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The White House Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives (OFBCI) sponsored a conference June 26-27, 2008, at the Omni Shoreham Hotel in Washington, DC, to highlight the wide range of research on new initiatives and the changes in governance that have occurred over the past seven years. This White House conference represented an important opportunity to review policy, regulatory, and programmatic changes and to gain a better understanding of the components of the Faith-Based and Community Initiative (FBCI) that are believed to have produced significant and long-term potential for positive change. Furthermore, the conference provided researchers, policy makers, and practitioners with information about the impact of these changes, what challenges they confront moving forward, and which factors contribute to successful service delivery in different groups.
Since its inception in 2001, the FBCI has focused on reorienting government to build on the strength of grassroots nonprofit and faith-based organizations to address some of the country's most stubborn social problems. Several innovations in governance have occurred to ensure that these organizations can better contribute their unique strengths to federal approaches to addressing human needs. These innovations include regulatory reforms, mini-grant programs, indirect funding mechanisms, technical assistance, capacity building, and public/private partnerships. Program areas that have seen significant growth in faith- and community-based initiatives include:
Papers commissioned through the public call for abstracts were published in a compendium and released at the conference. The Compendium is now available, “Innovations in Effective Compassion: Compendium of Research Papers Presented at the Faith-Based and Community Initiatives Conference on Research, Outcomes, and Evaluation”, <http://aspe.hhs.gov/fbci/comp08/index.htm>.
The White House OFBCI, in coordination with the HHS Office of the Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation and Center for Faith-Based and Community Initiatives, solicited abstracts for research papers to be presented at the conference. These papers were published in a research compendium. The desired research papers were in two tracks:
This new web site brings together in one place information on the Initiative and the conference. The web site can be found at http://innovationincompassion.hhs.gov/index.html.
Last updated: 07/28/2008
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