Ten Good Questions About Faith-based Partnerships and Welfare Reform 

      A little-known provision of the 1996 welfare reform law, Charitable Choice allows faith-based organizations, including individual congregations, to provide social services using public funds, while retaining their religious character and practices. States are encouraged to use these organizations, as long as they provide secular alternatives. But how effective are these programs? Can these organizations expand their participation? And if they do, what will happen to the existing, secular-based programs now attempting to deal with the same social problems? These are questions that researchers at The Polis Center pose, not only to policy-makers, but also to faith-based organizations themselves and to those who would enter into partnerships with them or advocate assigning public funds to them.

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