Public Value and Social Impact in Faith-Based Organizations: Toward Evidence-Based Religious Policy
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.61860/amuya.v2i2.120Keywords:
Evidence-Based Religious Policy, Faith-Based Organizations, Public Value, Social ImpactAbstract
Faith-based organizations (FBOs) contribute to welfare provision, public health, humanitarian assistance, and community development, yet their social contributions cannot be inferred from religious identity or service outputs alone. Existing research has examined FBO governance, service delivery, state–FBO relations, and sector-specific outcomes, but remains insufficiently integrated for explaining how social impact acquires broader public value and becomes relevant to evidence-based religious policy. This study examines how FBOs generate public value and social impact, identifies the contextual and institutional conditions shaping their emergence, distribution, and sustainability, and considers how such evidence can inform religious policy. A qualitative integrative review and conceptual synthesis, informed by realist reasoning, was employed. Peer-reviewed theoretical, empirical, and evaluative literature addressing FBOs, public value, social impact, governance, program evaluation, and evidence-based policymaking was selected according to its relevance to organizational practices, contextual conditions, outcomes, stakeholder experiences, equity, accountability, and legitimacy. The literature was analysed through combined deductive and inductive thematic analysis and iterative cross-source comparison. The synthesis indicates that faith-informed resources generate social impact through mechanisms including moral commitment, volunteer mobilization, relational accessibility, solidarity, and community trust, whose operation varies across institutional and socio-religious contexts. Social impact acquires public value when outcomes are accessible, equitably distributed, accountable, inclusive, and publicly legitimate. These findings provide an analytical basis for evidence-based religious policy that evaluates FBO involvement through demonstrated outcomes, contextual conditions, stakeholder experiences, distributional consequences, and governance arrangements rather than organizational identity alone.
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Copyright (c) 2026 Hasyim Asy’ari, Eko Prasetyo, Nuniek Amin Abdullah, Moh. Ahmed Ubaidallah
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