Our team’s findings address three salient topics pertaining to faith in philanthropy - the history and state of the field, current experiences of grantees and funders across the religious-secular divide, and the religious composition of funder groups. Click below to read brief summaries of the key findings and takeaways from each section of our research, or explore the rest of the site to find more in-depth information.
History and Background. The role of religion in philanthropy has evolved since the late 1600s due to social, policitcal, and economic factors. Religion was commonly seen as “divisive” beginning in the 1940s. But as we move forward, more people are aware of the “invisible” influence of religion and are subsequently resisting that reality. Thus, secularization has become increasingly prevalent in American society. We hypothesize that declines in identification with religion will have lasting effects on the religious philanthropic sector. Today, faith-based organizations still play a vital role in the philanthropic sector, and we expect this to continue to evolve due to rapidly changing social norms and cultural influence.
Expressions of Faith. Self-expression of nonprofits via their websites gives the public an idea of the group’s purpose, values, and credibility. There is a range in the degree of faith expression on websites for faith-based nonprofits and foundations. The range can be described by the following categories: No Indication, Symbols, Icons, Words, Statements, and Scripture. Using this range can provide information about how faith-based nonprofits express their faith and interact with the public and other organizations.
Intersectional Models. Similar to faith, there are other groups that play roles in philanthropy. Understanding how these groups have existed in philanthropy historically provides a comparison to religion. When looking at race-based philanthropy, LGBTQ+ and philanthropy, place-based philanthropy, and women and philanthropy, we discovered that each intersectional model had a distinct and unique history. These groups' roles in philanthropy changed over time due to social, cultural, political, and economic changes in America. Each continue to interact with philanthropy in unique ways, leveraging different approaches and facing different challenges.
There is notable complexity present in the relationships between nonprofit organizations that cross the secular-religious divide. Organizations that intentionally cross the divide, as our interviewees did, do so carefully and based on their own values and established criteria. Additionally, organizations expressed that these relationships can be difficult and require diligence and strong communication, resulting in most funders and grantees still primarily working within their own faith-based or secular communities. Religious-secular partnerships can work well and are important to the continued success of many programs throughout the country.
Composition of Funder Groups. Prior to our analysis, we expected most funder groups to be comprised of either only secular members or only religious members. In contrast, our analysis revealed most (87 percent) of funder groups include both faith-based and secular foundations and grantees. Although these groups are hybrid, most have a weak religious composition - meaning less than 10% of their members are faith-based. Even those funders that appear explicitly faith-based contain both secular and faith-based members.
Religiosity of Funder Groups. Nearly half of the funder groups we scored have no religious signifiers in their online material. Among those groups that have at least one religious signifier, most exhibit a low level of religiosity within their organization’s intra- and inter-organizational operations, environment, and finances.
Geographical Analysis. Our geographic analysis indicates that state institutional religiosity, measured as the percentage of faith-based foundations in a state, is a strong predictor of the average religious-secular member composition of funder groups in that state. However, other state-level contextual factors including income, population, urban population, average individual religiosity, and partisan leaning are insignificant predictors of funder group religious-secular composition. A linear combination of these factors weakly predicts funder group religious-secular composition.
Funder Group Analysis. To determine the relationship between funder group religiosity and member composition, we calculated the correlation between the two measures. We found that religion plays a more influential role in a funder group as its religious composition increases.
