Faith-Based and Community Initiative: Service Providers and Approaches to Studying Service Outcomes

President Bush\u27s Executive Orders to establish Centers of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives have encouraged the use of faith-based organizations (FBOs) as service providers in a range of federally funded programs. New federal rules and regulations are removing barriers so that FBOs can participate in these programs. Yet, there is no centralized information system that accumulates data related to performance standards or outcome measures. This article analyzes the scope and scale of services provided by FBOs and the diverse approaches to studying the outcomes from these services