Being “User Friendly:” The Benefits of a Multi-Faith Staff (James Thing, Center for Religion and Civic Culture, USC, 2004) One of the most controversial elements of Charitable Choice has been the permission granted to publicly-funded faith-based organizations to use religious criteria when they employ staff members. Does the U.S. Constitution, properly interpreted, permit publicly-funded faith-based organizations to deny employment to people from other faith traditions? If you want to hear strongly-asserted opinions, just ask that question. Staff members in two faith-based human service programs, [1] however, showed little interest in discussing that question. Instead, they wanted to talk about the advantages they perceived in employing staff members from a variety of religious traditions, whether or not their programs were publicly-funded. Here are reasons they offered: - Religiously-diverse staffs are more “user-friendly” for participants. According to an administrator in a Christian adoption/foster family recruitment program, hiring staff members and recruiting volunteers from various denominational backgrounds helps the program to be “user friendly.” “[T]here's so many differences in denominations,” he observed, “and since we're multi-denominational or ecumenical, we need to be user friendly to [this diverse] population.”
The president/CEO of a Muslim freestanding medical clinic agrees. The multi-faith character of its staff helps the clinic to be more sensitive to the religion-related needs of clients from diverse faith backgrounds. At the clinic, for example, Muslim physicians learn about Roman Catholic health care ethics. Non-Muslim physicians learn how to serve Muslims. “We have a fair number of Islamic patients,” the president said. So the staff needs to be sensitive to Muslim medical values. For example: “A lot of times the female patients will prefer female providers, so they’ll request a female physician or female medical student to see them…so we’re pretty conscious about things like that…. [At] Ramadan and certain times of the year where they’re supposed to fast… sometimes they prefer not to have labs drawn….” - Religiously-diverse staffs are more effective in recruiting participants. Most participants in the adoption/foster care program come from Baptist and non-denominational Christian congregations. Mainline Protestant and Catholic groups show their interest in other ways. “They tend to [offer] …behind the scenes support, sending us volunteers and financially supporting our organization,” the administrator reported. Having recruiters from diverse religious backgrounds enables the organization to be sensitive to the fact that different religious orientations may tend to encourage different forms of volunteerism. It enables recruiters to speak to congregations in ways that relate to their cultures.
If your program’s services are designed to deliver a clear, consistent religious message, grounded in the beliefs and culture of your own faith tradition, you may not want to recruit religiously diverse staff members and volunteers. Recognize, however, that there are advantages in presenting a religiously-diverse face within the delivery of your services. Doing so may grow your program and/or improve the quality of the services you offer. If you do want to reach out to volunteers and potential supporters who are of a faith different from that of your organization, here are some steps that you might take: - Be informed about the religious demographics of the neighborhoods you intend to serve.
- If you discover that your community is religiously diverse, get to know community leaders from your neighborhoods’ major faith traditions. Ask for their input as to how your program’s services can be delivered in ways that are sensitive to their traditions.
- Encourage these leaders to suggest sources of volunteers and staff members from their religious traditions.
- Ask this question: “Are the populations of actual or potential clients, volunteers, or supporters from different faith traditions large enough to warrant hiring staff or actively seeking out volunteer staff from these traditions?”
- Urge volunteers and/or paid employees from your neighborhood’s faith traditions to encourage their families, friends, and religious community members to get involved with your organization. You want to serve the whole neighborhood, not just a part.
- In staff meetings, encourage volunteers and staff members from different faith traditions to educate each other about how the program’s services can be configured in ways that are sensitive to their neighborhood’s religious diversity.
_____________________________________________________________________ This is part of a series of Thumbnail Case Studies authored by the FASTEN research team and released by Baylor University School of Social Work as part of a 30-month research project funded by the Pew Charitable Trusts. This project is designed to identify the factors that contribute to the effectiveness of faith-based organizations (FBOs) in addressing problems of urban poverty. Baylor is leading this project with researchers from Baylor University’s business school, the schools of social work at the University of Pittsburgh and Virginia Commonwealth University, and the Center for Religion and Civic Culture at the University of Southern California. A team of researchers from these four universities have interviewed various stakeholders from fifteen (15) promising faith-based programs in four United States cities. This ends the data collection portion of Phase I of a grounded theory research project in which participants, board members, administrators, program coordinators, and collaborators in these fifteen programs have been interviewed face-to-face. The findings of this first phase will be the foundation for a quantitative national survey designed to determine the extent to which the grounded theory that emerges in the project’s first phase can be applied nationally across the diversity of faith-based social services in the United States. Sagamore Institute’s Faith in Communities program and the Center for Faith and Service of the National Crime Prevention Council (NCPC), Baylor’s partners in this project, are disseminating the findings of this research through the creation of the Faith & Service Technical Education Network (FASTEN). This essay represents some of the findings from the FASTEN research project that are relevant to the planning and delivery of services by faith-based organizations. The piece was authored by James Thing (with the Center for Religion and Civic Culture at the University of Southern California) with the FASTEN Research Team. He can be reached at thing [at] usc [dot] edu.
[1] The names and locations of the programs have been omitted in order to protect their privacy as participants in the FASTEN research project. |
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