[House Hearing, 107 Congress]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
THE ROLE OF COMMUNITY AND FAITH-BASED ORGANIZATIONS IN PROVIDING
EFFECTIVE SOCIAL SERVICES
=======================================================================
HEARING
before the
SUBCOMMITTEE ON CRIMINAL JUSTICE,
DRUG POLICY AND HUMAN RESOURCES
of the
COMMITTEE ON
GOVERNMENT REFORM
HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
ONE HUNDRED SEVENTH CONGRESS
FIRST SESSION
__________
APRIL 26, 2001
__________
Serial No. 107-69
__________
Printed for the use of the Committee on Government Reform
Available via the World Wide Web: http://www.gpo.gov/congress/house
http://www.house.gov/reform
U.S. GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE
79-973 WASHINGTON : 2002
________________________________________________________________________
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COMMITTEE ON GOVERNMENT REFORM
DAN BURTON, Indiana, Chairman
BENJAMIN A. GILMAN, New York HENRY A. WAXMAN, California
CONSTANCE A. MORELLA, Maryland TOM LANTOS, California
CHRISTOPHER SHAYS, Connecticut MAJOR R. OWENS, New York
ILEANA ROS-LEHTINEN, Florida EDOLPHUS TOWNS, New York
JOHN M. McHUGH, New York PAUL E. KANJORSKI, Pennsylvania
STEPHEN HORN, California PATSY T. MINK, Hawaii
JOHN L. MICA, Florida CAROLYN B. MALONEY, New York
THOMAS M. DAVIS, Virginia ELEANOR HOLMES NORTON, Washington,
MARK E. SOUDER, Indiana DC
JOE SCARBOROUGH, Florida ELIJAH E. CUMMINGS, Maryland
STEVEN C. LaTOURETTE, Ohio DENNIS J. KUCINICH, Ohio
BOB BARR, Georgia ROD R. BLAGOJEVICH, Illinois
DAN MILLER, Florida DANNY K. DAVIS, Illinois
DOUG OSE, California JOHN F. TIERNEY, Massachusetts
RON LEWIS, Kentucky JIM TURNER, Texas
JO ANN DAVIS, Virginia THOMAS H. ALLEN, Maine
TODD RUSSELL PLATTS, Pennsylvania JANICE D. SCHAKOWSKY, Illinois
DAVE WELDON, Florida WM. LACY CLAY, Missouri
CHRIS CANNON, Utah ------ ------
ADAM H. PUTNAM, Florida ------ ------
C.L. ``BUTCH'' OTTER, Idaho ------
EDWARD L. SCHROCK, Virginia BERNARD SANDERS, Vermont
------ ------ (Independent)
Kevin Binger, Staff Director
Daniel R. Moll, Deputy Staff Director
James C. Wilson, Chief Counsel
Robert A. Briggs, Chief Clerk
Phil Schiliro, Minority Staff Director
Subcommittee on Criminal Justice, Drug Policy and Human Resources
MARK E. SOUDER, Indiana, Chairman
BENJAMIN A. GILMAN, New York ELIJAH E. CUMMINGS, Maryland
ILEANA ROS-LEHTINEN, Florida ROD R. BLAGOJEVICH, Illinois
JOHN L. MICA, Florida, BERNARD SANDERS, Vermont
BOB BARR, Georgia DANNY K. DAVIS, Illinois
DAN MILLER, Florida JIM TURNER, Texas
DOUG OSE, California THOMAS H. ALLEN, Maine
JO ANN DAVIS, Virginia ------ ------
DAVE WELDON, Florida
Ex Officio
DAN BURTON, Indiana HENRY A. WAXMAN, California
Christopher A. Donesa, Staff Director and Chief Counsel
Amy Horton, Deputy Staff Director
Conn Carroll, Clerk
Denise Wilson, Minority Professional Staff Member
C O N T E N T S
----------
Page
Hearing held on April 26, 2001................................... 1
Statement of:
DiIulio, John J., Jr., director, White House Office of Faith-
based and Community Initiatives, accompanied by Don Eberly,
deputy director, White House Office of Faith-based and
Community Initiatives; Carl Esbeck, director, Department of
Justice Center; and Don Willett, associate director of
Office for Law and Public Policy........................... 17
Humphreys, Katie, secretary of the Indiana Family and Social
Services Administration; Debbie Kratky, client systems
manager, Work Advantage; Loren Snippe, director, Ottawa
County Family Independence Program; Donna Jones, pastor,
Cookman United Methodist Church; Bill Raymond, president,
Faithworks Consulting Service; and Donna Jones Stanley,
executive director, Associated Black Charities............. 44
Letters, statements, etc., submitted for the record by:
Barr, Hon. Bob, a Representative in Congress from the State
of Georgia, prepared statement of.......................... 12
DiIulio, John J., Jr., director, White House Office of Faith-
based and Community Initiatives, prepared statement of..... 22
Humphreys, Katie, secretary of the Indiana Family and Social
Services Administration, prepared statement of............. 46
Jones, Donna, pastor, Cookman United Methodist Church,
prepared statement of...................................... 74
Kratky, Debbie, client systems manager, Work Advantage,
prepared statement of...................................... 58
Lynn, Barry W., executive director, americans United for
Separation of Church and State, prepared statement of...... 103
Raymond, Bill, president, Faithworks Consulting Service,
prepared statement of...................................... 79
Snippe, Loren, director, Ottawa County Family Independence
Program, prepared statement of............................. 66
Souder, Hon. Mark E., a Representative in Congress from the
State of Indiana, prepared statement of.................... 4
Stanley, Donna Jones, executive director, Associated Black
Charities, prepared statement of........................... 92
THE ROLE OF COMMUNITY AND FAITH-BASED ORGANIZATIONS IN PROVIDING
EFFECTIVE SOCIAL SERVICES
----------
THURSDAY, APRIL 26, 2001
House of Representatives,
Subcommittee on Criminal Justice, Drug Policy and
Human Resources,
Committee on Government Reform,
Washington, DC.
