Author:

Keywords:

Social Sciences, Social Work, Faith-based organizations, typology, poverty, religion, SOCIAL-SERVICE, EDUCATIONAL ORGANIZATIONS, RELIGIOUS CHARACTERISTICS, WELFARE, POVERTY, CONSTRUCTION, GOVERNANCE, PROSPECTS, PROGRAMS, STATE, S006621N#55954926, 1607 Social Work, 4409 Social work

Abstract:

In this paper, we present the results of our scoping review on the literature (2010-2021) on faith-based organizations (FBOs) active in the field of poverty alleviation. We focus on the different typologies that are used to study FBOs. Because not all articles use an existing typology or develop a new one, we also collected and studied the variables that are used in the articles to distinguish different types of FBOs. Our research shows that the field of faith-based organizations is simply to complex and diverse to allow the construction of an overarching typology. Therefore, we present a new way to study this type of social work actors by proposing a set of four categories (Religion, Solidarity, Organization and Location) and nineteen variables to use as a heuristic tool in future research.