) in Los Angeles manages a substantial
micro-loan fund, established after the violence in South Central Los Angeles that followed the
announcement of the Rodney King verdict. When rebuilding efforts began, FAME received a $1
million grant from the Walt Disney Companies, used to develop the program, which supplies
low interest loans of $2,000 to $20,000 to minority entrepreneurs in the area (Gite, 1993).
Which Congregations are Most Likely to do Community Development?
A small number of high-quality quantitative analyses have identified five factors that
appear to influence a congregation's likelihood of participating in some type of service activity.
While there are no analyses that look specifically at community development activities, it is
reasonable to hypothesize that the same factors would affect engagement in community
development.
11
Size. Larger congregations have more contributors and hence more funding; they also are
more likely to have paid staff, more staff, and a larger pool of volunteers to support activities.
Chaves and Tsitsos (2000) find that large congregations report supporting more service
programs than smaller ones. This finding confirms the finding in Chaves (1998) that large
congregations are more likely than others to report that they would be willing to apply for
government funds to support social services; however, this effect is significant only for
congregations with more than 900 members.
• Race. Predominately African American congregations are significantly more likely than
white congregations to provide social services (Chaves and Higgins, 1992). Chaves (1998)
confirms that congregations that are more than 80 percent African American are
significantly more likely than other congregations to be willing to apply for government funds
to support social services.
• Income. Evidence on the importance of income appears mixed. Early evidence linked
wealthier congregations to higher levels of social service activity (Castelli and McCarthy,
1997). However, Chaves (1998) found that after controlling for size, congregation income
(measured as whether more than 20 percent of the congregation is poor) was not a
significant determinant of likelihood of activity. Later analysis of the number of service
programs reported by congregations found a positive income effect (Chaves and Tsitsos,
2000). This suggests that what influences participation is the presence of enough income
within the congregation to support service activity, not the presence of low-income members
who advocate for that activity.
• Theological and political orientation. Liberal congregations are more likely than others to
engage in social services. An analysis which included a pastoral rating of each
congregation’s general ideology (from liberal to very conservative), found that liberal
congregations provided more social services; in some cases, they were twice as likely as
very conservative ones to provide a particular service (Foley, et al., 1999). Chaves (1998)
and Chaves and Tsitsos (2000) confirm this general finding using a typology based on the
congregations’ denominational affiliations.
11
All of the findings reported in this subsection except the one on leadership and the report by Castelli and
McCarthy (1997) are based on multivariate analyses of data from the National Congregations Study done by Chaves
and his co-authors.
10

• Community Need. A congregation is more likely to provide services if its house of worship
is located in a neighborhood where services are clearly needed. Thus, congregations
located in census tracts where more than 30 percent of the residents have incomes below
the poverty line report more service programs than those located in other types of
neighborhoods (Chaves and Tsitsos, 2000).
• Leadership. Case studies and other qualitative accounts consistently emphasize that the
extent to which a congregation engages in service activities is heavily influenced by the
tendency of its leadership to be so engaged. This finding flags the fairly obvious point that
any effort to influence congregational behavior will likely hinge on reaching, educating and
persuading ministers, priests and other congregational leaders.
In the aggregate, this evidence suggests that the group of congregations most likely to
become actively engaged in services includes large African American congregations that are
located in lower-income communities but that attract as members significant numbers of
congregants who are not themselves poor. These findings take on particular salience in light of
the examples cited above of prominent faith-based CDCs, most of which were founded by
congregations that meet this description.
National Denominations and Their Affiliates and Networks
Congregations are not the only faith-based organizations doing important social service
work. National denominations and their social service arms, such as Catholic Charities,
Lutheran Social Services, the Salvation Army (actually a religious denomination) and the United
Jewish Federations provide a wide variety of services, often on a much larger scale than
congregations. Together with national denominations, networked organizations such as the
YMCA and YWCA provide many of the same kinds of services congregations do, often with the
same family focus, but their greater size and resources enable them to provide more
professional, in-depth case work. Private contributions to the six largest such social service
providers in 1994 were estimated to be more than $1.6 billion, with which they assisted more
than 60 million people (Castelli and McCarthy, 1997).
Unlike congregations, many of which have small staffs whose main purpose is
supporting the spiritual life of the congregation, national denominations are typically large,
sophisticated entities with professional staff. They tend to be much better than congregations
at record-keeping because they handle much larger sums for which they are more likely to be
held accountable; their social service agencies are also much more likely than congregations to
use some public funding to support their work. Although their larger size and superior record-
keeping make them more amenable than congregations to study, there is no overall portrait of
this part of the religious sector.
Housing Development
The most visible community development activity of this part of the religious sector is the
work of Habitat for Humanity International (HFHI), an international network founded in 1976 as
an ecumenical Christian housing ministry. In the aggregate, network members had completed
an estimated 60,000 homes by mid-1997 (Applied Real Estate Analysis, 1998). However, the
majority of them are abroad. In 1995, only 3,280 of the nearly 10,000 homes completed were
in the U. S. Most were newly-constructed single family homes, many built with some sweat
equity from the purchasing low-income families.
11

All Habitat homes are built under the aegis of local affiliates, which are responsible for
assembling sites, materials and volunteer labor, and for screening buyers and selling them the
homes.
12
HFHI reported more than 1,400 U. S. local affiliates in 1997. As affiliates, they adopt
HFHl's faith-based status; as a matter of religious principle, Habitat home mortgages carry zero
interest.
Although the network is large, most of the individual affiliates are not, and each builds a
relatively small number of homes annually. The lifetime production of the 19 affiliates selected
for Applied Real Estate Analysis (AREA) study (most of which were founded in the 1980s)
ranged from a low of 11 homes (Eugene, Oregon) to a high of 176 (Jacksonville, Florida). Thus
their average housing output is small compared to that of the average CDC (Vidal, 1992).
Other organizations that have actively developed housing include Catholic Charities,
Lutheran Social Services, the Salvation Army, the Jewish Federations, and B'nai B'rith. Some
of their activities are reported by Castelli and McCarthy (1997), who cite a study by Catholic
Charities (1996) indicating that Catholic organizations sponsor more than 50,000 housing units
serving more than 70,000 people, most of them elderly.
Interview data indicate that the extent of housing work by the denominational service
organizations varies from place to place. For example, Catholic Charities' level of activity varies
greatly by diocese, with some dioceses (e. g., New York, Brooklyn, Chicago, Detroit) having the
reputation of being particularly active. Catholic Charities sometimes works on housing in
conjunction with parishes, but also works independently—either directly, in a partnership, or by
spinning off a separate development organization such as a CDC. Similarly, Lutheran activities
are organized, and vary, by synod. The housing work of the Jewish Federations, in contrast,
does not follow strong organizational lines; its more than 150 member agencies are heavily
supported by the contributions of non-religious Jews who feel a strong cultural affiliation.
Faith-based organizations have been active participants in two major federal housing
production programs: Section 202 and Section 236. However, the limited data on the
participation of religious groups in those programs do not distinguish between congregations
and denominational or other national organizations. Given the greater resources and
organizational capacity of the denominations, however, it is likely that they account for a large
share of the faith-based housing production.
A survey of Section 202 projects in 1988 found that 49.7 percent had religious sponsors
(Select Committee on Aging, 1989); they had produced an estimated 161,000 housing units. If
the rate of production held steady since the time of the survey, and if religious sponsors
maintained their share, they would have a current inventory of more than 215,000 units; this
would make them the holders of a substantial fraction of the Section 202 housing stock.
Faith-based organizations were also important participants in the Section 236 program,
which provided assisted housing for families. However, anecdotal evidence suggests that
congregational sponsors, in particular, experienced high default rates in this program. One view
is that “church groups often looked upon the projects they sponsored as a form of charity, kept
12 Since Habitat for Humanity works through this national network, it is discussed in this section.
However, some researchers consider Habitat a parachurch organization, and as such might be more comfortable
including it in the discussion of free-standing organizations. This is but one example of the difficulty of applying a
simple set of categories to a very diverse set of organizations.
12