The subcommittee met, pursuant to notice, at 2:45 p.m., in
room 2247, Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. Mark E. Souder
(chairman of the subcommittee) presiding.
Present: Representatives Souder, Gilman, Mica, Barr,
Cummings, and Davis of Illinois.
Also present: Representatives Scott and Edwards.
Staff present: Chris Donesa, staff director; Conn Carroll,
clerk; Amy Horton, deputy staff director; Tony Haywood,
minority counsel; Denise Wilson, minority professional staff
member; and Lorran Garrison, staff assistant.
Mr. Souder. The subcommittee will now come to order.
Good afternoon and thank you all for coming. I'm pleased to
convene this preliminary hearing today to examine the existing
and potential role of community and faith-based organizations
in providing effective social services. I'm also honored to
have a host of exceptional witnesses from the White House to
inner city America. I expect these witnesses will provide
valuable insights on the state of certain social services as
well as how the government can best promote and assist a
diversity of organizations, secular and sectarian alike, in
helping people in need.
At minimum, I believe government must not only allow but
demand that the best resources this Nation possesses are
targeted to help people who face the greatest daily struggles.
We must embrace new approaches and foster new collaborations to
improve upon existing social programs. Faith and community
initiatives are, by no means, the complete answer in reaching
all in people in need. Rather, they offer a new dimension in
that service, a core of people noted in many cases by their
faith who are ready, willing and able to help their neighbors
around the clock. I believe that we cannot begin to address the
social demands of this Nation without unbridled assistance of
grassroots, faith and community initiatives.
My goal in calling this preliminary hearing is threefold:
To examine the administration's efforts to assess regulatory
barriers that hinder faith and community-based organizations
from participating in social service programs; to explore State
and local initiatives to include these grassroots groups in the
delivery of services; and to learn from service providers and
intermediaries about their experiences employing public funds
to assist people in need.
This hearing is not about whether faith-based organizations
should be involved in helping those who are hurting. I hope
members will keep their comments and questions in that context
and not vary into the political debate behind this. Indeed, the
Constitution Subcommittee of the Judiciary Committee held a
hearing on the Constitutionality of this on Tuesday. This
hearing is to debate the impacts and how it's being done, not
the substance underlying that. We'll certainly debate that in
the authorizing committees and appropriations, and probably in
future hearings in this committee.
The role of the faith community in providing publicly
funded social services on an equal basis as secular providers
has been the topic of considerable public policy debate in
recent years. Although faith groups have been assisting scores
of people in need for decades, recent charitable choice
provisions encourage an even larger role. The watershed event,
the 1996 Welfare Reform legislation, first included full blown
charitable choice language in Federal law, applying it to the
newly established Temporary Assistance for Needy Families
[TANF], block grant programs. Subsequently, charitable choice
language was included in welfare-to-work formula grants added
to TANF the following year.
These provisions established a new paradigm for
collaboration between government and nongovermental
organizations in serving people in need. The new model affords
an equitable approach in awarding government contracts. Faith-
based service providers could compete for government grants on
the same basis as other providers. Consequently, organizations
providing the most effective services, regardless of their
character, would be awarded grants to assist people in need. In
addition, charitable choice provisions affirmed that faith-
based organizations could retain their religious character and
employ their faith in implementing social service programs.
Charitable choice provisions have been extended by law to
other programs since welfare-to-work formula grants in 1997, in
1998 to the community services block grant, to substance abuse
services under the Children's Health Act, and to prevention and
treatment of substance abuse services under part of a
Consolidated Appropriations Act.
Congress has repeatedly endorsed charitable choice during
its consideration of a variety of bills. In the 106th Congress,
charitable choice provisions were included in legislation
related to juvenile justice, home ownership, child support,
youth drug services, family literacy service and fatherhood
grants under TANF.
Aside from this congressional support for charitable
choice, the highest ranks of the executive branch have also
rallied around the concept. In 1997, former HUD Secretary Cuomo
launched the Center for Community and Interfaith Partnerships
directed by Father Joseph Hacala. Secretary Cuomo recognized
that community and faith-based organizations are ``the voice of
conscience in the struggle for economic rights.'' He believed
they are integral components of the equation to address
critical social needs saying: ``Our challenge is to engage
partners in a new way to support the critical housing and
community development efforts of community and faith-based
organizations. Government cannot do this alone''--this is
Secretary Cuomo--``community and faith-based organizations
cannot do this alone, but together by combining our strategies,
resources and commitment we can build communities of
opportunity and bring economic and social justice to our
Nation's poorest neighborhoods.''
Former Vice President Al Gore, while on the Presidential
campaign trail, also endorsed the inclusion of faith-based
organizations in social service programs in speeches and on his
Web site, and President George W. Bush's proactive leadership
in promoting the practice in Texas and now from the White House
has been unparalleled.
On January 29, 2001, President Bush executed two Executive
orders related to the community and faith-based organizations
in providing social services. The second established an office
of faith-based and community initiatives in the White House.
