Making Grants on Faith

Congress expected to debate plan to aid religious charities

As the new, Republican-led Congress begins next month, one issue expected to be high on the agenda is

President Bush’s plan to make it easier for religious charities to compete for federal grants.

Previous attempts to pass such legislation stalled this year after some Democrats in the Senate raised concerns about the way religious groups would spend the money. Among the contentious issues: whether faith-based recipients of federal money can refuse to hire people who don’t hold their religious views.

Now that both houses of Congress are led by Republicans, many political observers say they expect the proposal to have a better shot at passing. Even so, the issue remains volatile, they say.

John C. Green, an expert on religion and politics at the University of Akron, says he expects “a really ferocious debate” by the new Congress over just how far the federal government should go in supporting religious social-service providers.

The Congressional debate will be shaped, in part, by the federal government’s experiences so far in awarding federal money to religious groups. Both critics and supporters of the idea point to the recent grant decisions by the Compassion Capital Fund — run by the Department of Health and Human Services — as one of the best indicators of how government efforts to finance religious groups will work. Some say the program takes a strong first step toward helping effective religious groups expand their efforts and improve their operations. But others contend that the grant recipients show the federal government’s preference for some religions over others, and that some of the award selections were based more on political ties than on merit. Some people also worry that the way the grant program is structured provides too little oversight to ensure that federal money will not be used to pay for religious activities.

Nearly $25-million in the first round of Compassion Capital Fund grants was allocated among 21 organizations, including some universities and the Boston United Way, to help small nonprofit organizations and churches apply for federal money and run social-service programs. The grant recipients are expected to pass on some of the money directly to smaller charities or use the federal funds to provide training and consulting to help those organizations improve their operations.

Grants ranged from $500,000 to $2.5-million each, with the Institute for Youth Development, a Washington group that works with local youth organizations, getting the largest award. Each recipient has to match at least half of the value of the grant with cash or services from other sources. The Compassion Fund hopes to provide additional money to the same organizations for the next two years if the terms of the grant are met.

Another $4.4-million of the Compassion Capital Fund grants went to organizations to study and evaluate the way religious groups provide services and to establish a national resource center as a clearinghouse of information for such organizations.

Grant recipients have a fair amount of discretion in how to use the money, but they must work out an individual agreement with the Department of Health and Human Services. If they pass the money on to other charities, however, they must give priority to groups that work with the homeless, people suffering from hunger, those trying to make the transition from welfare to work, disadvantaged youths, drug addicts, and prisoners.

$100-Million Request

Mr. Bush had hoped to greatly expand the Compassion Capital Fund for the current fiscal year, which started in October, asking Congress to put $100-million into it. But lawmakers are expected to eventually provide much less for the grants program, around $45-million, when they approve appropriations for fiscal 2003.

Government officials and others are hailing the first round of awards from the Compassion Fund as a nondivisive way to jump-start government support for small or newly founded religious and neighborhood groups. “The president believes the Compassion Capital Fund will help these small grass-roots groups and programs — run out of church basements and synagogue halls — to be treated fairly in the granting process,” said James Towey, head of the White House Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives. “He makes clear that the funds aren’t to promote religion, they are to provide services to the poor.”

But critics call the grant program a bad start to a bad plan. Some charge that the money favors some religions over others. “These awards show us that the American Muslim community remains outside the loop,” said Ibrahim Hooper, a spokesman for the Council on American-Islamic Relations, a Washington advocacy group. No Muslim organizations received money in the Compassion Capital Fund’s first round of grants.

Operation Blessing

Some critics contend that some awards appear to be based less on merit than on the Bush administration’s desire to reward its political allies or quiet its opponents. One example of such maneuvering, they said, is the $500,000 grant to Operation Blessing International Relief and Development Corporation, a charity in Virginia founded by the Rev. Pat Robertson, a Christian conservative who has been a vocal opponent of President Bush’s faith-based plan. Among the concerns he expressed before his group got the grant: that federal money would end up going to what he considers objectionable organizations, such as the Church of Scientology.

Mr. Towey said charges concerning political maneuvering are unfounded, adding that if the grants were politically motivated, “we did a pretty horrible job.” He points to the $2-million grant, one of the largest, to a United Way in Sen. Edward M. Kennedy’s home state of Massachusetts. “Last time I checked, Senator Kennedy was not a Republican,” said Mr. Towey.

Most troubling to some critics is the fund’s reliance on well-established organizations to pass on some of the money to religious groups. Some say the government has given those intermediaries too much authority to decide who gets the money, and has set too few requirements to ensure the money is used as intended.

“The way the awards are set up — with the money flowing through the intermediaries and out to whomever they choose, according to whatever standards they create — is extremely problematic,” said Gary Bass, director of OMB Watch, a group in Washington that monitors government spending. “The question is: Was it structured this way to avoid the normal standards of accountability, financial reporting, and auditing for the intermediaries and, especially, for the subgrantees?”

