The Capacity and Effectiveness of Faith-Based and Secular Corporations

There are over 500,00 Community Development Corporations (CDCs) in the United States & internationally. CDCs serve a very important and influential roles. CDCs help address issues such as lack of literacy, homelessness, lack of adequate infrastructure. CDCs are assets as these corporations help to bring sustainable change to communities globally. This dissertation develops an approach and a model for assessing the effectiveness of faith-based and secular community development corporations (CDCs) in the provision of economic development and other services. This dissertation contends that faith-based and secular CDCs are essentially comparable entities whose characteristics and functions are virtually indistinguishable, thus to speak of organizational effectiveness of CDCs is sufficient to encompass both faith-based and secular CDCs. The study uses an empirical approach, directed by the literature, to discover the characteristics and functions of faith-based and secular CDCs, the extent to which they are involved in economic development activities, and to determine the key factors that are influencing organizational effectiveness of these corporations.