The first created similar centers in each of the five cabinet
Departments: Education, Health and Human Services, Housing and
Urban Development, Justice and Labor, and this subcommittee has
oversight jurisdiction over the Office of Faith-based at the
White House as well as the Departments of Education, Health and
Human Services, Housing and Urban Development, and Justice.
The purpose of the executive department centers is to
coordinate department efforts to eliminate regulatory
contracting and other programmatic obstacles to the
participation of faith-based and other community organizations
in the provision of social services. In order to accomplish
this purpose, each center will conduct a department-wide audit
to identify existing barriers and remove them. Each of the five
department centers must report to the Office of Faith-based and
Community Initiatives by the end of July.
Given the level of legislative and executive interest in
incorporating grassroots faith and community organizations in
social service programs, we must fully consider the current and
future role of these groups, learn the facts as we go into the
debate. I believe this hearing will provide a preliminary
assessment of these questions.
I now yield to the distinguished ranking member, Mr.
Cummings of Maryland, for an opening statement.
[The prepared statement of Hon. Mark E. Souder follows:]
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[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T9973.002
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T9973.003
Mr. Cummings. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. I want to
say for the very beginning, I am the son of two ministers, and
Mr. Chairman, faith-based and community based organizations
have always been at the forefront in combating the hardships
facing families and communities.
As a Democrat, I do not have problems with government
finding ways to harness the power of faith-based organizations.
Many of these organizations have long been involved in tackling
social ills such as drug addiction, juvenile violence and
homelessness. However, I do not believe that faith-based
programs should replace government programs, use taxpayer money
to proselytize or engage in racial, gender or religious
discrimination.
Few would argue the good works that many religious and
community-based organizations provide. In my own congressional
district in Baltimore, churches, nonprofits and others, serve
up hot meals to the hungry, offer shelter to the homeless,
provide a safe harbor for victims of domestic violence and
counselling to those suffering from drug addiction. Faith-based
and community-based agencies are active in my neighborhood and
yours. They are not and never have been strangers to the raw
needs of people and communities in need.
While I applaud faith-based organizations for their good
works, I do not believe that charitable choice is the method by
which we should lend our support. Charitable choice distracts
from the real issue of providing much needed Federal funds and
resources to address the problems of poverty, crime and drug
addiction.
Under the current administration proposal to expand
charitable choice, I have a real and valid fear that we will
wind up diverting funds away from public agencies and current
nonprofit providers. This will undermine current programs and
create a smoke screen by seemingly doing more with less.
I believe that charitable choice will pit religious,
secular, nonprofit and public agencies against each other in a
competition for declining share of Federal dollars for social
service programs. I also believe that under charitable choice,
there is a fundamental incompatibility between the government's
duty to taxpayers for accountability in the use of Federal
funds and the need for religious organizations to maintain
their independence and religious character.
Further, charitable choice mixes government and religion in
a way that will allow religious discrimination in federally
funded programs. It puts the government in the business of
picking and choosing among religions for Federal grants and
contracts. This raises serious questions about preferential
treatment for one religion over another. How in the world do we
decide who is in or out, good or bad?
I continue to be troubled over the fact that charitable
choice allows churches to limit their hiring to people of their
own faith and people who follow their teachings in programs
that receive Federal money. Religious discrimination in hiring
for programs funded with Federal dollars just does not sit well
with me.
As the former ranking member of the Subcommittee on Civil
Service, I'm extremely sensitive to the plight and treatment of
Federal workers and working people in general. Consequently, I
am concerned that charitable choice creates loopholes or gaps
in Federal protection for workers. Can workers organize and
engage in collective bargaining? Will they be subject to the
Federal unemployment tax and receive unemployment benefits if
they become unemployed? All of these issues beg to be looked at
in depth and I'm sure we will.
Looming heavy over all of my concerns and problems with the
expansion of charitable choice is the issue of accountability
and the glaring lack of research and study. From where I sit
and from what I have observed, many people assume that faith-
based programs work, and that they work better than Federal
social service programs.
My friends, we just do not have the independent and in-
depth research to support such views. Last year the National
Institute on Drug Abuse, in response to misinformation linking
faith-based drug treatment programs to a 60 to 80 percent cure
rate, stated there's not enough research in the treatment
portfolio for the NIDA to make any valid conclusive statements
about the role that faith plays in drug addiction treatment. We
are not aware of research from any treatment program that has
been peer reviewed or published that can attribute a 60 to 80
percent cure rate to faith as a major factor for a group's
treatment success, end of quote.
Indeed, 3 years ago, the General Accounting Office report
on drug abuse and treatment, requested by Representatives
Gingrich and Hastert and Charles Rangel, concluded that other
treatment approaches to drug abuse, such as faith-based
strategies, have yet to be rigorously examined by the research
community. The report went on to conclude that research
literature has not yet yielded definitive evidence to identify
which approaches work best for specific groups of drug abusers.
In a recent Associated Press article entitled ``Faith-based
Battle on Capitol Hill,'' the AP writer asserts that DiIulio
allows that there is scant evidence to support the contention
that religious programs are more effective than secular ones.
Finally, there was an article in Tuesday's New York Times
newspaper quoting Professor Byron Johnson of the University of
Pennsylvania Center for Research on Religion and Urban Civil
Society. Professor Johnson, along with other social scientists,
says that there's little reliable research proving the
effectiveness of religious programs. There seems to be scant
evidence showing which religious programs show the best results
and how they stack up against secular programs.
