Finding Homes for Their Dreams: Strategies Founders and Program Initiators Use to Position and Sustain Faith-Based Programs

Abstract

This grounded theory study of 15 faith-based programs in four urban cities examines how initiators and founders find homes for their visions of addressing unmet community needs, especially those of children and their families. Founders can be congregations, individuals, or groups with diverse characteristics. This study suggests that they place their visions in viable contexts through developing new organizations in which to place their programs, temporarily incubating them until a new organization can be formed, tethering them to congregations, or birthing them in well-established faith-related agencies with deep historical roots in the community. These programs have the potential to become legends, influencing the identity of their organizational homes and the larger community's images of those homes.