Social service agency partnerships with religious congregations in Wilmington, Delaware

American social welfare is provided by a mix of organizations from three major interdependent sectors: government, for-profit and non-profit. Since the 1980s, the government has devolved responsibility on the for-profit and non-profit sectors. Non-profit organizations include secular and religious service agencies as well as religious congregations. In the past decade, religious agencies and congregations have received increased recognition in their social-service roles. Recent studies have shown congregations to be ubiquitous and important actors in the welfare mix. Collectively, congregations are a rich source of volunteers, financial resources, and facility space. Non-profit social service organizations offer organizational capacity, structure, and service-providing expertise. Thus, social service organizations and congregations often form complementary partnerships, finding that together they can offer services more effectively and efficiently. Although there has been increasing scholarship about the role and potential of religious congregations as service providers, there have been few studies examining the partnerships of social-service agencies with religious congregations. This study analyzes data gathered in a two-part study of Wilmington, Delaware social service agencies and congregations. The data collection was conducted between 2006 and 2008 by research teams at UNC Greensboro and the University of Pennsylvania. Fifty-eight social service agency directors were asked about the services they provided and the congregations that they collaborated with. One-hundred Wilmington congregations provided information about social programs and whether they collaborated with social service agencies. The unique combination of the two surveys allows us to move beyond self-report and compare what agencies say about congregations with what the same congregations say about themselves. Congregational partnerships with social-service agencies were found to be ubiquitous. Congregations of all types provided resources to both secular and faith-based service agencies. The commonest constituencies supported by congregations were families, in services such as emergency/crisis services and child & youth services. Congregations primarily supported social-service agencies with volunteers and facility space, though to a certain extent they also provided money and other goods and services. Congregational size was the single strong predictor of social-service collaboration; after controlling for size, theological and demographic characteristics of congregations were weakly related to collaboration, if at all