Valuation of Urban Congregation's Social and Economic Benefits to the Local Social Economy

Cautionary note:

I did not find a better suited place for this submission. It is not a traditional program evaluation. My apologies.

It is using cutting edge economics methods to value the contributions of organizations producing public goods. I focus on local congregations as an example, but the method can then be applied to many social and human services.

Purpose:

Public goods are often difficult to value in dollar terms (Baron & Greene, 1996; Carson, Flores, Martin, & Wright., 1996; Tisdell, 2007). One community institution that is prevalent through America's neighborhood is the local religious congregation. Surprisingly, no serious attempts were carried out to value contributions of local religious congregations to their local social economy.

Methods:

The valuation of a congregations to the local economy can be either viewed as very simplistic or extremely complex. The simplistic approach is to assess the congregational annual budget and use it as the congregation's contribution to the local economy. In addition to the simplistic approach, I detail the contributions of various positive externalities such as: social and human services offered by the congregation (using replacement value methods), contribution to crime reduction, contribution to property value, contribution to the local economy (such as religious tourism and reunions), saving public schools boards the cost of educating thousands of students who study in congregational-based schools, and the economic value of bringing people and resources from the suburbs to the city. Finally, the valuation of Community Development Corporations and housing initiatives that revitalize local neighborhoods are added. The various contributions assessed are added to the estimate of the operating budget and, combined; they are the valuation of the contribution of religious congregations to the local social economy. In all cases, I made sure to avoid double counting.

Results:

The total estimated value of the contribution of a typical urban congregation is estimated at $431,192.97. If this number is confirmed in future works, it then can be used as a basis to assess the contribution of the urban congregations to the local social economy. In Philadelphia, for example, there are some 2,120 different congregations. One may assess their overall contribution by multiplying the two numbers (2,120 congregations by $431,192.97) and obtain a most impressive sum of $914,129,096.40.

Implications:

In being the first comprehensive attempt to assess the value of an urban local religious congregation some assumptions were necessary to advance our understanding of the contributions of congregations to the social economy. This study shows that positive externalities can be assessed. However, future research should focus on refining the measures used in this valuation and their monetary estimation as well as including the possible negative externalities. For example congregations may decrease property value as they increased traffic (and parking) congestion and the noise of the church bells.

Given the annual estimated value of an urban religious congregation to its local social economy, it can be safely assumed that the local social economy benefits more from the programs and externalities generated from urban congregations than from potential taxes collected.