Mr. Chairman, given that charitable choice was first added
to the welfare reform measure adopted in 1996 and that four
charitable choice measures have been enacted into law, I
believe it is time to review how well charitable choice is
working. Today, I will request that GAO, the investigative arm
of the Congress, begin an indepth review and oversight of
charitable choice: The program, States currently engaged in the
charitable choice, faith-based organizations receiving money, a
look at who is and who is not being served, program
accountability, contract award processes, and whether or not
the services provided are successfully serving the needs of the
people. I am anxious to learn who is currently utilizing faith-
based organizations, learn of their value and see how well they
measure against secular programs.
Mr. Chairman, I'm also pleased that Congressman Bobby Scott
and Chet Edwards have joined us today, and I thank you all for
being here, and I wish to thank all of the witnesses who will
testify, and again, thank you for holding this hearing.
Mr. Souder. Thank you. Mr. Mica of Florida, the immediate
past chairman of the subcommittee, I yield to you for an
opening statement.
Mr. Mica. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and thank you for first
taking on the legislative oversight responsibility for the
faith-based initiative and also for conducting this first
congressional hearing, at least on the House side that I know
of, on the issue and maybe in Congress.
I'm a strong supporter of this initiative, basically, not
based on any studies or reports, and even I think if we get GAO
involved, GAO has a very difficult task ahead of itself trying
to evaluate caring, love and faith, which I don't think fits
into any of their parameters or would they be able to evaluate
it. That's one of the missing ingredients from most of the
government programs. But again, I don't speak and can't cite
reports.
I have heard some of the reports. Mr. Cummings and I've
served together on Civil Service. He was a ranking member. We
served on the Criminal Justice, Drug Policy and Human Resources
Subcommittee together.
So I've heard some of those reports, but I can tell you
firsthand that I've seen in my own community education and drug
treatment programs that have astounding results. They differ
from the government programs because they have two ingredients
that are different. They have very low administrative and
bureaucratic overhead, and second, they're highly effective.
I could just cite two examples: One is House of Hope, which
is located in central Florida. It provides drug treatment,
started out primarily for young women, has a 70, 80 percent
success rate, and I would venture to say from any studies I saw
as chair of Criminal Justice, Drug Policy and Human Resources
Subcommittee, it's just the opposite of what the public
programs produce in drug treatment effectiveness.
Education is another area where we could do so much, and I
have seen in my community a third of some of the public
programs, well intended, and I'm a strong supporter, for
example, of Head Start, but community faith-based programs, and
I have them in central Florida. I've one Catholic based
education program with two administrators for 16,000 students.
Their preschool programs are far superior to anything offered
by the government programs and at a third to a fourth of the
cost, and also with the infusion of caring, love and faith, and
a success rate that far surpasses any that are now offered to
our disadvantaged.
Poverty, crime and drug addiction can all benefit from our
support of these faith-based initiatives. And faith-based
organizations, I believe, are now being discriminated against.
People with faith also pay taxes, and people who pay taxes
should be entitled to have some of their public money spent on
programs that are successful as opposed to those government
programs that are unsuccessful, and I think we can evaluate
these programs simply by their effectiveness.
And I wouldn't support any faith-based services that
discriminate in any way, but I think there are plenty of
examples and there's plenty of experiences without spending
tons of money on study and reviews of successful organizations
that provide faith-based service and, again, a meaningful and
successful manner.
So I support this initiative, look forward to the hearing
and thank you for this initiative.
Mr. Souder. Thank you.
Mr. Davis of Illinois.
Mr. Davis of Illinois. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman,
and let me thank you for holding this hearing to initiate the
discussions. Obviously, this issue that we deal with this
afternoon is going to be one of the great debates of the year,
and I think it's certainly time that we got started.
I think the concept of faith as a part of treatment
modalities in various human service and social service programs
have been with us for a long time, and so I personally am a
strong supporter of the concept of faith. As a matter of fact,
practically all the communities that I've lived in and spent a
great deal of my time working in as both an adult as well as
before I became an adult relied very heavily upon the concept
of faith. As a matter of fact, as an African American, I
remember the song that we sing as part of our national anthem.
It says sing a song full of the faith, and so faith has been an
integral part of the movement of many different groups and
groups of people in this Nation.
I certainly hope that we can answer some of the questions
that I have about the initiative. For example, I'm very much
concerned to know whether or not we're talking about some
additional money. I think it's good to have faith, but when you
add faith with resources, and provide faith with greater
opportunity to work, then I think faith reaches another level.
I'm going to be concerned to understand whether or not we
can establish program modalities and treatments in such a way
that we can absolutely assure that there will be no
discrimination against different individuals because of their
own concepts and notions about faith.
And so I look forward to the hearing. I look forward to the
testimony of all those who will participate and again, Mr.
Chairman, I thank you for initiating this activity because I
think this committee is probably going to be one of the most
interesting subcommittees in Government Reform or in any other
area that we will experience this session.
Mr. Souder. Thank you. Mr. Barr.
Mr. Barr. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Chairman, if America understood the first amendment the
way it was intended, we wouldn't have to have this hearing
today, because it wouldn't be an issue of whether or not
institutions that believe in the power of God can participate
in the public life of America, having been done so--would be
doing so for the last 200 and 20-some-odd years. The first
amendment, as crafted by James Madison, not only was never
intended to be a barrier between any religious activity in the
public facets of our society, but was intended to preserve that
union. It was certainly, as we all know, intended to prohibit
the forcing of any particular religion on any individual or any
group.