rents artificially low, and were willing to overlook rent delinquencies” (Comptroller General of the
U.S., 1978). Another, expressed in interviews, is that residents of the developments “didn”t feel
they had to pay rent to the deacons.” While nonprofits did have higher default rates than for-
profits, no hard information is available about how faith-based nonprofits performed relative to
secular ones (Calhoun and Walker, 1994).
Economic Development
National denominations and their affiliates also provide some indirect support for
community development through their social investments. Starting in the early 1970s, the
Interfaith Center for Corporate Responsibility (ICCR), an affiliate of the National Council of
Churches, has taken the lead in fostering faith-based work on corporate responsibility and
social investing. At that time, the early efforts by churches to invest in poor neighborhoods
were experiencing substantial difficulty. A study commissioned by ICCR found that these
investments were commonly treated as “ancillary to the church's basic mission,” that churches
invested little strategic planning or discipline in the investment process, and that they had
unrealistic expectations about risk. Seventy percent of the programs studied were defunct or in
the process of being dismantled at the time of the study, and 55 percent of all debt and equity
investments made by the ten programs studied were either considered poor performers or had
been written off as bad debt (Nowak, et al., 1989).
This negative experience gave social investing something of a bad name in the religious
community, and limited its range. Over time, however, the social investment climate has
gradually improved through both the education programs of ICCR and the emergence of high-
visibility positive investment opportunities (most notably South Shore Bank {now Shorebank
Corporation}, which received considerable help from the religious community). Faith-based
investors, often through ICCR, began to treat their investments more professionally. This
included developing investment policies that clearly define positions on risk, financial return,
and social impact; investment strategies consistent with church resource and operating
constraints; and financial leveraging strategies with public and private agencies.
Today ICCR oversees more than one billion dollars in social investments on behalf of
270 investors, including denominations, religious orders, pension funds, hospitals and other
institutions. Of this, between five and six million dollars are invested in community economic
development. Typical economic development investments are deposits in minority banks, credit
unions, various types of loan funds and cooperative businesses. ICCR participants also make
similar types of investments (of unknown amount) through a multitude of local and regional
social investment vehicles.
13
In addition, pension funds (of various denominations and religious
orders) participating in ICCR have approximately $300 million invested in low-income housing
(Smith interview, June 7, 1999).
Freestanding Faith-based Organizations
Freestanding faith-based organizations constitute a heterogeneous group. It includes
ecumenical and interfaith coalitions; large nonprofit institutions such as universities or hospitals
with a current or previous religious affiliation; and a multitude of smaller nonprofits formed for a
variety of purposes. Although several types of these organizations could have a community
development role, the literature on their participation in social services and community
13
Nowak, et al. (1989) provides a rich profile of the shape of these investments in the Philadelphia area.
13

development consists primarily of analyses of the smaller faith-based nonprofits, which are
therefore the focus here.
As noted earlier, religious organizations sometimes form small faith-based nonprofits
that incorporate as 501(c)(3) or 501(c)(4) organizations. Their religious affiliations may be
formal, ideological, or simply based on shared values. They appear to be numerous, and have
been gaining increased attention as a research topic. However, they are difficult to study
because the roots or other ties that make them faith-based may not be readily apparent, and
what fraction they constitute of the nonprofit services sector remains unknown.
This group includes the smaller separately incorporated nonprofits started by
congregations, including faith-based CDCs and credit unions. As noted in the introduction to
this report, about 14 percent of the nation’s CDCs report that they are faith-based. Preliminary
indications are that they are younger and smaller, on average, than secular CDCs: they appear
to have significantly smaller full-time staffs and are more than twice as likely to have annual
budgets of less than $500,000.
14
As the previously-cited examples illustrate, however, some of
them are substantial organizations.
Like congregations, small faith-based nonprofits are much more likely to provide direct
services to individuals than to engage in broader community benefit activities. Wolpert (1997),
studying such organizations in distressed neighborhoods in Philadelphia and Trenton, finds
them heavily concentrated in the human services (although he provides no numbers).
Gronbjerg and Nelson’s (1995) examination of small nonprofits in Illinois found that only nine
percent of religious nonprofits, but 16 percent of their secular counterparts, reported housing or
community development (not defined) as their primary mission.
The literature on small religious nonprofits includes a number of findings about their
characteristics. They are often begun through the initiative of a religious leader who may have
some expertise in the organization’s program area. Nitterhouse (1997) argues that the tie to a
parent organization increases the viability of new small religious nonprofits relative to their
secular counterparts. The parent can provide a pool of volunteers with a shared faith and
commitment to the activity; meeting space, office equipment, free mailing and telephone service
and other in-kind support; initial program expertise; management support; visibility; and possibly
start-up funds. Wolpert’s (1997) analysis makes a similar case. He notes that the small
religious nonprofits he studied were more stable than their secular counterparts and attributes
this to several possible causes. These include their ability to tap the parent organization for
funds, their lower salary base and administrative costs, and their effective recruitment of
volunteers and locally resident board members.
CONCLUSION
Faith-based organizations are engaged in a wide variety of activities beyond worship,
most of which provide services and immediate benefits to needy individuals and families. More
than half of all congregations participate. The approach they take most frequently is to support
with donations and volunteer labor service delivery conducted by other types of organizations.
The likelihood that they will become involved in this way appears to depend on several factors,
including whether the congregation’s house of worship is in a poor neighborhood; whether the
14
These estimates are based on a preliminary, unpublished analysis of NCCED data done for this report.
14

congregation has or can raise adequate resources, which depends importantly on its size
(especially whether it is very large), and possibly on congregant income; its racial composition;
its theological and political orientation; and pastoral leadership.
Taken together, these factors suggest that independent participation in community
development (i.e., without partners) is likely to be attractive to only a small fraction of
congregations. To engage with maximum effect, they will generally need to work through a
separately incorporated nonprofit entity, and fostering such an entity makes special demands
on congregations. Despite their limited numbers, however, those congregations could make
significant contributions to community development.
Larger faith-based organizations, particularly those affiliated with major denominations,
have some experience in housing and community economic development, both directly and
through their social investments. However, the extent of their participation is unknown. Among
the freestanding faith-based nonprofits, faith-based CDCs are the easiest community
development participants to identify, but a systematic analysis of their characteristics and
activities remains to be done.
15

CHAPTER 3: WHAT DO CONGREGATIONS BRING TO COMMUNITY DEVELOPMENT?
Congregations have a unique vantage point from which to enter community
development. It is a vantage point with both advantages and disadvantages. Many
congregations possess some of the qualities—such as an organizational structure and the
dedication to improving the situations of low-income people and their neighborhoods—needed
to engage in successful community development. However, congregations that attempt to do
community development may also stumble upon difficulties, including a lack of financial and
technical expertise. Ultimately, the degree to which a congregation can successfully engage in
community development depends on its ability to navigate the rough terrain of its advantages
and disadvantages.
Requisites of Successful Community Development
Community development is difficult to do well. It requires activities that are technically
complex and must be sustained over time to achieve a meaningful impact. As community
development has matured from a movement into a small industry of sorts, both funders and
researchers have become increasingly interested in the factors that contribute to Asuccessful@
CDC performance. Walker and Weinheimer (1998), based on an analysis of CDCs in 23 cities,
identify five types of organizational capacity important for successful, sustained CDC
performance. They must have the ability and capacity to do the following:
• Plan effectively. This includes developing (with community input) an understanding of
community assets and needs that informs a strategic vision for change, and internal
planning to match its resources, programs, etc., to the requirements of implementing that
vision.
• Secure resources. This includes acquiring grants, loans, contracts, fees or earnings, and
technical assistance.
• Develop strong internal management and governance. This includes establishing good
working relationships between board and staff and representation of the community on the
board.
• Deliver programs. This includes erecting systems to deliver the full range of programs
undertaken.
• Network. This includes building relationships with other entities, both public and private,
inside and outside the community.
15
15
Glickman and Servon (1998) take a somewhat different tack in covering this same ground, identifying
qualities similar to those above, but organizing them differently and giving them different relative emphasis. They
argue that CDCs need five kinds of capacity: (1) resource, (2) organizational, (3) networking, (4) programmatic, and
(5) political. This review works with the Walker and Weinheimer framework for three reasons. First, the usefulness
of distinguishing between the ability to relate to the public sector and to community constituents, on the one hand
(political capacity), and to others involved in the CDCs work and organizational success, on the other hand
(networking capacity), is not clear; many similar skills are involved. Second, the Glickman and Servon framework
does not leave out planning capacity, as Walker and Weinheimer implicitly suggest; at least some elements of
planning are included within other types of capacity (e.g., to plan for organizational growth, to project revenues and
revenue needs, to do strategic and project planning). However, focusing directly on the importance of various types
of planning is important in the current context since, as discussed below, congregations as a group are commonly
believed to have limited capacity in this area. Finally, Walker and Weinheimer do a better job of embedding their
16

