Readers of the Yearbook of American & Canadian Churches have come to trust it as the best single source of information about the status of religion in North America. Updated and confirmed annually, this accurate and comprehensive resource provides quick-reference access to names, addresses, telephone numbers, and fax numbers for denominational leaders, headquarters, agencies, and regional headquarters, as well as historical and current statistical data.
Too often, say its critics, U.S. domestic policy is founded on ideology rather than evidence. Take "Charitable Choice": legislation enacted with the assumption that faith-based organizations can offer the best assistance to the needy at the lowest cost. The Charitable Choice provision of the 1996 Welfare Reform Act—buttressed by President Bush's Faith-Based Initiative of 2000—encouraged religious organizations, including congregations, to bid on government contracts to provide social services. But in neither year was data available to prove or disprove the effectiveness of such an approach. Charitable Choice at Work fills this gap with a comprehensive look at the evidence for and against faith-based initiatives. Sheila Suess Kennedy and Wolfgang Bielefeld review the movement's historical context along with legal analysis of constitutional concerns including privatization, federalism, and separation of church and state. Using both qualitative and, where possible, statistical data, the authors analyze the performance of job placement programs in three states with a representative range of religious, political, and demographic traits—Massachusetts, Indiana, and North Carolina. Throughout, they focus on measurable outcomes as they compare non-faith-based with faith-based organizations, nonprofits with for-profits, and the logistics of contracting before and after Charitable Choice. Among their findings: in states where such information is available, the composition of social service contractor pools has changed very little. Reflecting their varied political cultures, states have funded programs differently. Faith-based organizations have not been eager to seek government contracts, perhaps wary of additional legal restraints and reporting burdens. The authors conclude that faith-based organizations appear no more effective than secular organizations at government-funded social service provision, that there has been no dramatic change in the social welfare landscape since Charitable Choice, and that the constitutional concerns of its detractors may be valid. This empirical study penetrates the fog of the culture wars, moving past controversy over the role of religion in public life to offer pragmatic suggestions for policymakers and organizations who must decide how best to assist the needy.
This book is intended for several audiences: 1. Front line advisors: financial, tax and legal advisors who have clients whose assets go well beyond cash and public securities. 2. Nonprofit gift planners: fundraisers in major gifts, planned gifts, and principal gifts whose donors wish to give assets other than cash. 3. Technical experts: Lawyers, accountants, and back office staff at charities and financial institutions charged with determining how an asset may be used for a philanthropic purpose, or determining whether that asset should be accepted as a gift.
Charitable giving and philanthropic behavior are frequently the subject of media reports and newspaper headlines. Examining the incentives and barriers to charitable behavior, Dashefsky and Lazerwitz account for such giving by members of the Jewish community. A discussion of motivations for charitable giving, Charitable Choices relies on quantitative and qualitative data in one religio-ethnic community.
We all know we should give to charity, but who really does? In his controversial study of America's giving habits, Arthur C. Brooks shatters stereotypes about charity in America-including the myth that the political Left is more compassionate than the Right. Brooks, a preeminent public policy expert, spent years researching giving trends in America, and even he was surprised by what he found. In Who Really Cares, he identifies the forces behind American charity: strong families, church attendance, earning one's own income (as opposed to receiving welfare), and the belief that individuals-not government-offer the best solution to social ills. But beyond just showing us who the givers and non-givers in America really are today, Brooks shows that giving is crucial to our economic prosperity, as well as to our happiness, health, and our ability to govern ourselves as a free people.
