Mapping Small Religious Nonprofit Organizations: An Illinois Profile

Abstract

Small religious nonprofit organizations in the human service field are relatively invisible to researchers, reflecting in part their disproportionate omission from the Internal Revenue Service list of charitable nonprofits. Drawing on a 1991 survey of Illinois nonprofit human service organizations, the authors describe their organizational and financial characteristics as well as their governance structures and relations with religious congregations. The authors conclude that the organizations are internally diverse and also differ in significant ways from their nonreligious counterparts in the field. Finally, the authors present research and policy implications.