But to have the complete focus of the first amendment in
terms of freedom of religion changed as it was fundamentally in
the Supreme Court decision in 1947, which has been, I believe,
misinterpreted many times since then, does indeed bring us to
the strange point that we have to have hearings and a great
deal of controversy over whether or not institutions of proven
effectiveness in State after State after State over so many
years, in helping to solve the social ills of our society, is
something that seems alien and adversarial to some Members of
Congress, and certainly a number of judges.
But I salute President George W. Bush as both a man of
faith and man of understanding our Constitution, in one of his
first acts as President, in recognizing and trying to restore
the first amendment to its proper role, and that is, not as
something that prohibits the use of faith-based institutions in
our public life, but rather, something to be encouraged so long
as all of us are very mindful to not use religion officially to
force a particular belief.
Churches, mosques, synagogues, all across this great land,
have known the secret of solving the problems that face our
society for generations. It is faith and turning to God. And we
now have a President that recognizes that, and I think this
will open up many, many new and very productive avenues for
solving and helping to solve the problems that afflict our
society.
And I appreciate, Mr. Chairman, your convening this hearing
today to begin to put back into proper focus the role of
religion in the public life of the greatest Nation on the face
of the earth. Thank you.
[The prepared statement of Hon. Bob Barr follows:]
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Mr. Souder. Mr. Gilman.
Mr. Gilman. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
I want to take this opportunity to welcome the witnesses
and thank them for taking the time from their busy schedules to
discuss the role of community and faith-based organizations in
providing effective social services.
Faith-based organizations play a vital role in our
communities, all of whom work tirelessly toward effectively
meeting the needs of these communities. These organizations
cover all religions and range from family counseling to
community development, to homeless and battered women's
shelters, to drug treatment and rehab programs, and to saving
our at risk children.
Our community, faith-based organizations deserve our thanks
and our praise that, in many cases, they are the only
organizations which have taken the initiative to provide a much
needed community service. In other words, not only do they live
and work in the communities that they serve but they know their
neighbors and understand their individual needs and
circumstances. No one can dispute the great work of our faith-
based organizations in compassion, the duty to serve and
devotion to helping one's fellow human beings should be
cherished and supported as these qualities are common to all
religions and transcend partisan politics.
I welcome this opportunity to learn from those who serve on
the front lines of their communities and can share their
personal experiences with us in how faith-based organizations
have effectively served in the past, and I look forward to the
testimony of today's witnesses to hear your thoughts on how
best our government can support your humanitarian work in
faith-based, community-based organizations and strive for the
betterment of our communities.
We thank our witnesses for being here, and thank you, Mr.
Chairman.
Mr. Souder. Thank you. I, for the record, wanted to say
Congresswoman Davis joined this subcommittee partly because
she--mostly because she was interested in this issue. She's
having to chair another hearing downstairs and hopes to be up
part way through, but didn't have an opening statement.
Two of my friends who have worked on this issue, even
though we've been on the opposite side of many of these
debates, but it's great to have it during the day rather than
the middle of the night. Congressman Scott and Congressman
Edwards, and I've asked them if they would like to have an
opening statement as well. Congressman Scott would you like to?
Mr. Scott. Thank you, Chairman Souder and Ranking Member
Cummings and I'd like to thank you for holding this hearing on
the issue of the role of the community and faith-based
organizations, and specifically charitable choice, and I'd like
to thank you particularly for inviting me and the gentleman
from Texas to participate today.
First of all, I'd like to say that support for funding for
faith-based programs in general should not be confused with the
specific legislative proposal called charitable choice. Under
current law, without charitable choice religiously affiliated
organizations such as Catholic charities, Jewish federations,
and Lutheran services can compete for and, in fact, now operate
effective government-funded programs. In fact, there would be
significant common ground on this issue if charitable choice
were not included because those religiously affiliated
organizations are free to compete for funds, just like other
private organizations compete for funds, and they are funded
like other private organizations are funded. That is, they are
prohibited from using taxpayer money to advance their religious
beliefs and are subject to all civil rights law.
Charitable choice, however, specifically allows the sponsor
of a government-funded program to promote religion during the
program and to discriminate on employment based on religion
when using taxpayer dollars. Mr. Chairman, notwithstanding the
apparent prohibition against government funded proselytization,
sectarian worship and instruction found in section 1994 A of
H.R. 7, there is, in fact, no prohibition against
proselytization, sectarian worship and instruction by
volunteers during the program. In fact, the right to retain the
religious character of the sponsor virtually guarantees that
the program will promote religious views. Furthermore, unless
religious views were being advanced during the program, it
would be unnecessary to require alternative secular services
elsewhere or to allow discrimination in employment.
It's that provision allowing sponsors of federally funded
programs to discriminate in employment based solely on religion
that is particularly disturbing. Some of us are frankly shocked
that we would even be having this debate. We remember that the
passage of the civil rights laws in the 1960's was not
unanimous, and it is clear that we are using charitable choice
to redebate the passage of basic anti-discrimination laws.
Publicly funded employment discrimination was wrong in the
1960's, and it is still wrong.
Some have suggested that religious organizations should be
able to discriminate employment to select employees who share
their vision and philosophy. Under current civil rights laws,
you can discriminate against a person based on their views on
the environment, views on abortion or gun control. You can
select staff based on their commitment to serve the poor, or
whether you think they have the compassion to help others kick
the drug habit. But under present laws without charitable
choice, you cannot discriminate against an individual because
of his race, sex, national origin or religion.
