Exploring elements of religious organizations that affect participation and success in obtaining funding from faith-based initiatives

This dissertation is an exploratory attempt to discover what characteristics of religious organizations contribute to their participation and success in obtaining funding from government funded social delivery and/or community development programs. I propose that an established leader, lay leadership opportunities, racial diversity, class diversity, and volunteer experience in social services contribute towards interest and success in obtaining funding.; Research is performed through semi-structured interviews with eight informed members in a cross-section of faith-based congregations in California that have received funding from the Governor's Faith-based and Community Initiatives program. It also examines the National Congregations Study (NCS), an interview survey of leaders of over 1,200 US congregations. Using interview responses, descriptive statistics, and results from logistic regressions, this research evaluates the conceptual framework and other significant outcomes.; The NCS shows that congregations with previous experience in social services, and having a large percentage of African Americans are highly aware of, often apply for funding, and frequently obtain government funding to deliver social services, while congregations that are politically conservative are less aware of and less inclined to apply for funding than other congregations. The NCS results also show a low level of racial and class diversity in the congregations while the interviews suggest the social bridges potential from racial and class diversity appear to be important. Conflicting results between the NCS showing lay leadership opportunities and leadership from the organization leader as counter-productive and interview results revealing these two elements as beneficial suggest that non-formal arrangements between spiritual leaders and lay members drive social services involvement rather than formal structures.; Strong leadership and class diversity appear to be spurs to lay leadership opportunities which enable a congregation to manifest interest and ability to secure government funding. The higher interest of politically liberal congregations, the high proportion of secular nonprofit organizations in the California Faith-based and Community Initiatives program, and the preponderance of Christian churches in the vision for these initiatives suggests that a positive social construction of churches is providing political cover for a program that expands social services funding to nonprofits while ignoring the advertised ecumenical nature of a “faith-based organizations” initiative.