Most predominantly Black churches invest in social-good efforts close to home, while largely white congregations tend to pursue good works abroad.
That’s according to a new survey of faith leaders and faith-based donors. Seventy-one percent of predominantly Black congregations name serving their local communities as a top priority compared with 58 percent of predominantly white churches.
Conversely, nearly two-thirds of white congregations believe that outreach to address global needs is very important, while only 20 percent of Black churches rate it that highly.
The data reflect the extraordinary role of Black churches as anchors of their communities, says Wale Mafolasire, founder and CEO of Givelify, a donation platform for churches and nonprofits. Givelify conducted the survey with the Lake Institute on Faith and Giving at the Lilly Family School of Philanthropy.
The intense local focus of Black churches is known but rarely quantified so clearly. “If you talk to Black pastors, they probably have a hunch this is happening,” Mafolasire says. “But having the data to back that is very revealing.” The Givelify survey oversampled the Black faith community to conduct such analysis. Nearly half of participating faith leaders were Black clergy, and Black Americans made up 44 percent of donors surveyed.
“We have a depth of information that’s unusual,” says David King, executive director of the Lake Institute. In other faith surveys, King notes, Black respondents might make up as little as 8 percent of the total.
The report found that while most churches provide social services such as food, clothing, and shelter, Black congregations often go further. They are more likely than white churches to offer elderly services, tutoring or GED classes, outreach for incarcerated people, and citizenship and voter-registration programs.
Black churches are also much more likely to see social justice as key to their mission (46 percent of respondents) than white congregations (8 percent).
“‘Social justice’ is language that the Black church would use at much higher levels to motivate lives engaged in civic need,” says King.
Other research echoes elements of the new report. Black Protestant churches are much more likely than other congregations to offer health-related services, according to Duke University’s National Congregations Study. They also are particularly likely to participate in election activities such as hosting political candidates, registering voters, and distributing voter guides.
“Without the Black church, Black people would not be free as we are in this country,” said the Rev. Richard Franklyn Robinson, board chair of the Conference of National Black Churches, in a December speech. “Without the Black church, Black people would not be heads of corporations and universities. Without the Black church, America would be much further away from her ideals and possibilities.”
Research pointing to the vital role of Black churches in communities stands against data showing their significant decline. A study last year by the Pew Research Center found that only 46 percent of Black Protestants attend religious services at least once a month — down from 61 percent in 2019. That’s the largest drop of any faith tradition over that period, the result, at least in part, of the disproportionately high share of Covid-19 hospitalizations and deaths relative to white Americans and more wariness in the Black community about the disease, according to the Pew report.
In Washington, D.C., one-third of churches have closed since 2008, according to Sacred Spaces DC, including many of the Black Protestant churches that were community anchors.
Faith Partnerships With Nonprofits
Givelify customers made up about half of the 2,001 donor participants in the survey and nearly two-thirds of the faith leaders. Nearly all the individual and leader respondents worship in Christian faith traditions.
Other findings from the report:
- 97 percent of congregations reported supporting at least one outreach program in their communities, and 92 percent said they had maintained or increased such efforts in 2023. “What we’re seeing is an intention by places of worship to go beyond propagating the teachings of the faith and ask: ‘What’s our role in our local community?’” says Givelify’s Mafolasire. “And I think there are opportunities for nonprofit partnerships with places of worship.”
- Outside their church giving, faith-based donors are more likely to give to youth- and family-service organizations than other Americans. Forty-three percent of respondents reported gifts to such groups — the highest share in the survey, with education next at 33 percent. In the annual “Giving USA” report and other research, education typically is a more popular cause.
- Churches reported that digital donations provide a median 60 percent of their annual giving. The large share of Givelify churches in the survey may have inflated that figure, but it reflects the embrace of digital donations during the pandemic, when many congregations moved to virtual worship services. More than two-thirds of churches reported using online giving in 2023 — more than double the number from 2015, according to the Hartford Institute for Religious Research.
- Nearly a third of faith-based donors in the Givelify survey reported giving money directly to fellow congregation members. Such charity, which is not typically recorded in studies of generosity, is evidence of what researchers call the “invisible safety net” that churches offer their members.