Other studies round out these findings. Based on an analysis of 130 exemplary CDCs,
Vidal (1992) identified five factors consistently associated with high levels of housing
production: leadership stability; existence of a clear organizational strategy; size;
16
the
importance of the activity to the organization (e.g., was housing a strategic priority); and years
of experience, where longevity (16 or more years) yields disproportionate positive returns.
Most CDC-built housing is rental housing; once built, it must be managed. Nonprofit
housing organizations need the following program delivery and internal systems characteristics
to manage their housing well: the willingness and ability to treat property management as a
business rather than a service activity; the ability to do physical and financial planning; the
capacity to establish and maintain systems that facilitate management of numerous types of
details; and the ability of the property manager (whether in the nonprofit’s employ or an outside
agent) to establish positive relationships with tenants, either individually or through tenant
associations (Bratt, et al., 1994).
Finally, all three of these major analyses emphasized the importance of the local
institutional and programmatic setting. CDCs are more productive and effective when they have
access to funding, technical assistance, and supportive partners (such as foundations, banks,
national intermediaries, local housing partnerships, and city government) who willingly
coordinate their activities.
Congregations (and other faith-based organizations) that seek to enter the community
development field as it is currently structured will need to bring similar competencies to the
table to be successful.
Congregations Bring Distinctive Advantages to the Table
Congregations can bring distinctive advantages to the task of establishing an
organization that can engage effectively in community development.
17
The advantages they
possess include:
• Potential as an incubator. Between 5 and 15 percent of congregations, depending on
their size, that are involved in some community development activities conduct some of
those activities through an independent nonprofit organization (Hodgkinson, et al., 1993).
There is also ample evidence of congregations supporting a wide array of programs in-
house with a mix of funding, in-kind support, space and volunteer assistance. Both of these
facts suggest that a congregation’s potential as an incubator can be an important
advantage. Anecdotal evidence about early congregational support for now-well-known
faith-based CDCs, such as those cited in Chapter 2, further supports this point, as does the
literature on small religious nonprofits.
discussion of needed CDC organizational capacity into a larger discussion of what the community development
support can/should provide to individual neighborhood organizations.
16
Size was defined in terms of the CDC’s annual non-development budget, taken as the best ready
indicator of available resources; a separate piece of analysis estimated that organizations did not begin to benefit
from any economies of scale until they reached operating budgets above $1 million. Note, however, that budget and
staff size are usually highly correlated.
17
This discussion adopts the framework developed by Nowak, et al. (1989).
17

• Potential access to volunteers. Several interview respondents made a point of noting that
congregation volunteers represent more than “free labor.” They are consistently
characterized as good-hearted, generous, committed people who come to their volunteer
activities with energy and a positive attitude. At the same time, they were sometimes
characterized as being politically and financially naive. They may not necessarily have the
technical and financial expertise need for development activity (Gittell and Vidal, 1998).
• Potential access to the financial resources of the congregation and its affiliated
organizations. This advantage is very real, but it is also easily susceptible to exaggeration
and wishful thinking. Most congregations have modest amounts of money available for
public-benefit activities, and the claims against those resources are often numerous and
worthy (Hodgkinson, et al., 1993; Chaves and Tsitsos, 2000). This is especially true of
congregations that are located in lower-income communities and that also have significant
older buildings to maintain (Cnaan, 1997). Further, more money flows from congregations
to denominational organizations than flows in the other direction. Nevertheless, modest
amounts of seed money, strategically used, can often make a big difference to a fledgling
program or organization. In addition, congregations or their denominations (or the religious
orders of their clergy) can occasionally provide badly needed emergency support. In a few
instances, congregations may be in a position to offer debt and/or equity for development
projects, or to provide on-going operating support. Nowak, et al. (1989) found, however,
that this latter form of support is the least common.
• A context that engenders public trust. Although this fact is not commonly acknowledged
directly, religious organizations are widely presumed to be able to act on behalf of principles
that rise above narrow self-interest. This positions them to help legitimate ideas and to play
a constructive role in resolving social conflicts - both of potential importance in implementing
development projects.
Congregations Also Encumbered by Some Disadvantages
Potential advantages are, of course, accompanied by a set of potential disadvantages
that congregations seeking to enter community development will need to avoid or learn to
manage. These include:
• Potential for projects to be viewed as church rather than neighborhood initiatives.
This issue is especially likely to arise when concrete benefits (such as housing, jobs or child
care slots) are to be made available to individuals. Congregants often have an
understandable inclination to make sure that “their own” have access to the benefits they
have worked hard to provide. The community, in turn, may be prone to view the allocation of
individual benefits as a test of whether the congregation really has the neighborhood’s
interests at heart.
• Congregational staff may have too many demands on their time. Especially when
community development organizations are new and projects are first being started, the
tendency is often for members of the congregation or its staff to oversee the new venture.
This calls into question whether the project will receive the concentrated time and attention
it needs in order to be successful (Nowak, et al., 1989).
• Congregational staff may lack necessary skills. Numerous observers voice concerns
about the financial management and record-keeping of congregations (and hence of
18

activities they engage in directly), fearing that many lack the capacity to avoid co-mingling of
community development and congregation funds. Since much community development
work depends on public investments or subsidy dollars, the fact that only an estimated three
percent of congregations receive public sector funds (Chaves, 1998) and understand the
standards of accountability that those funds impose on the recipient also provides grounds
for caution. In fact, several of those interviewed for this project noted that many
congregations avoid public funds precisely because they do not want to deal with those
standards and oversight.
• Potential for conflicts between religious values and the demands of the marketplace.
Development is not charity; it is a difficult business and in poor, disinvested communities it
is even more difficult. A challenge for faith-based developers is to retain and draw strength
from shared spiritual values, but to do so in a way that is consistent with practicing
development as a business, e.g., preparing sound financial plans and budgets, collecting
rents consistently, and so forth. The congregational experience with Section 236 projects
reinforces the importance of attending to this issue.
When Congregations and Community Developers Join Forces: A National Example
What happens when congregations partner with seasoned community developers who
can help them navigate the unfamiliar waters of development? Religious Institutions as
Partners in Community Based Development, a national program launched by the Lilly
Endowment in 1989, invited congregations to form partnerships with experienced community
development organizations and propose initial development projects. Lilly funded 28
competitively chosen partnerships, the majority of which were urban and served low-income,
minority communities. In 1989, the Lilly Endowment commissioned an evaluation of these
partnerships. The results, reported in Scheie, et al. (1991), offer insight into the road ahead for
faith-based organizations that enter development work, even though the participating
congregations did not shoulder the burdens of development on their own.
In large part, the partnerships were successful. Most accomplished almost all of what
they set out to achieve. At the end of the project period, 900 housing units had been built,
rehabilitated, repaired, or were under construction; another 400 units were in the planning or
design phase. Additional results included eight businesses started or strengthened, 11 new
revolving loan funds with nearly $6 million in new assets, and an increase of $500,000 in the
funds held by seven faith-based credit unions. In addition, the evaluation found evidence that
“bringing religious institutions and community development groups together opens up the
possibility for building bridges across racial and class lines.”
These positive results were possible, in part, because many of the congregations
partnered with very strong community developers. However, despite having such strong
partners—and despite the great satisfaction they felt as a result of their accomplishments—
congregational participants reported that:
...the cautious or balky behavior of financiers and government officials was "frustrating;”
the required technical knowledge of design, construction, finance, marketing, and
property management was sometimes “overwhelming;” the persistence and attention to
detail was “tedious;” and the tendency of secular partners to value religious partners’
financial or property contributions more than their spiritual and interpersonal
contributions was “irritating.”
19

