“If you’re in the trenches doing social service and you meet a drug addict who needs sweatpants and a T-shirt before going into detox, you know that religious organizations are really important,” says Steven B. Stritt, a lecturer in the School of Social Work at San Jose State University. Faith-based organizations (FBOs), he says, “fill in the gaps” by offering flexible, immediate aid such as clothing, shelter, and food.
Yet no one seemed to know exactly how much aid FBOs were offering. And so Stritt calculated the dollar value himself, estimating in a recent research article that FBOs deliver some $50 billion in social services annually.
In comparison, the four federal departments that render the same services have a total budget of some $138.2 billion, he finds.
Unlike several other researchers, Stritt accounted for the social service contributions not only of congregations, but also of national network FBOs such as the Salvation Army, as well as freestanding FBOs such as local interfaith coalitions. He also included the value of volunteer labor and in-kind donations, where possible. As a result, his estimate of the size of the social service FBO sector is higher than previous ones, which range from a mere $322 million to $37 billion.
“When you compile the information from all the different sources, it adds up to more than you would expect,” he says.
Steven B. Stritt, “Estimating the Value of the Social Services Provided by Faith-Based Organizations in the United States,” Nonprofit and Voluntary Sector Quarterly, 37, 2008.
Read more stories by Alana Conner.