A front-burner issue on the public policy agenda today is the increased use of partnerships between government and nongovernmental entities, including faith-based social service organizations. In the wake of President Bush's faith-based initiative, many are still wondering about the effectiveness of these faith-based organizations in providing services to those in need, and whether they provide better outcomes than more traditional government, secular nonprofit, and for-profit organizations. In Faith, Hope, and Jobs, Stephen V. Monsma and J. Christopher Soper study the effectiveness of 17 different welfare-to-work programs in Los Angeles County—a county in which the U.S. government spends 14% of its entire welfare budget—and offer groundbreaking insight into understanding what works and what doesn't.

Monsma and Soper examine client assessment of the programs, their progress in developing attitudes and resources important for finding self-supporting employment, and their experience in finding actual employment. The study reveals that the clients of the more explicitly faith-based programs did best in gaining in social capital and were highly positive in evaluating the religious components of their programs. For-profit programs tended to do the best in terms of their clients finding employment. Overall, the religiously active respondents tended to experience better outcomes than those who were not religiously active but surprisingly, the religiously active and non-active tended to do equally well in faith-based programs.

Faith, Hope, and Jobs concludes with three sets of concrete recommendations for public policymakers, social service program managers, and researchers.

Stephen V. Monsma is a research fellow at the Henry Institute for the Study of Christianity and Politics, Calvin College. He is a professor of political science emeritus at Pepperdine University, where he was on the political science faculty from 1987 to 2004 and held the Blanche E. Seaver chair in social science. He has published widely including Putting Faith in Partnerships: Welfare-to-Work in Four Cities and Equal Treatment of Religion in a Pluralistic Society (coedited with J. Christopher Soper).

J. Christopher Soper is the Frank R. Seaver Professor of Political Science and the executive director for the Center for Faith and Learning at Pepperdine University. Soper's most recent publications are Equal Treatment of Religion in a Pluralistic Society (coedited with Stephen V. Monsma) and Muslims and the State in Britain, France, and Germany (coauthored with Joel Fetzer).