The evaluators presented their assessment of the likelihood that the new partnerships
would be sustained; 75 percent of the partnerships were judged capable of continuation in each
of six “critical” dimensions. These included the partnership (1) being organized and committed
to continuing community development activity, (2) having knowledgeable and respected staff,
(3) having community support, (4) having a plan for continuing its activities, (5) having
continued funding, and (6) having equipment and other resources. Absence of a plan and lack
of funding were the two most common missing ingredients. Overall, however, Scheie, et al.,
(1991) felt that the greatest risk to sustained future involvement in community development lay
in the narrow base of support the activity had within the congregations: active participants were
typically very committed, but few in number. This may account for the missing ingredients
observed. A narrow base of support is unlikely to stimulate a congregation to make demanding
new plans for which it must actively seek out new sources of funding.
Conclusion
Although faith-based organizations may face many challenges if they engage in
community development, they also bring distinctive advantages to the field. The degree to
which they will be successful community developers depends in large part on their ability to
draw on their advantages while managing or overcoming their disadvantages. If they embark
on this course, many will need assistance—both organizational and technical as well as
financial. Even so, many will find traditional community development approaches daunting. For
these organizations, new institutional vehicles to channel their contributions may need to be
developed. Chapter 4 considers these possibilities.
20

CHAPTER 4: IMPLICATIONS FOR RESEARCH AND POLICY
Policymakers have increasingly viewed congregations as vital community institutions
that should play a greater role in building stronger communities. Some congregations, already
committed to addressing the needs of the poor, have responded with interest; so have some of
the national denominations or networks of which they are a part. Lively dialog, and some
careful early action, have been the result. This report is an effort to advance that dialog and
support careful action.
In order to proceed responsibly, each group has important questions to which research
has only begun to provide answers. Supporters of community development need to know if
faith-based organizations bring distinctive strengths or advantages to the field. Faith-based
organizations (not just congregations) need to understand better which among their numbers
are well-suited to this potential new activity. Both groups, and their prospective supporters from
all sectors, need to identify what help faith-based organizations need to explore this new
territory and seize its opportunities, but to avoid fruitless and possibly costly mistakes.
This chapter builds on the findings reported earlier by advancing a research agenda that
would start to answer these questions. The proposed agenda is not intended to be
comprehensive. Rather, the effort is to both focus and structure the options in ways that will
inform practice, recognizing that the list of relevant question may grow and sharpen as more is
learned and faith-based community development practice evolves.
18
Specifically, the proposed
agenda tries to:
• Focus on the community development mainstream, but reflect a broader view of the field
that can help researchers, policy makers and the public to think broadly about how to select
and position their own efforts;
• Focus on possibilities that build incrementally from existing knowledge; and
• Inform efforts intended to help faith-based organizations enter the field in ways that
capitalize on their strengths.
The chapter concludes by identifying policy implications that seem warranted on the basis of
the limited amount of “hard” knowledge that is currently available.
The Issue of Faith
In pursuing the suggested agenda, researchers and funders may need to face directly
an issue some find troublesome: how to deal forthrightly with faith. Advancing a respectful
research agenda requires identifying ways to treat faith as something more than an
organizational label. This will be both challenging and delicate, and extends well beyond the
need to tread carefully the separation between church and state.
18
Readers interested in conducting or funding research in the field should know that a small number of
substantial analyses are currently planned or in progress. They include a book that will present comprehensive
findings from the National Congregations Study; a national survey-based study of Hispanic congregations based at
Brooklyn College; the U.S. Congregational Life Survey Project to be conducted by Research Services Presbyterian
Church (U.S.A); and an analysis of seven parachurch organizations, including Habitat for Humanity, and an in-depth
study of Catholic Charities, both based at Loyola Marymount University.
21

Members of faith communities want their participation in urban ministry to be valued for
more than the money, free space and cheap labor many hope they can bring to the table. As
one interview subject put it, “It’s insulting; they come with dollar signs in their eyes.” Faith-
based practitioners feel strongly that they bring something distinctive and valuable to
community development, something eminently worthy of respect; if research and researchers
are perceived as not showing that respect—and they are sometimes perceived that way—
valuable learning opportunities will be lost. The challenges posed by this issue arise most
directly in research on congregations, but also have potential relevance for studies of
ecumenical and interfaith coalitions, where the issue of how to manage differences in religious
beliefs and practices may become important.
Methodologically, it is not always clear which organizations should be considered “faith-
based.” Some cases, e.g., congregations and religious orders, are straightforward. Others are
not, especially among freestanding groups like small faith-based nonprofits. Two examples
illustrate the methodological problem, which will likely be most nettlesome in analyses intended
to compare the conduct and outcomes of faith-based and non-faith-based community
development. As noted in Chapter 2, CDCs and other nonprofits created by religious
organizations often have close ties to their “parent” organization initially. In some cases, this tie
is enduring; in others, it atrophies as the new group matures, clergy and CDC staff turn over,
and congregants’ interests change. In time, the spin-off group may be indistinguishable from its
counterparts wth secular roots. In conducting research, how should one distinguish between
organizations that are and are not “really” faith-based in any particular analysis? Even more
vexing is the methodological challenge presented by the fact that the community development
movement has attracted many individuals whose work in the field, often at a very senior level, is
strongly motivated and shaped by their religious faith even though they may not work for an
organization with current or historical religious ties. How should researchers treat (or even
identify) the organizations they lead, e.g., in a comparison of faith-based and non-faith-based
CDCs? In both of these examples, relying on the organization's self-identification creates a
defensible categorization, but does not necessarily address the underlying analytical problem.
19
An especially difficult unanswered question is whether and how faith makes a difference
in the character of community development work. Addressing it directly does not mean
undertaking research on the so-called “miracle factor.” Rather, it entails careful exploration of
the various ways in which a belief system or ties to a religious organization affects decisions
about whether and how development is done. For example, congregations may choose to
provide services that meet the immediate needs of the poor (rather than to engage in
development) because this activity matches their organizational capacity or because their belief
system emphasizes the importance of charity. Some faith-based organizations may be wary of
adopting the market-driven principles that accompany some types of development, e.g., taking
the chance that they might need to evict a poor household that could not meet rent payments.
The perceived importance of dealing with the needs of “the whole person” might give faith-
based organizations an advantage over their secular counterparts in developing and operating
transitional housing for troubled families. These types of questions are researchable; additional
hypotheses worth pursing are identified in the next section.
19
How important this problem might be is a function of whether, for any particular issue, what Areally
matters@ is an individual leader’s faith (e.g., spiritual beliefs or life experience in a religious family or faith community,
as they affect the organization), or an organizational connection (either spiritual or formal) to a faith community. This
question is one on which opinions differ, but is an empirical, researchable question, at least in principle.
22

