White House Plans Seminars to Help Religious Groups Win Federal Aid

With a proposal to benefit religious charities stalled in Congress, the White House plans to hold five free information seminars to help sectarian groups win federal contracts for social services.

The one-day conferences, the first of which will be held October 10 in Atlanta, are designed to teach small religious and secular nonprofit groups how to apply for grants from five federal departments — Education, Health and Human Services, Housing and Urban Development, Justice, and Labor.

“The conferences will provide real nuts-and-bolts guidance, like this is what a grant application looks like and this is what you can do to make your grant more effective,” says Rebecca A. Beynon, an official in the White House’s Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives who is helping to organize the events.

She expects 1,000 to 1,500 people to attend each seminar. The White House tentatively plans to hold the second conference in November and the other three early in 2003 in as-yet-undecided locations.

Government-watchdog groups argue that the seminars are the latest in a series of efforts by the administration to direct federal money to religious charities without receiving permission from Congress.

The House of Representatives has approved a bill containing portions of the president’s plan, and the Senate may vote on a related proposal, the Charity Aid, Recovery and Empowerment Act of 2002. But it has been unclear whether both houses of Congress will be able to agree on a final bill to send to the White House, observers say.

‘A Tent Revival’

The White House seminars could fill a critical need by helping small nonprofit groups increase their ability to win federal grants, says Gary D. Bass, executive director of OMB Watch, a group in Washington that monitors government spending. But Mr. Bass and others worry that the administration may use the conferences to help religious groups that receive federal money find loopholes in the rules that prohibit proselytizing to the beneficiaries of government-supported programs or discriminating against employees of other faiths.

If the seminars are similar to previous gatherings of federal agencies and nonprofit groups in support of the administration’s faith-based plan, they will probably “look more like a tent revival than a government meeting,” says Daniel E. Katz, director of legislative affairs for Americans United for Separation of Church and State, an advocacy group in Washington.

Mr. Katz says he does not believe the seminars will address any of the needs of nonreligious organizations. “As far as secular nonprofits go, the administration couldn’t care less,” he says. “They’re only window dressing.”

Administration officials deny that nonreligious groups will be ignored. “We have a commitment to working with folks who have not been involved in our grant process in the past, be it faith-based, be it small, community-based groups,” says Robert Polito, director of the Center for Faith-Based and Community Initiatives at the Department of Health and Human Services.

Revising Regulations

To the critics, though, the seminars are not the most worrisome of the Bush administration efforts to support faith-based charities.

For the past year, the cabinet-level agencies have been rewriting rules that govern human-service programs to help religious groups get grants. Some charge that the work has gone on without Congressional oversight. “What makes us very nervous about the administration’s actions is that it’s establishing federal policy without the legislative branch granting that authority,” Mr. Bass says.

What’s more, the administration is using the new Compassion Capital Fund — a $30-million Department of Health and Human Services fund to support the work of religious charities — in ways not approved by Congress, Mr. Katz alleges. Though Congress agreed that the fund could provide grants to 15 to 25 large nonprofit groups to help churches expand their charitable programs, it did not want the grantees to pass a portion of their grants to religious charities, as the department has planned, Mr. Katz says.

According to Mr. Polito, however, his office is heeding the wishes of Congress. “We are not interested in or intent on rewriting regulations that would be contrary to what we’ve been instructed by Congress to do,” he says.

The administration expects to announce the fund’s first grantees by early October.

New Study

While critics are complaining about the information seminars and other work by the administration to help religious groups, a new study may provide supporters of faith-based services new ammunition to defend the work of churches.

The study, by the Hudson Institute, a think tank in Indianapolis that supports government partnerships with religious organizations, found that, of nearly 400 churches participating in welfare programs in 15 states, only 9 percent reported that recipients of aid left the programs because they objected to their religious nature. The study also found that 70 percent of the groups separated their government money from money used to support religious activities, countering concerns that churches would use federal dollars to buy Bibles and to carry out other sectarian activities.

Information about the seminars is available on the White House Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives Web site, http://www.whitehouse.gov/infocus/faith-based. The Hudson Institute study is at http://www.hudsonfaithincommunities.org.