February 23, 2006 | Read Time: 2 minutes
Religious organizations received a growing number of federal grants from 2002 to 2004, although the dollar amount of federal funds going to such groups fell, according to a new study.
The Roundtable on Religion and Social Welfare Policy, part of the Rockefeller Institute of Government at the State University of New York, in Albany, studied more than 28,000 federal grants for social-services projects.
It found that religious groups received 17.8 percent of all funds provided by those grants in 2004 — the same percentage as they had in 2002. Because the overall amount of money the federal agencies distributed in social-service grants declined, however, the amount going to religious organizations also fell, dropping from $670-million in 2002 to $626-million in 2004.
The number of grants going to religious groups increased, however, the study found. Religious groups received 1,042 grants in 2002 (11.6 percent of the total), which increased to 1,332 (12.8 percent) in 2004.
But the amount of money in the average grant fell, the study found.
The study also found that, despite the Bush administration’s desire to steer more money to small groups run by local congregations, the share of grants going to such groups declined. In 2002, charities linked to congregations received 10.7 percent of all grants to religious organizations; by 2004 that had fallen to 8.8 percent.
In fact, the study found that larger national and international religious groups received the bulk of the growth in federal grants. In 2002, large groups accounted for 43.5 percent of all grants that went to religious organizations; by 2004 they received 53.7 percent.
The Labor Department far outstripped other federal agencies in the growth of grants to faith-based groups, with an increase of 29 percent over the period studied. No other agency had an increase of more than 4 percent.
A report on the study, “A Complete Piece of the Pie: Federal Grants to Faith-Based Social Service Organizations,” is available on the roundtable’s Web site, at http://www.ReligionandSocialPolicy.org.