Finally, not all research on faith-based organizations in community development is well-
suited to public sponsorship or involvement. Members of faith communities are quick to point
this out. For example, one minister interviewed made the case that faith-based audiences need
research on how community development or other social ministry affects their religious self-
consciousness. He was very clear, however, that this was not an appropriate topic for publicly-
funded research.
Do Faith-Based Organizations Bring Distinctive Advantages to Community
Development?
This question is most readily addressed by comparing faith-based and secular
organizations active in the CDC movement. The primary objectives are to describe the extent
to which the two groups differ (or not) and to obtain insight into any distinctive advantages or
disadvantages that faith-based organizations bring to the field. One way to do this is to
compare and contrast the two types of organizations in segments of community development
already known to include both faith-based and secular participants: CDCs, community
development financial institutions (CDFIs), and workforce development organizations. A
second approach is to compare the experience of all types of faith-based and secular nonprofit
organizations in implementing federal community development programs. This section
discusses each of these alternatives, in turn.
CDCs
The best way to do a systematic, national comparison of faith-based and secular CDCs
would be to analyze the data collected to prepare Coming of Age (NCCED, 1999). (It reports
that 14 percent of survey respondents self-identify as faith-based.) This analysis could examine
variations in such characteristics as age, size, types of communities served, mix of activities,
output in several key categories (including rental and owner housing production, square footage
of commercial and industrial space produced, and lending in support of small business),
amount and sources of funding, and denominational affiliation (if any). Sample sizes would be
too small to support analysis of individual denominations, but would likely permit use of a
typology of denominations (such as the one used by Chaves (2000)) to compare the faith-
based CDCs to one another in various ways.
Any analysis of the NCCED data to examine the activities of faith-based CDCs will
certainly have a sizeable housing component, since that is those CDCs’ major development
activity. That analysis should include an initial look at how faith-based CDCs have used various
federal programs and how their reliance on those programs differs, if at all, from that of secular
CDCs. Analogously, any analysis starting from the Independent Sector or National
Congregations Study data could identify a sample of congregations reporting housing activities
and investigate in detail which programs they have used and what their experience has been.
Both types of analyses could also explore whether faith-based organizations have a record of
successfully developing affordable housing without federal funding and, if so, how and why they
have done so.
The NCCED data set could serve as a sampling frame to select samples (random,
clustered, or stratified) of CDCs for more detailed qualitative study.
20
Such samples could
20
An ideal sampling frame would include a complete listing of all entities in the category to be studied. The
NCCED survey respondents do not constitute the relevant universe, but this listing is by far the most complete single
23

support additional comparative analyses, e.g., to compare faith-based and secular CDCs in
terms of the characteristics of the staff (composition, compensation, training, turnover), the role
of residents and other community stakeholders in governance, and access to various types of
financial and technical resources. They could also support qualitative assessment of a number
of hypotheses relevant to community development practice, such as:
• Faith and/or participation in a faith-based organization sustains community development
practitioners in the face of burnout and poor compensation, thereby increasing leadership
stability and enhancing organizational capacity and production.
• Faith-based development groups diversify beyond housing more quickly than other groups
because of their orientation toward assisting “the whole person” and the conviction (at least
for some) that the person reaches full potential only in connection to community.
• Faith-based development groups do a better job than secular groups, on average, of
keeping residents engaged in the organization’s work. As one interview respondent put it,
“they are gemeinschaft, not gesellschaft, organizations.”
Alternatively, samples drawn from the NCCED data set, or from existing lists of CDCs in
particular states or localities, might be employed to examine in greater detail distinctive features
of faith-based CDCs. For example, rich analytic cases could explore and illustrate, from their
perspective, what “faith-based development” means, how congregations or denominational
organizations have influenced them, and the kinds of things that they believe they do
distinctively well. An expansion on this approach might develop cases from multiple points of
view, e.g., the faith-based CDC, the clergy and laity of the affiliated congregation(s), and others
(such as members of other significant community organizations, or funders and partners
outside the community). Comparative analyses of these cases would shed light on the
dynamics of the “spin-off process,” and would also begin to inform the question of whether
differences among faith-based organizations are important in community development and, if
so, how.
More broadly, archival research and in-depth interviews might document the role of
faith-based organizations in the development and growth of the community development
movement. Some of the CDC movement’s roots lie in the civil rights movement, in which
African American churches played crucial roles, but these early congregational influences have
yet to be well-documented.
21
At the national level, it would be interesting to explore the question of whether
congregations or other faith-based organizations offer a way to deal with the uneven
geographic distribution of CDCs. The national community development intermediaries have,
each in their own way, made efforts to foster or strengthen CDCs in environments where they
are weak or non-existent, but have met with mixed success. Congregations might present an
untapped opportunity to seed community development in such places; alternatively, they might,
list available and it could be supplemented in a variety of ways (to make it more complete) if resources were
available.
21
One resource that could inform this effort are the archives from the Community Development Oral History
Project conducted by Pratt Institute Center for Community and Environmental Design. They include videotapes and
transcriptions of more than 200 hours of elite interviews with figures important in the founding of the CDC movement.
24

for theological or local cultural reasons, be unlikely to be drawn to community development as a
form of urban ministry.
Community Development Financial Institutions (CDFIs)
Faith-based organizations nationally do substantial social investing, and faith-based
credit unions have been an important part of the congregational activities in Philadelphia
(Nowak, et al., 1989). This suggests that examining more systematically their participation in
CDFIs might be fruitful. Comparing secular and faith-based community development credit
unions would be a promising way to begin, since the ranks of community development credit
unions have expanded considerably since Nowak, et al.’s analysis. This growth is reflected in
the rising membership of the National Federation of Community Development Credit Unions;
that membership could serve as a sampling frame identify organizations for comparative
analysis of such matters as their relative numbers; their membership, assets and services
(including “soft” services like credit counseling); the quality of their management and financial
health; and the extent to which they receive assistance from congregations or denominational
organizations. These all speak to the central question of whether a religious origin or affiliation
appears to provide faith-based credit unions with distinctive advantages or disadvantages.
22
Mirroring the approach suggested for studying CDCs, the subgroup of faith-based credit
unions could be used to explore in greater depth the role of sponsoring congregations and any
related denominational organizations in the credit union’s establishment and operation, and to
identify the sources of any financial or technical assistance received. On the assumption
(based on Nowak, et al.) that many of the congregation-based credit unions are small, an
analysis of the feasibility, advantages and disadvantages of multi-congregation credit unions or
other collaborative efforts might be quite useful; linking small credit unions - but without
reducing the sense of mutual obligation and trust that members feel - could increase member
access to a range of financial products and services, and simultaneously allow for professional
management when capable volunteer oversight is not available.
More broadly, the full range of federally designated CDFIs could be polled to determine
the role of the faith-based sector in supporting them, through either investments or deposits.
Religious organizations provided considerable early assistance of this type to South Shore
Bank—but it was the first of its kind and relatively high-profile. Whether faith-based social
investing and depository practices can play an equally significant role as the number of CDFIs
expands is an open question. So is the issue of how the risk of investing in these institutions
compares with the risk of other investments in the faith-based social investment portfolio. This
latter issue will influence efforts to increase the social investments of faith-based organizations
and to attract those investments into community development.
Workforce Development Organizations
Harrison and Weiss’s (1998) findings that several exemplary workforce development
organizations have their origins in faith-based network organizations suggest the hypothesis
that such organizations may have distinctive advantages in this challenging field. Two lines of
analysis might illuminate whether this is the case and explore the feasibility and desirability of
expanding their role in workforce development. One would start with the Independent Sector or
22
Unfortunately, as the Philadelphia analysis made clear, many faith-based credit unions do not belong to
the Federation. Hence this analysis will likely overstate the size and financial strength of the universe of faith-based
credit unions.
25

National Congregations Study databases to identify and do exploratory case studies of
congregations that report supporting employment and training. The other might follow up on
Harrison and Weiss’s examples to focus specifically on the role of faith communities in these
state-of-the-art examples (a topic their book does not address). For example, do clergy or
congregants, either in a single church or a network of churches, play a role in identifying and/or
recommending candidates for training or placement? If so, how do they perform this role, and
what criteria do they use? Do they assume responsibility for assisting candidates they identify if
they encounter difficulties, and with what result? What special advantages, if any, do they seem
to have in conducting this work?
Major Programs in Community Development
Faith-based organizations have participated extensively in HUD’s Section 202 program.
It would be instructive to draw a sample of those participants to determine the types of faith-
based organizations involved - not only congregations of different types, but also
denominational groups and coalitions - and look at their impetus to become involved. Such an
analysis should also assess their organizational structure, organizational capacity (for both
property development and management), and track record (including strengths and problems,
both in development and management). Since Section 202 housing is comparatively
straightforward to develop and manage, an understanding of how and why faith-based groups
perform as they do might establish some basics about their ability to create and sustain the
capacity to handle core development and property management activities.
A small but potentially fruitful inquiry would revisit the experience of faith-based
organizations that received funding in their formative periods from the now-defunct John Heinz
Neighborhood Development Program. This analysis could examine a range of activities
supported by this program, including housing development and management, economic
development, development of service delivery mechanisms, and planning and financing for
voluntary neighborhood improvement. One technical assistance provider interviewed observed
that the modest scale of the awards under this program was “right” for new organizations and
programs, and that faith-based groups typically used this money well. An alternative view
(offered by another interviewee) was that “HUD gave folks $50,000 and when it was gone they
still didn’t have a program.” The point of revisiting this program would be to learn whether the
information sought from applicants and the criteria used to assess them, combined with
program experience about what recipients accomplished with the funds, hold any lessons
regarding how technical assistance providers and prospective funders should assess the
capacity of faith-based groups, especially those just getting started. It would also be very
useful to determine whether participating CBOs received assistance of various kinds from their
affiliated religious organizations.
Finally, nothing systematic is known about the participation of faith-based organizations
in the major current housing production programs: HOME, the low income housing tax credit,
and HOPE VI.
Will Faith-based Organizations be Effective in Community Development?
This core question is more difficult than the previous one because faith-based
organizations are so diverse; to help address this difficulty, the following discussion considers
the basic types of organizations separately. In each case, the premise is that examining their
community development experience—both how they choose to become involved and what
26

