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Faith-based welfare-to-work programs rely less on government funding than secular programs

Results of the study are detailed in the report, "Working Faith: How Religious Organizations Provide Welfare-to-Work Services." Authored by Stephen Monsma, a non-resident fellow at Penn's Center for Research on Religion and Urban Civil Society and a professor of political science at Pepperdine University, the report sheds new light on the current debate in Washington about the appropriateness of government funding of faith- based initiatives.

Monsma will present his findings at a news conference Monday, June 10, from 11 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. at the Hyatt Regency Washington on Capitol Hill, 400 New Jersey Ave., NW.

After the news conference, a roundtable of leading experts in welfare reform and faith-based organizations will take up issues raised in the study. John DiIulio, Penn's Fox Leadership Professor of Politics, Religion and Urban Civil Society and a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, will moderate.

Monsma's findings cast serious doubt on the arguments against the President's faith-based initiatives.

"The more one actually gets out in the field and observes ongoing programs, the more irrelevant many of the Washington and academic government funding debates appear," Monsma wrote.

He and his team of researchers studied faith-based welfare-to-work programs in Los Angeles, Chicago, Dallas and Philadelphia.

They compiled data from questionnaires completed by directors, staffs and clients from 500 welfare-to-work providers, of which 120 were faith-based organizations.

His investigation showed that faith-based groups had a greater potential to raise funds on their own than did secular groups in the four cities.

"Faith-based organizations seemed to have other sources of funds, so that, even if they were receiving government funding and if they saw a need not covered by their government contract, they would meet it out of existing funds or go out and try to raise money to meet this need," Monsma wrote.

"Whereas we were often struck by the tendency of nonprofit/secular organizations to have the attitude that if there is no government contract available to provide a given service, there is nothing they can do."

The study found that:

• 50 percent of all faith-based welfare-to-work providers in the cities studied currently receive government funding, including more than 40 percent of those that integrate religious elements into their services.

• Among those faith-based groups that receive government funding, that funding represents 30 percent of the budgets of those groups that integrate religious elements into their programs and 50 percent of the budgets of those that do not.

• Secular non-profit welfare-to-work providers are refused government funding only 7 percent of the time, compared to 21 percent for faith-based groups, and receive far more government funding overall.

The report, "Working Faith: How Religious Organizations Provide Welfare-to-Work Services," can be viewed on the Manhattan Institute Website: http://www.manhattan-institute.org/crrucs_working_faith.pdf

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