Robert W. Tuttle, a professor and constitutional law scholar at George Washington University, in Washington, says the compassion fund provides “no working definition of what is a prohibited activity.” Some intermediary groups, he said, could, in effect, “launder the money” by passing it through to churches or other sectarian organizations that are not careful enough about, for example, separating worship from counseling sessions. He said that even with good intentions, a grant recipient could give to an organization that uses the money improperly.

Robert Polito, director of the Center for Faith-Based and Community Initiatives, which distributes grants from the Compassion Capital Fund at the Department of Health and Human Services, said his agency determined that using intermediaries to spread the award money would be the most effective way to reach the smallest and best religious and neighborhood social-service providers. He said the 21 grant recipients were chosen from among more than 500 applicants because of their demonstrated abilities to identify and aid such groups. “We’re looking for ways to move resources out to grass-roots service providers,” said Mr. Polito.

He added that the Compassion Capital Fund should be less controversial than other programs, such as federal grants to religious groups aiding welfare recipients, because the Compassion Fund pays for management and other training instead of direct social services. “We’ve made it clear that this isn’t a way to fund direct-service ministries,” he said. “This is about technical assistance. This is about providing seminars and training to put faith-based and community-based organizations on a level playing field to go after federal dollars.”

Half Are Secular

About half of the 21 groups sharing the Compassion Capital Fund money are religious organizations. Among the overtly sectarian groups, along with Operation Blessing, are the Christian Community Health Fellowship, a national network of Christian medical professionals and health centers based in Chicago, and the National Center for Faith Based Initiatives, a Florida group started in 1999 by Bishop Harold Calvin Ray, senior pastor of Redemptive Life Fellowship, in West Palm Beach. The center’s Web site says that the group’s “prototype is not the world — but rather THE WORD.”

Among the secular groups to get awards: the United Way of Massachusetts Bay, Emory University, and a for-profit entity, a Denver company that advises charities, JVA Consulting. One government-related group, Montana’s Office of Rural Health, also received an award.

Spending plans among the grant recipients vary widely.

Operation Blessing plans to use its grant to help small organizations that work in hunger relief throughout the country keep better track of donations, inventory, and distribution of food. Nearly half of its $500,000 grant will pay for computers, software, and training. About the same amount will be awarded in grants to help groups cover costs such as increased warehouse space.

The United Way of Massachusetts Bay plans to give smaller organizations nearly all of its $2-million grant, focusing on helping organizations that serve children and teenagers. Most of the money will pass immediately to a group that worked with the United Way on the grant application, the Black Ministerial Alliance of Greater Boston, a coalition of predominantly black churches that coordinates an after-school program. The alliance will oversee the distribution of the grant money to smaller groups.

Christian Community Health Fellowship plans to use about two-thirds of its $1.1-million grant to help create small Christian-affiliated health centers, which may offer prayer as part of their health services. Jerry Stromberg, executive director of the health network, said the grant money provides the crucial ingredient for expanding the work of religious charities. “It isn’t vision and ideas lacking out there, it’s money to get things going,” he said.

Officials at the Community Technology Centers’ Network, in Cambridge, Mass., said they plan to serve a mix of organizations, with only a small portion of their federal grant money reserved for sectarian groups. Of the $1.5-million the group received from the Compassion Capital Fund, just $110,000 is expected to go to the Association for Christian Community Computer Centers, which will distribute the money to its members.

Faith-Based Centers

While the Bush administration continues to hope that Congress will pass new legislation to explicitly allow religious groups to use federal funds, it has already taken numerous steps to try to increase the number of faith-based organizations that apply for and receive federal money.

Five federal agencies, under executive order of the president, have opened special Centers for Faith-Based and Community Initiatives. In addition to the Department of Health and Human Services, those include the Departments of Education, Housing and Urban Development, Justice, and Labor.

Among the responsibilities of each office is to identify and remove “existing barriers” to participation by religious-affiliated charities.

The new offices have acted quickly to reach out to their constituents. The Department of Labor, for example, recently published a 12-page brochure for religious and community groups that encourages organizations to apply for government grants. Its cover makes a biblical allusion to the story of Moses, stating, “Not everyone has a burning bush to tell them their life’s calling.”

While some people have criticized such steps by the federal government as an inappropriate mixing of government and religion, others say many of the concerns have been overblown.

Scott Larson, president of Straight Ahead Ministries, a group in Westboro, Mass., that works with youngsters who are or have been in juvenile-detention centers, said complaints about the Compassion Capital Fund sound to him like “a lot of worry over nothing.”

He said his group, which has received support from the United Way of Massachusetts Bay in the past and may get more money through the United Way’s new federal grant, respects the line between church and state.

“Faith-based groups like us know who we are and what our mission is,” said Mr. Larson. “We also know that we’d have to clearly define how we use government money. More money for us doesn’t mean more religion, it means more and better services for our kids.”