There was a time when some Americans, because of their
religion were not considered qualified for certain jobs. In
fact, before 1960 it was thought that a Catholic could not be
elected President, and before the civil rights laws of the
1960's, persons of certain religions were routinely suffering
invidious discrimination when they sought employment.
Fortunately, the civil rights laws of the 1960's put an end
to that practice and outlawed schemes which allowed job
applicants to be rejected solely because of their religious
beliefs. Mr. Chairman, supporters of charitable choice have
promised to invest needed resources in our inner cities, but it
is frankly insulting to suggest that we cannot get those
investments unless we turn the clock back on our civil rights.
I, therefore, thank you, Mr. Chairman for holding this
hearing and thank you again for your courtesy in allowing me
and the gentleman from Texas to participate.
Mr. Souder. Thank you.
Mr. Edwards.
Mr. Edwards. I want to thank you for your good faith and
Mr. Cummings' graciousness in allowing two non-members of this
subcommittee to participate and listen in this hearing.
I want to compliment you also for holding this hearing,
because while we have passed into law in three separate
measures charitable choice legislation, the fact is that over
those past 5 years, when we were doing so, it wasn't until this
past week that we had the first House hearing on an issue,
regardless of which side you're on--it's so important that
Madison and Jefferson debated it for 10 years in the Virginia
legislature--the question of the proper role between government
and religion.
Mr. Chairman and members, I believe the question before
Congress is not whether faith-based groups can contribute to
solving social problems. As a person of faith, I believe the
clear answer to that question is yes. Rather, I believe the
fundamental question before Congress is whether we should do
something that our Nation has not done in over 200 years since
the Bill of Rights became part of our law and, that is, to send
Federal tax dollars directly into houses of worship, churches
and synagogues as well.
I hope, Mr. Chairman, in the process of this hearing today,
there are five questions that perhaps will be answered by those
testifying. One, will Federal Government agencies and auditors
go in and audit annually the books of churches, synagogues and
houses of worship that would be receiving these Federal tax
dollars under charitable choice?
Second, who in the Federal Government, deciding to whom to
send charitable choice dollars, will be given the power to
decide what is a religious group or not? What is a faith-based
group or not? For example, we have a number of active
participating, practicing Wiccans in my central Texas district.
Will they be considered a faith-based group under the
definition of this law?
The third question I hope folks will address is the catch-
22 I see in this process. As a person of faith, I believe the
very reason faith-based groups have been effective in so many
cases in addressing social problems is because of their faith.
I consider faith second to none in any type of power, political
or otherwise, but the question is, if we agree under the law of
this land you cannot proselytize with Federal tax dollars, are
we then not taking the faith out of faith-based organizations,
thus leaving organizations?
Fourth, will groups be allowed to discriminate using
Federal dollars? For example, a religion that sincerely
believes that women should not be in the workplace, will they
be allowed to take all of the taxpayer dollars of those of us
in this room and say to women, you are perfectly qualified in
every other way for this federally funded job, but we will not
hire you because our religious faith respects that women should
not be in the workplace?
And finally, I hope a fundamental question this committee
and our Congress can address is, is it necessary to pass new
legislation? Is there anything wrong with having the
requirement of setting up a separate 501(c)(3), whether it be a
church, a synagogue, a house of worship, another faith-based
group, and ask them to meet two standards: don't discriminate
using tax dollars and don't proselytize using tax dollars.
Thank you again, Mr. Chairman and Mr. Cummings, for your
graciousness in letting us participate in this important
hearing today.
Mr. Souder. Thank you. And as has been said, this is about
the most debate and extended debate we've had on this issue,
and this subcommittee will continue to explore a number of the
nuances in conjunction with other committees.
Before proceeding, I would like to take care of some
procedural matters. First, I ask unanimous consent that all
Members have 5 legislative days to submit written statements
and questions for the hearing record, that any answers to
written questions provided by the witnesses also be included in
the record. Without objection so ordered.
Second I ask unanimous consent that the gentleman from
Texas, Mr. Edwards and the gentleman from Virginia, Mr. Scott,
who are not members of the committee be permitted to
participate in the hearing and to question witnesses under the
5-minute rule in each round after all the members of
subcommittee have completed their questions. Without objection
so ordered.
We now begin the first panel, which consists of Dr. John
DiIulio, the director of the White House Office of Faith-based
and Community Initiatives. We welcome you to the subcommittee,
and as an oversight committee, it is our standard practice to
ask all our witnesses to testify under oath. So if you will
rise and raise your right hand, I'll administer the oath.
[Witness sworn.]
Mr. Souder. Let the record show that the witness responded
in the affirmative. We now recognize Dr. DiIulio to outline
some of his vision for the Department.
STATEMENT OF JOHN J. DiIULIO, JR., DIRECTOR, WHITE HOUSE OFFICE
OF FAITH-BASED AND COMMUNITY INITIATIVES, ACCOMPANIED BY DON
EBERLY, DEPUTY DIRECTOR, WHITE HOUSE OFFICE OF FAITH-BASED AND
COMMUNITY INITIATIVES; CARL ESBECK, DIRECTOR, DEPARTMENT OF
JUSTICE CENTER; AND DON WILLETT, ASSOCIATE DIRECTOR OF OFFICE
FOR LAW AND PUBLIC POLICY
Mr. DiIulio. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman, and thank
you, Congressman Cummings and thank you other members of the
committee for inviting me here.
