Government's Role in Building the Capacity of Faith-Based Organizations

This website is an archive and will no longer be updated. For continuing research and analysis of faith-based social services, turn to the
Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life.

Resource Pages

The Bush Administration's Faith-Based and Community Initiative

An Introduction
To Faith-Based Social Services

Faith-Based Initiatives
and The States

The Comparative Effectiveness
of Faith-Based Social Services

Guidance to Faith-Based Organizations Partnering With Government

Hiring Rights of Religious Organizations

Vouchers and Indirect Financing

Government's Role in Building the Capacity of Faith-Based Organizations

Taxpayers' Right to Sue over Church-State Violations

Faith-Based
Prison Programs

Faith-Based Organizations in Disaster Response

Public Funding for Religious Buildings

Healthy Marriage Initiative

Government's Role in Building the Capacity of Faith-Based Organizations

Developing the organizational capacity of faith-based organizations that wish to compete for government grants has been a hallmark of the Bush Administration's Faith-Based and Community Initiative. The Administration has identified such capacity-building as a key strategy to "level the playing field" for small, grassroots religious charities that want to compete for government service contracts against larger, entrenched organizations.

In 2002, the Administration even designated a new pot of money, the Compassion Capital Fund (CCF), to provide small grants to faith-based groups to assist them with such organizational growth, in areas such as governance, fundraising, and technology. By the end of 2008, CCF made 112 grants to intermediaries that provide sub-awards, training, and technical assistance to more than 4,100 grassroots providers in 47 states and the District of Columbia, according to the White House.

The legality of these grants came into question in a 2006 case brought by Americans United for Separation of Church and State, concerning a federal grant to a marriage education program offered by the Northwest Marriage Institute. Americans United's claims included two charges: (1) that the government was illegally funding a Bible-based program; and (2) that it was improper for the Christian NMI to use tax money to improve its ability to raise funds, write grants and manage finances – all things that would support its religious as well as secular activities. The lawsuit was dismissed after it was determined that NMI had altered its marriage programs to exclude religious content.

The court, therefore, never ultimately addressed the question of whether government could provide capacity-building grants to support secular purposes, if the recipient's religious functions would ultimately benefit from that support, too. Government support for capacity-building creates distinct, and perhaps trickier, legal questions than other types of financial assistance provided by the government to faith-based groups. In other situations where government provides direct financial aid to religious service providers, taxpayer funds must be used exclusively for secular programming, and the government is responsible for monitoring the use of those funds. But with capacity-building grants, it is less clear that one can separate the secular purposes of the funding from the benefits bestowed on the organization's religious mission. As the Roundtable's legal experts say in their legal analysis of the case, Christianson v. Leavitt (see below), “the aid constitutes financial support for the organization's religious activity, but at the same time is not directly related to the religious content of the organization's programming.”

Resource Pages

Government's Role in Building the Capacity of Faith-Based Organizations

Roundtable Legal Analyses

Roundtable Interviews

Roundtable News Stories