From 1983 to 2008, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF) funded more than 1,700 projects across the country to support interfaith volunteer caregiving through three national programs. The projects brought together coalitions of congregations, social service organizations and other organizations to engage and organize volunteers to provide services to people in need, especially those who were frail, elderly and homebound.

In describing the role of interfaith volunteer caregivers, Kenneth G. Johnson, M.D., who directed this effort from 1992 to 2002, said:

• Their relationship to the people they help is a friend, not a patient or client relationship.… Interfaith volunteer caregiver programs fill gaps in the long-term care system. About 60 percent of their referrals come from agencies that are unable to respond. Who else is there to look after an old person living alone after being discharged from the hospital on a Friday afternoon? Who else will deliver meals on weekends and holidays? Who else can be called after office hours? Who else will transport without charge someone three times a week for chemotherapy at a hospital 60 miles away?

RWJF began its funding of interfaith volunteer caregiving in 1983, with a national demonstration program, the Interfaith Volunteer Caregivers Program (now thought of as Faith in Action, Phase 1). It later funded two additional phases of the program, Replication of the Interfaith Volunteer Caregivers Program and Faith in Action®, which finished in June 2008. Throughout, RWJF and program management refined the program's work and mission.

Phase 1: The Demonstration
In its demonstration phase, the Interfaith Volunteer Caregivers Program, RWJF sought to test the idea that interfaith coalitions could mobilize and organize volunteers to provide services such as visiting, transportation, help with light housekeeping and other services to people in need.

RWJF funded 25 sites in communities ranging from urban New York City, Memphis, Tenn., and San Antonio, Texas, to rural La Grande, Ore., and Belhaven, N.C., giving each site $150,000 over three years to carry out its work. The program took place between 1983 and 1987.

At the end of the program, at least 20 of the projects found other sources of support to continue operating.

Phase 2: The Replication
Through assessments that RWJF commissioned and the continued viability of the original interfaith coalitions, RWJF staff believed they had found enough evidence of the effectiveness of this model to fund many more coalitions.

In July 1992—six years after the initial demonstration program had ended—the RWJF Board of Trustees authorized up to $25 million, for a four-year replication/expansion of the demonstration program.

Faith in Action: Replication of the Interfaith Volunteer Caregivers Program, awarded 1,091 grants to interfaith coalitions between 1993 and 1998. Each coalition received $25,000 for an 18-month period. In 1998, RWJF added a $10,000 supplemental grant to 773 coalitions that applied for such a supplement.

From a database of over 1,000 reports from Phase 2 Faith in Action projects, the national program office created a sketch of what the coalitions looked like, who the volunteer caregivers were and what kinds of people received care. See "A Faith in Action Database Yields a Picture."

The program, however, quickly ran into difficulties in finding enough applicants that met the criteria for Faith in Action programs. RWJF also found that many of the existing projects were struggling to stay open.

To address this concern, starting in February 2005, RWJF stopped making grants to support new Faith in Action projects and instead reprogrammed funds to help existing Faith in Action coalitions sustain their work and thrive over time. No further funds were authorized.

During Phase 3 of Faith in Action, RWJF made 599 grants to support new projects. Each coalition received $35,000 for a 30-month period. In addition, RWJF awarded an additional 15 grants for collaborative efforts among local programs during Phase 3.

Phase 3 of the program ran from 1999 to 2008.

Key Results

• Over the course of the initiative, beginning with the pilot sites funded in the demonstration phase starting in 1983, RWJF made 1,715 grants to establish new projects (plus the 15 collaboration grants). Faith in Action projects were established in every state, Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands.
• As of June 2008, 667 of those projects were active, representing a sustainability rate of 38.9 percent.
  
  In addition, of the projects established under Phase 3 (1999–2008), 359 or 60 percent were still active as of June 2008.

The Sidebar List provides links to stories about projects. They are also available from links within the report.

Key Findings
A 1997 assessment of the replication of Faith in Action in phase 2, by the Vanderbilt Institute for Public Policy Studies, Nashville, Tenn., (ID# 032019) and the Health Reform Project at George Washington University, Washington (ID# 032295), indicated that fund raising and partnering with other faith communities were the two biggest struggles of the replication sites. Many also had trouble enlisting African-American congregations and faiths such as Islam and Buddhism in their coalitions.

A 2003 evaluation (ID# 040740) by Public/Private Ventures, a Philadelphia-based consulting firm, examined how well projects in the Faith in Action replication were sustaining themselves following the end of RWJF funding. The evaluation also identified characteristics associated with project survival. Among those characteristics were:

• Projects that recruited at least 15 volunteers annually and retained at least 20 percent of their volunteers for more than a year.
• Projects with total annual budgets of at least $25,000 (the amount of the original Faith in Action grant) from at least three different funding sources.
• Projects that received fund raising and recruitment help from their interfaith coalitions.

A 2007–2008 telephone survey of 661 projects from all program phases conducted by the University of South Carolina's Institute for Public Service and Policy Research, Columbia, S.C., yielded the following findings:

• The 579 projects that submitted complete information served 75,262 people in 2007 with an average of 130 people per project. Extrapolating those numbers over the 25 year history of the program, the national program office surmised that Faith in Action served hundreds of thousands of people.
• Some 84,740 volunteers served in these 579 projects in 2007 with an average of 146 volunteers per project.
• The most frequently provided services, in descending order were:
  • Friendly visitor/telephone reassurance (keeping in touch with someone by visiting or by phone)
  • Shopping
  • Transportation
  • Household repair
  • Respite for caregiversLight housekeeping.
• The most typical people assisted by volunteers in descending order were:
  • Frail elders
  • People who were physically disabled
  • People who had Alzheimers or dementia
  • People who were terminally ill
  • People who had developmental disabilities or mental illness.

Program Management
Kenneth Johnson, M.D., managed the first two phases of the program at a national program office based at Kingston Hospital in Kingston, N.Y.

As Phase 3 got started, RWJF sought a new home for the program. After multiple changes in management, RWJF moved the program to Wake Forest University School of Medicine, Winston-Salem, N.C., under the direction of Burton Reifler, M.D., a psychiatrist. Reifler managed phase 3 from early 2001 until April 2005. He left over disagreements about the program's direction and was replaced by Tom Brown, who had served as the director of grant operations at the national program office since 2001. Brown served through the end of the program in August 2008.

Funding
RWJF's Board of Trustees authorized up to $77.5 million funding for the three phases: Interfaith Volunteer Caregivers, its replication and Faith in Action® from 1983 through August 2008.