President Bush has outlined several interrelated objectives
for faith and community initiatives. Let me just begin by
briefly summarizing them. First, to increase charitable giving,
both human and financial, both volunteer hours and charitable
dollars. Second, to increase social delivery choices available
to beneficiaries of social welfare programs that are funded in
whole or in part by Washington. Third, to ensure that all
community serving nongovernmental organizations that seek to
administer Federal social programs are treated in a
nondiscriminatory fashion and judged by their performance. And
finally, to seed or expand model public private and religious
secular programs that address acute but unmet civic needs.
As President Bush noted in his February budget address to
Congress, there are groups working in every neighborhood in
America to fight homelessness and addiction and domestic
violence and to provide a hot meal or a mentor or a safe haven
for our children.
So let me just briefly, quickly begin by saying that is
certainly true everywhere I've been over the past 6 or 7 years
looking at these groups and studying this issue and community-
serving ministries all across this country. It is certainly
true in my own hometown of Philadelphia where I, our great
mayor, Major John Street, has promoted public private
partnerships and religious secular programs through his own
office of faith-based and voluntary action, programs in which
neighborhood volunteers in grassroot congregations help each
released prisoner who wants a job, to stay away from illicit
drugs, to complete high school and so on, programs in which
each of our 259 public schools is adopted by a local faith-
based group to help solve such longstanding problems as low
reading scores and high truancy rates and programs like Amachi,
which is led by former Philadelphia mayor, the Reverend W.
Wilson Goode. He is Philadelphia's favorite Dubya, by the way,
and Amachi which is a West African word, I'm told that means:
``who knows, but what God has brought us through this child.''
What Amachi does is it mobilizes volunteers from faith-based
organizations directly to serve as mentors whose fathers and
mothers are both incarcerated. The rub of such programs has
always been that it's difficult to mobilize the volunteers.
The lead organization in this particular program is Big
Brothers Big Sisters of America, which is the Nation's premier
mentoring organization, secular mentoring organization, best
practices mentoring organization.
We know from the research that's been done, getting a
loving, caring, well matched ``big'' into the life of a needy
child cuts that child's chances of first time drug use in half,
reduces aggressive or hitting behavior by a third,
significantly improves school performance and has numerous
other well documented positive social consequences, but again,
the rub has always been with tens of millions of children who
need mentors, the inability to mobilize them.
And so what has happened with Reverend Goode and his Amachi
team is that in just 6 weeks, they mobilized over 600
volunteers from local congregations, enlisting people with
faith to mentor these children of promise, thereby doubling the
number of Big Brothers Big Sisters matches in Philadelphia for
this particular hard-to-serve population, making it the largest
Big Brothers Big Sisters site in the entire Nation, and they
have only really just begun.
From north central Philadelphia to south central L.A., I
could recite literally hundreds of inspiring anecdotes and
stories about how people of sacred places working across
racial, denominational and other divides, are achieving
important civic purposes like those I just mentioned with
respect to the Amachi program. But as my social science
colleagues like to say, the plural of anecdote is not data.
The good news, however, is that the best local and national
data on faith-based and community initiatives all show that
these inspiring anecdotes are the rule, not the exception. For
example, based on 3-hour site visits and 20 page
questionnaires, covering 215 different types of social services
at each of over 1,000 Philadelphia congregations--I'm not
talking about spotty phone surveys or slip shod inventories--
Professor Ram Cnaan of the University of Pennsylvania found
that over 85 percent of the city's churches synagogues and
mosques provided one or more community-serving programs. The
very conservatively estimated value of what these programs
provide in Philadelphia alone in a year is about a quarter
billion dollars. And as has been found in all previous research
of the same depth and breadth, the primary beneficiaries of
these faith-based programs are needy neighborhood children,
youth and families who are not members of the congregations or
faith-based programs, whether they're storefront churches or
run out of a basement, or what have you, that serve them.
In fact, from the Cnaan data you can count on your fingers
and toes the number of community-serving congregations and
other faith-based organizations that make entering the
buildings, receiving the services or participating in the
programs in any way conditioned upon any present or eventual
expression of religious faith or that require beneficiaries to
participate in sectarian worship of any kind.
Professor Cnaan calls these community serving faith-based
organizations that partner often with secular organizations,
and in the case of Philadelphia and so many other cities now
with their city halls, he calls them America's hidden social
safety net. Hidden perhaps, but no longer unheralded, not even
by government.
As has been mentioned here, President Clinton signed the
Federal Welfare Reform law in 1996, and that law contained a
provision called charitable choice. That provision made it
possible for community-serving faith-based organizations that
supply certain social services to seek direct or indirect
Federal support for the provision of those services on the same
basis as any other nongovernmental providers of those services.
Now I repeat and emphasize the rather cumbersome locutions
``supply certain social services,'' ``for the provision of
those services,'' and ``any other nongovernmental providers of
those services,'' not merely because I am a boring academic at
heart, which I am, but because I have learned over the past
several months that otherwise some people will describe the
1996 Charitable Choice law, as well as several subsequent laws
that contain charitable choice provisions, as well as the
present proposal perhaps, as government funding for religion or
government funding for religious charities. That to me is like
describing my purchase of a fast food cheeseburger as ``DiIulio
funding for McDonalds.'' Clearly, I do a lot of that sort of
thing, but the fact of the matter is that it's not core funding
for the organization.
