Faith-based Community Organizing:  The State of the Field, by Mark R. Warren and Richard L. Wood

Contents | Summary | Main Report | About | Appendices | Figure | Tables | Notes

ABOUT THE AUTHORS

Mark R. Warren is Assistant Professor of Sociology at Fordham University in New York City and directs the university's Service Learning Program. He is the author of a book on the Southwest Industrial Areas Foundation network entitled Dry Bones Rattling: Community Building to Revitalize American Democracy (Princeton University Press, 2001). He has written on issues of community empowerment, racism and, more recently, faith based organizing in the United Kingdom. In 1999, he co-organized a national conference on the role of social capital in combating poverty sponsored by the Ford Foundation. He co-edited the papers from the conference to be published in the volume Social Capital and Poor Communities (Russell Sage Foundation Press, 2001).

Richard L. Wood is Assistant Professor of Sociology at the University of New Mexico. He has written extensively on community organizing, primarily addressing the work of the Pacific Institute for Community Organization and the Center for Third World Organizing. He continues to write on the role of religious culture in democratic life, the faith-based organizing networks, and religion in American public life more generally; this includes an essay in the Handbook of the Sociology of Religion (Cambridge University Press, 2001; Michele Dillon, ed.). He is now completing a book manuscript entitled Faith in Action: Religion, Race, and Democratic Action in America.

ABOUT INTERFAITH FUNDERS

Interfaith Funders is a national network of faith-based funders committed to advancing social change and economic justice through support for grassroots community organizing and community economic development. Current members include: Catholic Campaign for Human Development, Claretian Social Development Fund, Domestic Hunger Program of the Evangelical Lutheran Church, Dominican Sisters of Springfield, Jewish Fund for Justice, Missionary Oblates of Mary Immaculate, One Great Hour of Sharing Fund of the Presbyterian Church USA, Unitarian Universalist Veatch Program at Shelter Rock,

Marianist Sharing Fund and The Needmor Fund.

Interfaith Funders provides a forum for its members to:

• Promote strategic approaches to combating the root causes of poverty through its grantmaking;
• Implement collaborative grantmaking and evaluate its impact;
• Identify effective approaches to educating and involving denominations and congregations in
• social action at the local level, particularly in partnerships that cut across class, race, and
• religion; and
• Act as a collective voice for faith-based funders.

To fulfill its mission, IF carries out: collaborative research to advance the field of faith-based community organizing, of which this report is the result; education and outreach to other grantmakers, religious communities, community organizers, and academics; and collaborative grantmaking to support faith-based community organizing (the Initiative). Over the last three years, IF has awarded $1.37 million in grants to faith-based community organizations. In addition to supporting the Initiative, each IF member supports a broad range of community organizing groups in low- and moderate-income communities around the country, including both faith-based groups and those using other organizing models.

NOTE: If you would like to order more free copies of the report, please call the Interfaith Funders office at 516-364-8922.