activities they undertake—holds the greatest promise of providing insight into their relative
strengths vis-a-vis community development. Since faith-based organizations, like most others,
have limited resources and many worthy uses for them, the key issue is whether community
development makes good use of their comparative advantages.
Congregations
This area is rich with potentially important research possibilities. It is at the
congregational level (or the faith-based CDC level) that some insight into the role of “the faith
factor” might be gleaned most readily. Good case studies are a useful place to begin. A major
gap in the literature is the absence of rich ethnographic descriptions of different types of
congregations with varying types of involvement in community development activities, and of
the independent development organizations they either spin off or choose as partners. The
literature review reveals, as well, the absence of a corresponding set of materials that would
provide portraits of the organizational development and capacity of those same organizations.
Given how poorly the participation of faith-based organizations is understood, there is little
doubt that some carefully chosen examples would be widely informative. They might address
such questions as: What factors affect congregational engagement? How do congregations
decide what urban ministry activities to undertake? What factors affect congregational
willingness to adopt an inclusive neighborhood-oriented approach? Are there appropriate
opportunities for public, philanthropic or denominational organizational organizations to
influence these choices? Ideally, these case materials should attempt to comparing different
types of faith-based groups to one another, since such contrasts are likely to call attention to
the obvious but often-overlooked fact that congregations exhibit great variety.
It would also be useful to conduct a comparative analysis of the experience of
congregations as they decide to expand community ministry by creating, supporting, or
collaborating with other organizations. The dynamics of when, why and how congregations spin
off community-serving activities, and what influence they retain over those spin-offs, has
received too little attention. What we know is almost all framed from the perspective of the spin-
off nonprofit organization, not the congregation. Nowak, et al. (1989) and Nitterhouse (1997)
both argue that start-up religious nonprofits can have distinct advantages over their secular
counterparts in their development stages because they benefit from the resources of the parent
religious organization. At the same time, Nowak, et al., also state (without providing potentially
embarrassing examples) that more congregational efforts to start independent community
development entities have failed than have succeeded. Given the tenor of current policy
discussions, in which congregations are looked upon to assume new roles, and given the need
for them to establish separate nonprofit organizations to move into community development on
their own, determining how best to help them do this well is an obvious priority.
Since smaller congregations are likely to have considerable difficulty moving into
development on their own, a second path of inquiry is needed to develop alternative ways for
them to contribute to community development. Habitat for Humanity clearly provides one such
opportunity. Understanding of how best to devise additional options is likely to come from
exploring, (a) from the top down, how Habitat and any similar denomination-sponsored
programs facilitate participation by small congregations and manage their contributions and, (b)
from the bottom up, how congregations decide to participate in various types of collaborations,
and the pros and cons of their engagement in those collaborations from both the congregations’
and the coalitions’ perspectives. This would logically include an examination of how
congregations’ theological and political orientations, denominational affiliations, and structures
27

affect their decisions about whether and how to participate in local collaborations.
23
Consideration of the possible role of intermediary organizations would also be valuable.
Finally, much may be learned about the willingness of congregations to make use of
public funding by monitoring the extent to which more of them become active in response to
charitable choice.
24
Since public funding is an irreplaceable part of much community
development work, unwillingness to accept such funding could severely limit congregational
participation in it.
All of this work should include careful attention to the need for, and availability of,
technical assistance and education and training for clergy and laity. Those interviewed as part
of this project differed considerably in their views about whether adequate technical assistance
is available to faith-based organizations, particularly congregations. Many entities, both for-
profit and nonprofit, provide assistance to nonprofits in the domains of organizational
development and housing development (presumably the first task of the new or emerging
organization).
25
Disagreement centers around whether the available technical assistance
resources are “appropriate,” and the issue is a sensitive one. To the extent that congregations
are able and willing to take advantage of the technical assistance services routinely tapped by
CDCs, existing resources may be adequate, or nearly so. To the extent that congregations
need, or insist on, technical assistance provided by faith-based providers, the supply of
“appropriate” assistance could easily be inadequate. Interviews with the leaders of two
prominent faith-based CDCs revealed that they receive many requests for free assistance from
congregations trying to decide whether to enter community development.
Faith-based Networks Formed Through Community Organizing
Community organizing is often considered not only outside the boundaries of community
development, but a challenge to its core premises. However, changes in the field are leaving
this viewpoint increasingly open to question. Community organizing has itself become less
confrontational in nature. Practitioners and funders have seen examples of the contribution that
good community organizing can make to leadership development in poor communities. And the
importance of community leadership to successful community development has become
clearer.
What remains unclear - indeed, completely unexplored - are the circumstances under
which faith-based community organizing, now a significant portion of the organizing done by the
major national community organization networks, leads (or might lead) to the formation of
agencies with a development agenda. Some conspicuous positive examples illustrate that
community organizing can be a launching pad for powerful community development
organizations. The protest origins of many current CDCs suggest that organizing can be fertile
23
Although this discussion focuses on examining housing activities, lessons about networks and other
collaborative approaches might also be gleaned from corresponding analyses of social service collaboratives. As
noted in Chapter 2, such collaborations are the most common form of congregational engagement in social service
provision, and the strategies they have developed may have applications in community development.
24
Charitable choice is the term commonly used to refer to the provision of the Personal Responsibility and
Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996 (a.k.a., welfare reform) that extends the conditions under which
religious organizations may deliver publicly supported social services.
25
Note, however, that the geographic distribution of these resources is uneven; nonprofits in rural areas,
small cities and towns, and sometimes even in larger cities in the South, may have to seek this assistance outside
their local areas.
28

ground for new community development groups - a topic that a sample drawn from the NCCED
database might be used to examine. On the other hand, those interview respondents who had
an opinion were skeptical about whether contemporary faith-based organizing lends itself to this
type of organizational evolution.
The types of faith-base organizing processes and foci that do and do not lead to the
establishment of effective development organizations remains unmapped territory.
26
Both faith-
based CDCs and congregations that report engaging in organizing, advocacy or public policy
(on the NCCED and National Congregations Study surveys, respectively) are good candidates
for grounding such research. Each group could provide the foundation for a well-structured
longitudinal study of congregation-based community organizing. These studies could shed light
not only on the conditions under which organizing leads to direct involvement in development,
but also its effects on the community, on leadership development, and on local public policy.
Denominational Organizations and National Networks
These organizations are attractive policy research targets because they possess
substantial influence, resources and overall organizational capacity.
27
They present research
challenges insofar as they are relatively large organizations with distinct missions and
organizational cultures. In addition, many allow their members or affiliates, both regionally and
locally, to work quite independently, so their activities can vary importantly from place to place.
The national organizations may or may not collect systematic information about those
decentralized activities.
The limited literature available and the information from the interviews, taken together,
suggest two sensible research foci. The first is the role of these organizations in housing. The
second is their participation in social investing.
In housing, the most basic question is “what are they doing?” This investigation could
be expansive and exploratory in character, or it could pick a short list of the organizations
believed to be the most active and examine them in a more intensive way. In either case, the
inquiry should not focus narrowly on numbers of units produced and dollars spent, but should
also try to learn about other more policy-relevant issues such as where these units are being
built, who the housing serves, where the resources are coming from (public subsidies, church-
owned land, denominational equity investments and/or debt), whether it makes sense to expand
this work, and, if so, where the most promising opportunities lie and what would be required to
capitalize on them.
Within this line of analysis, it would also be interesting to understand better the extent to
which national or regional entities (e.g., dioceses) do their housing development and other
activities in collaboration with local congregations. To the extent they do so, what challenges
does this present and what advantages does it bring (e.g., improving the standing of the
congregation in the community, providing residents of the new housing with better local ties and
26
The very promising work of such groups as South Bronx Churches (an ACORN affiliate) in education
reform and the growing number of examples of congregations, organizing groups and CDCs taking on community
policing and other safety-enhancing activities - both of which are viewed as essential requisites for making low-
income city neighborhoods genuinely developable into decent, family-supporting communities - seems a healthy
reminder that meaningful community development must sometimes extend beyond physical and economic change.
27
In addition, their size and comparatively professional character mean that each is likely to have relatively
good data about its activities, outputs and finances.
29