Table of Contents
	Page
List of Tables 
List of Figures 
Acknowledgements 
Introduction 
Chapter 1: The Effectiveness Muddle
Chapter 2: The Study 
Chapter 3: Client Evaluations of their Programs
Chapter 4: Enabling Outcomes 
Chapter 5: Intermediate and Ultimate Outcomes 
Chapter 6: Observations and Recommendations 
Appendix A: The Questionnaire Survey 
Appendix B: The Survey Instruments
Appendix C: The Faith-Based/Segmented versus Faith-Based/Integrated Distinction 
List of Tables
Table 2.1 Median Number of Part-Time Employees and Volunteers, by Program Type
Table 2.2 Distribution of Completed Interviews at Baseline, Six Months, and Twelve Months, 
by Program Type
Table 2.3 Respondents at Six and Twelve Months, as a Percentage of Baseline Respondents, 
by Program Type
Table 2.4 Key Characteristics of Baseline, Six-Month, and Twelve-Month Respondents
Table 2.5 Key Demographic Characteristics, by Program Type, Six-Month Respondents
Table 2.6 Religious Involvement at Baseline by Organization Type, Six-Month Respondents
Table 2.7 Percentage of Respondents with less than a High School Education, by Program 
Type, Six-Month Respondents
Table 2.8 Total Skills Measure at Baseline by Program Type, Six-Month Respondents
Table 2.9 Life Situation Barriers at Baseline, by Program Type
Table 2.10 Level of Attitudinal Optimism at Baseline by Program Type, Six-Month 
Respondents
Table 3.1 Perceived Staff Empathy at Six Months, by Program Type
Table 3.2 Perceived Staff Empathy, by Religious Involvement and Program Type
Table 3.3 Perceived Staff Empathy, by Race and Program Type
Table 3.4 Instrumental Evaluations at Six Months, by Program Type
Table 3.5 Instrumental Evaluations, by Religious Involvement and Program Type
Table 3.6 If the Faith-Based Nature of their Program Made Respondents More or Less Eager 
to Participate in It
Table 3.7 Religious Aspects of Faith-Based Programs Recalled by Respondents
Table 3.8 Respondents¿ Evaluations of the Religious Aspects of their Program
Table 3.9 Percentage of Respondents Giving the Most Positive Evaluation of the Religious 
Aspects of their Program
Table 3.10 Classification of Positive Comments in Response to Two Open-Ended Questions
Table 3.11 Classification of Negative Comments in Response to Three Open-Ended 
Questions
Table 4.1 Percentage of Respondents Whose Attitudes were More or Less Optimistic at Six 
and at Twelve Months Compared with Attitudes at the Baseline, by Program 
Type
Table 4.2 Percentage of Clients with more Optimistic Attitudes Minus the Percentage of 
Clients with less Optimistic Attitudes, Compared to the Baseline, at Six and 
Twelve Months, by Program Type
Table 4.3 Optimism at Baseline, by Religious Involvement, Six-Month Respondents
Table 4.4 Changes in Optimism, Baseline to Twelve Months, by Level of Religious 
Involvement
Table 4.5 Percentage of Respondents More Optimistic, Baseline to Twelve Months, by 
Religious Involvement and Program Type
Table 4.6 Percentage of Respondents More Optimistic, Baseline to Twelve Months, by Race 
or Ethnicity and Program Type
Table 4.7 Percentage of Respondents who Failed to Complete their Programs, by Program 
Type
Table 4.8 Failure to Complete their Programs, by Level of Religious Involvement
Table 4.9 Percentage of Respondents Failing to Complete their Program, by Baseline 
Religious Involvement and Program Type
Table 4.10 Percentage of Respondents Failing to Complete their Programs, by Race or 
Ethnicity and Program Type
Table 4.11 Respondent Contacts with Staff Since Leaving Program, by Program Type
Table 4.12 Perceived Helpfulness of Contacts with Program Staff after Leaving Program, at 
Six and Twelve Months, by Program Type
Table 4.13 Percentage of Respondents Reporting Many or a Few Contacts with Program Staff 
at Six and Twelve Months, by Religious Involvement and Organization Type
Table 4.14 Respondent Contacts with Fellow Participants since Leaving Program, by 
Program Type
Table 4.15 Respondent Contacts with Fellow Participants, by Level of Religious Involvement 
and Program Type
Table 4.16 Church Attendance at Baseline and at Twelve Months, by Program Type, Twelve-
Month Respondents
Table 4.17 Changes in Religious Involvement, by Program Type, Twelve-Month 
Respondents
Table 5.1 Employment at Baseline and at Six Months, by Program Type
Table 5.2 Employment at Baseline and at Twelve Months, by Program Type
Table 5.3 Determinants of either Full- or Part-Time Employment at Six and Twelve Months
Table 5.4 Determinants of either Full-Time Employment at Six and Twelve Months
Table 5.5 Percentages of Respondents who Were Employed at Six or Twelve Months, by 
Program Type and Religious Involvement
Table 5.6 Percentages of Respondents who Were Employed at Six or Twelve Months, by 
Program Type and Race/Ethnicity
Table 5.7 Hourly Wages of Employed Respondents, by Program Type
Table 5.8 Net Changes in Wages at Six and Twelve Months Compared to Baseline Wages, by 
Program Type
Table 5.9 Hourly Wages of Employed Respondents, by Program Type (Only those 
respondents who were unemployed at the baseline)
Table 9.10 Percentage of Respondents at Twelve Months Earning $10 or More3 an House, by 
Program Type and Race/Ethnicity
Table 9.11 Percentage of Respondents Receiving TANF at Six and Twelve Months, by 
Program Type and Whether or Not Receiving TANF at Baseline
Table 9.12 Determinants of TANF Status at Six and Twelve Months
Table 5.13 The TANF and Economically Self-supporting Status of Respondents who Had 
Been Receiving TANF at the Baseline, at Twelve Months, By Religious 
Involvement
Table 5.14 The TANF and Economically Self-supporting Status of Respondents who Had 
Been Receiving TANF at the Baseline, at Twelve Months, By Race/Ethnicity
Table 5.15 Summary Assessments of Employment, Wage, and Welfare Outcomes, by 
Program Type
Table 6.1 Summary Assessments of Respondent Evaluations and Enabling Outcomes, by 
Program Type
Table 6.2 Summary Assessments of Respondents¿ Personal Religious Involvement and 
Race/Ethnicity as They Relate to Program Outcomes
List of Figures
Figure 1.1 Research Examining the Relationship between Religion and Health Outcomes
Figure 1.2 Research Examining the Relationship between Religion and Well-being Outcomes
Figure 2.1 Comparison of the Number of Programs and the Number of Full-time Employees, 
by Organization Type
Figure 2.2 Demographic Characteristics of Cal/WORKS Population and Six-Month 
Respondents