sources of support, or giving the congregation important technical support). If they do not, why
not? Might there be benefits, either in gaining public approval for the developments or for the
residents of the housing, to doing development in this way? If so, what are the impediments?
This research might also assess the possibility of using national denominational groups,
like Catholic Charities, coalitions or parachurch organizations to build affordable housing that
could support housing mobility (i.e., poverty deconcentration) goals. For example, the dioceses
with reputations for high levels of housing development activity are mainly those that serve
older inner cities with high concentrations of poverty (New York, Detroit, etc.). Is this housing,
generally being built in high-poverty neighborhoods, contributing to the concentration of poverty,
or is it an unrecognized vehicle to deconcentrate housing affordable to the poor? If the latter is
the case, do congregations in receiving communities help to give such developments public
legitimacy? Do they provide support to low-income families moving into unfamiliar areas, or
entering home ownership or workforce roles for the first time? This might be thought of as the
flip side of possible support by faith-based organizations (such as the Nehemiah Project) to
diversify the income mix in neighborhoods whose community development potential is limited by
the fact that the current residents are overwhelmingly poor.
In the social investment arena, faith-based organizations had an unfortunate initial
exposure that gave social investing a poor reputation; this reputation appears to have been
largely overcome (Nowak, et al., 1989). Since no literature has addressed this subject since
Nowak, et al., further exploration via interviews should precede defining the specifics of a
research agenda. Likely promising avenues include: what intermediaries (national, regional
and local) and investment vehicles are in place to facilitate social investments in community
development by these groups (and possibly others); and what additional niches (for either
organizations or investment vehicles) remain, and how might they best be developed and
promoted. This line of inquiry might include consideration of whether national and local
community development intermediaries provide an opportunity to engage organizations of this
type.
Very little is known about the roles, and possible new roles, of local denominational and
ministerial alliances and interfaith coalitions. Several of the scholars interviewed have found
indications, in the course of their work on other topics, that the number of such coalitions and
their participation in housing appear to be growing. Explorations in this area should include not
only possible direct housing development activity, but also the activities of such coalitions in
housing partnerships and fair housing issues.
An Integrated Faith-Based Portrait
Community development is a fundamentally local activity. A full picture of faith-based
activity in community development includes consideration of how different aspects of
community development, conducted by all the various types of faith-based organizations, come
together in particular places. A series of comprehensive, thoughtful analyses of the universe of
faith-based community development activity in a modest number of metropolitan regions would
be very instructive. These should surely be urban regions known to have diverse religious
profiles; some variety with respect to level or type of community development activity would also
be desirable, although selecting places in which the level of activity is very low is unlikely to be
useful. These rich cases should include considerable qualitative analysis, e.g., about
institutional and political relationships and the distinctive styles of various organizations.
However, they should also include systematic information about such topics as what and how
30

much faith-based groups produce, and the extent to which they receive financial and other
support from various sources. Since faith-based organizations tend to define community
development relatively broadly, these cases might have to be guided by a broader construct of
community development than the one used in this paper in order to capture this work as it is
viewed locally. The excellent profile of the Philadelphia area by Nowak, et al., (1989) might be
used as a model in designing such a project, although the efforts in that volume to capture the
national landscape should obviously be done only once (either as part of this project or
independently) and used as context for the metropolitan portraits. Such cases might also
provide a much better understanding of local religious ecology as it relates to urban ministry.
Policy Implications and Challenges
While much remains to be learned, what we know now suggests the high likelihood that
only a small fraction of congregations are currently well-positioned to become independent
community development agents, i.e., they are located in communities where development is
needed and they have (or can access) needed financial and technical resources. Many,
perhaps most, of these are African American churches. The strongest candidates are those
that are located in poor neighborhoods and have credibility there, but that have large
congregations including substantial numbers of members who are, themselves, not poor.
We have enough good examples to be clear that well-positioned congregations can
make significant community development contributions when they commit themselves to doing
so. These examples share the element of a professionally staffed, independent nonprofit
development organization founded by, and receiving some support from, one or more
congregations. They also share a long time horizon; they are committed to staying in the
community, and understand that development is a demanding, time-consuming process.
Capitalizing on the potential that congregations represent is likely to require investments
in the organizational capacity of congregations, both to help them make good decisions about
whether to enter community development and to help them get any newly-incorporated
development organizations off to a good start. This may require the development of new
systems to deliver technical assistance and other types of support.
A better understanding of what has enabled the existing crop of faith-based CDCs to
emerge and grow—and what distinctive problems they have faced, if any—would inform this
effort. Given the consistent finding that faith-based organizations do not have slack resources
to devote to urban ministry, significant expansion of their community development activity will
need to tap state or federal funds. Technical assistance will be critical to their ability to use
those funds responsibly.
Congregations could also become involved in community development in other ways,
either as direct agents or as supporters. For example, they could partner with experienced
community developers (as in the Lilly demonstration program); provide mentors to participants
in job training programs; or participate financially, e.g., through the management of their
investments and bank deposits. Congregations in moderate- and middle-income communities
could contribute by supporting community development directly (recall the example of suburban
churches giving New Community Corporation financial and political support in its early years)
and/or by creating a supportive climate for local development of affordable housing for families.
All congregations could contribute by working to create a political climate supportive of
community development investment. For example, congregations are potentially significant
31

allies for community developers in building local and regional coalitions to promote supportive
local, state, national, and corporate policies.
The field needs to explore alternative strategies for congregational involvement. These
might include new mechanisms to stimulate and support coalitions or collaborations; links
between inner-city and suburban congregations; new shared social investment vehicles suited
to small scale and/or shorter term investments; and new mechanisms for groups of clergy and
laity to affect the climate of public discourse and opinion. Differently stated, community
development practitioners may find it worthwhile to invent new ways to tap congregations’
strengths—not only their space and volunteer labor, but also their potential for positive, ethical
engagement in public dialogue.
Finally, the fact that faith-based organizations could engage in community development
does not necessarily mean that they should. Congregations and other faith-based groups, like
other kinds of organizations, have strengths and weaknesses. They work in environments that
pose different kinds of problems and offer varying kinds of opportunities. As the huge range of
activities they already conduct demonstrate, faith-based organizations have many opportunities
to make socially valuable contributions. They should apply their energies in ways that capitalize
on their comparative advantages; for many, that will not lead them into community
development.
32

REFERENCES
Applied Real Estate Analysis. 1998. “Making Homeownership a Reality: Survey of Habitat for
Humanity, Inc. Homeowners and Affiliates.” Washington: US Department of Housing
and Urban Development.
Bratt, Rachel G., et al. 1984. Confronting the Management Challenge: Affordable Housing in
the Nonprofit Sector. New York, NY: Community Development Research Center, New
School for Social Research.
Briggs, Xavier de Souza. 1998. “Brown Kids in White Suburbs: Housing Mobility and the Many
Faces of Social Capital.” Housing Policy Debate 9:177-221.
Briggs, Xavier de Souza and Elizabeth J. Mueller with Mercer L. Sullivan. 1997. From
Neighborhood to Community: Evidence on the Social Effects of Community
Development. New York: Community Development Research Center, New School for
Social Research.
Calhoun, Charles and Christopher Walker. 1994. “Loan Performance of Management
Cooperatives.” Washington, D.C.: The Urban Institute.
Castelli, Jim and John McCarthy. 1997. “Religion-Sponsored Social Service Providers: The
Not-So-Independent Sector.” Aspen Institute Nonprofit Sector Research Fund.
Unpublished.
Chaves, Mark. 1999. “Congregations' Social Service Activities.” Charting Civil Society, No. 6.
Washington, D.C.: Urban Institute, December.
Chaves, Mark. 1998. Religious Congregations and Welfare Reform: Who Will Take Advantage
of Charitable Choice? Washington, DC: Aspen Institute.
Chaves, Mark, and Lynn Higgins. 1992. “Comparing the Community Involvement of Black and
White Congregations.” Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion 31:425-440.
Chaves, Mark and William Tsitsos. 2000. “Congregations and Social Services: What They Do,
How They Do It, and With Whom.” Paper presented at the annual meeting of the
Association for Research on Nonprofit Organizations and Voluntary Action. December.
Comptroller General of the United States. 1978. “Section 236 Rental Housing: An Evaluation
with Lessons for the Future.” Washington, D.C.: U.S. G.A.O.
Cnaan, Ram A. 1997. “Social and Community Involvement of Local Religious Congregations: A
Neglected Community Practice Arena.” Philadelphia, PA: School of Social Work,
University of Pennsylvania.
Decaro, Louis A., Jr. 1997. Bethel Gospel Assembly: Ministry to Harlem and Beyond. In Signs
of Hope in the City: Ministries of Community Renewal., eds. Robert D. Carle and Louis
A. Decaro, 70-81. Valley Forge, PA: Judson Press.
Dionne, E.J., Jr. 1999. “Take It on Faith.” Washington Post. Sec. Magazine, p.WO7, June 20.
33

Ferguson, Ronald F. and William T. Dickens. 1999. “Introduction.” In Ronald F. Ferguson and
William T. Dickens, eds., Urban Problems and Community Development. Washington,
D.C.: Brookings Institution Press.
Foley, Michael W., John D. McCarthy and Mark Chaves. 1999. “Social Capital, Religious
Institutions and Poor Communities.” Unpublished
Gite, Lloyd. 1993. “The New Agenda of the Black Church: Economic Development for Black
America,” Black Enterprise (December).
Gittell, Ross, and Avis Vidal. 1998. Community Organizing: Building Social Capital as a
Development Strategy. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications.
Glickman, Norman J., and Lisa J. Servon. “More than Bricks and Sticks: Five Components of
Community Development Capacity.” Housing Policy Debate 9,3.
Gronbjerg, Kristen, and Sheila Nelson. 1995. “Mapping Small Religious Nonprofit
Organizations: An Illinois Profile.” Chicago: DePaul University, October.
Hall, Peter Dobkin. 1999. Posting to ARNOVA-L listserve, June 28. Archived at
www.arnova.org.
Harrison, Bennett and Marcus Weiss. 1998. “Workforce Development Networks: Community-
Based Organizations and Regional Alliances.” Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications.
Hodgkinson, Virginia, et al. 1993. From Belief to Commitment: The Community Service
Activities and Finances of Religious Congregations in the United States. Washington,
D.C.: Independent Sector.
National Congress for Community Economic Development. 1999. &ldquo;Coming of Age: Trends and
Achievements of Community-Based Development Organizations.” Washington, D.C.:
NCCED.
Nitterhouse, Denise. 1997. “Financial Management and Accountability in Small, Religiously
Affiliated Nonprofit Organizations.” Nonprofit and Voluntary Sector Quarterly 26.
Nowak, Jeremy, et al. 1989. Religious Institutions and Community Renewal. Philadelphia:
Delaware Valley Community Reinvestment Fund.
Printz, Tobi Jennifer. 1998. “Faith-Based Service Providers in the Nation’s Capital: Can They
Do More?” Charting Civil Society, No. 2. Washington, D.C.: The Urban Institute. April.
Safire, William. 1999. “Faith-based: Why Does Religious Suddenly Need A Synonym.” The
New York Times. Sec. Magazine, p. 16, June 27.
Scheie, David, et al. 1991. “Better Together: Religious Institutions as Partners in Community-
Based Development.” Final Evaluation Report on the Lilly Endowment Program.
Minneapolis, MN: Rainbow Research, Inc.
34

Select Committee on Aging, Subcommittee on Housing and Consumer Interests, U.S. House of
Representatives. 1989. The 1988 National Survey of Section 202 Housing for the
Elderly and Handicapped. Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office.
Thomas, June Manning, and Reynard N. Blake, Jr. 1996. “Faith-Based Community
Development and African American Neighborhoods.” In Revitalizing Urban
Neighborhoods., eds. W. Dennis Keating, Norman Krumholz, and Phillip Star, 131-143.
Lawrence: University of Kansas Press.
Toussaint, Pamela Ann. 1997. “Concord Baptist Church: Taking Care of Bed-Stuy.” In Signs of
Hope in the City: Ministries of Community Renewal, Eds. Robert D. Carle and Louis A.
DeCaro, Jr.. Valley Forge: Judson Press.
Vidal, Avis. 1992. Rebuilding Communities: A National Study of Urban Community
Development Corporations. New York, NY: Community Development Research Center,
New School for Social Research.
Vidal, Avis. 1998. “Sustained Excellence Awards: Profiles of the Awardees.” Washington, D.C.:
Fannie Mae Foundation.
Walker, Christopher and Mark Weinheimer. 1998. Community Development in the 1990s.
Washington, DC: The Urban Institute.
Wolpert, Julian. 1997. “The Role of Small Religious Nonprofits in Changing Urban
Neighborhoods.” Nonprofit and Voluntary Sector Quarterly 26.
Wright, Elliot (Ed.). 1999. An Annotated Bibliography for Faith-Based Community Economic
Development. Washington, D.C.: National Congress for Community Economic
Development.
35

APPENDIX A
List Of Individual Interviewed
(Titles and Affiliations Were Current at the Time of the Interview)
Linda Byrd, Director
Communities of Shalom
Mark Chaves, Associate Professor
University of Arizona
John Coleman, Professor
Loyola Marymount University
Fred Davies, Program Officer
The Ford Foundation
Carl Dudley, Co-Director of the Center for
Social and Religious Research
Hartford Seminary
Craig Dykstra, Vice President
Lilly Endowment
Helen Rose Ebaugh, Professor
University of Houston
Michael Foley, Associate Professor
Catholic University of America
Ben Hecht, Vice President
The Enterprise Foundation
Joanne Kane, Executive Director
McAuley Institute
Spense Limbacher, Executive Director
Neighborhood Funders Group
Msgr. William Linder
New Community Corporation
Fred Lucas, President
Faith Center for Community Development
John McCarthy, Professor
University of Pennsylvania
Joseph McNeely, Executive Director
Development Training Institute
Karen Phillips, Executive Director
Abyssinian Development Corporation
David Scheie, Associate Director
Rainbow Research, Inc.
Timothy Smith, Executive Director
Interfaith Center on Corporate
Responsibility
Stanley Carson-Thies, Senior Fellow
Center for Public Justice
June Manning Thomas, Professor
Michigan State University
Carol Thompson, Senior Program
Associate
Annie E. Casey Foundation
Dr. Harold Dean Trulear, Vice President
and Director of Faithbased Initiatives
Public/Private Ventures
Mark Weinheimer, CEO
Weinheimer & Associates
Mark Willis, President
The Chase Manhattan Foundation
Robert Wineburg, Professor
University of North Carolina at Greensboro
Wheeler Winstead, Director of the
Faithbased and Community Development
Program, National Congress for Community
and Economic Development
Elliot Wright, Consultant
National Congress for Community and
Economic Development