One rarely, if ever, hears the locution ``government
funding for secular nonprofit organizations.'' One rarely, if
ever, hears the locution ``government funding for profit making
firms.'' Yet the fact is that virtually every domestic policy
program that the Federal Government funds, in whole or in part,
has been and continues to be, since the end of World War II,
administered not directly by Federal employees themselves, but
via Federal grants, contracts, vouchers and other disbursement
arrangements with vast networks of nongovernmental
organizations and providers.
My former Brookings Institution colleague, Don Kettl of the
University of Wisconsin, calls this massive public
administration reality ``government by proxy.'' Professor
Lester Salamon has termed it ``third party government,'' an
estimate made that by 1980, 40 percent of all of the funds in
domestic program service delivery that touch the Federal
Government were being administered by nonprofit organizations,
the vast majority of those secular.
The 1996 charitable choice provision, like the relevant
section of the proposed Community Solutions Act of 2001,
invites civic-minded godly people back into the Federal public
square by ensuring, as a matter of law and public policy, that
merely because a faith-based social service delivery program
receives penny one of public funds, its leaders and volunteers
need not remove religious iconography from their walls, need
not refrain from parking their housing rehab lumber in church
yards, need not cease humming hymns while they hammer nails,
can keep saying ``God bless you'' in the health clinic, even
when nobody has sneezed and so on.
At the same time, the 1996 charitable choice law, like the
present charitable choice expansion proposal, seems equally
explicit that no public grants or contracts, under any
government program, shall be expended for sectarian worship
instruction or proselytization. There is and can be no
government funding for religion or for religious charities.
Public funds may be used only for public purposes, not for
religious ones.
In the aforementioned Cnaan survey certain interesting
questions, empirical questions were asked. They asked how many
of the clergy in the city of Philadelphia--again, this is the
largest massive and best data set we have. There are other data
sets as well. They asked how--what fraction of the clergy knew
of charitable choice on the books now for almost 5 years. Only
7 percent knew.
There's only one congregation in the city of Philadelphia
that has actually been charitable choice, and I believe, Mr.
Chairman, you will be hearing from Pastor Donna later this
afternoon.
When asked however--when charitable choice was explained to
the community-serving clergy in the city of Philadelphia--
again, this is a census, not just a mere sample or survey--and
was explained to them, 60 percent said they would be interested
in pursuing, possibly pursuing funding, support, to seek to
deliver social services.
Now, what fraction would actually follow through or qualify
or go on to administer Federal programs or services is really
anybody's guess. I mean I could give you my best guesstimates,
but they would be guesstimates, but as a matter of public law
and policy in deference to constitutional norms of equal
treatment and for the sake of just plain fair play, the
decision of whether to apply should be left to the country's
community-serving Reverend, each should decide, according to
his on her own best understanding of religious mission and
community need.
During the 2000 Presidential campaign, both Vice President
Gore and then-Governor George Bush, called for expanding
charitable choice to juvenile justice and other areas of
Federal public policy and administration. I think everybody
wants government by proxy programs, which is really virtually
all that we have in the area of Federal public policy, domestic
public policy, administration to succeed. In the area of social
services and social welfare, it will actually promote literacy,
not just get improvement, but to get children reading at or
above grade level, not merely to promote housing rehab but to
alleviate situations like the one in Philadelphia, where a
fifth of the housing stock, despite literally tens of millions
of dollars being spent over many years to rehab it, remains
abandoned or falling down in many of our poorest neighborhoods,
and to achieve other common civic purposes and get good
results.
If that is what we wish, then I believe, as President Bush
has proclaimed, and I quote him here, we must heed the growing
consensus across America that successful government social
programs work in fruitful partnership with community-serving
and faith-based organizations, whether run by Methodists,
Muslims, Mormons or good people of no faith at all.
Like most Americans, like Philadelphia's Mayor Street and
Reverend Goode, like those I believe in this Congress who
supported charitable choice several times over the last several
years, and like literally tens of thousands of community
leaders, both religious and secular, all across the country,
President Bush understands that the Constitution does not erect
a wall of separation between common sense and social
compassion. As the President has so often and so eloquently
stated, government cannot be replaced by charities, but it
should welcome them as partners, not resent them as rivals.
As the President stated in the Executive order to establish
the office that I now direct, and I quote him again here, the
paramount goal is compassionate results, and private and
charitable groups should, including the religious ones, should
have the fullest opportunity permitted by law to compete on a
level playing field so long as they achieve valid public
purposes. The delivery of social services must be results-
oriented and should value the bedrock principles of pluralism,
nondiscrimination, evenhandedness and neutrality.
So again, thank you for inviting me. I look forward to
answering any questions to the best of my ability, or more
likely and better, to the best of my staff's ability. Thank you
very much.
Mr. Souder. Thank you.
[The prepared statement of Mr. DiIulio follows:]
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Mr. Souder. Do you want to wait until the questions or
would you like to introduce your staff at this point, because
we'll need to swear them in before they can testify.
Mr. DiIulio. I would introduce my staff, Mr. Chairman, if
that's all right, if they would. Don Eberly who is the deputy
director of the White House Office of Faith-based and Community
Initiatives. Carl Esbeck who is the director of the Department
of Justice center. Don Willett, the associate director of
office for law and public policy.
[Witnesses sworn.]
Mr. Souder. Let the record show that the witnesses all
responded in the affirmative. We're going to go to our 5-minute
rule with the Members. If we need to, we could go a second
round. We also have a large second panel, and I have asked
Ranking Member Cummings if he'd like to go first.
Mr. Cummings. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. DiIulio.
Mr. DiIulio. Yes, sir.
Mr. Cummings. I was just wondering when you--I mean what is
your--your last words when you were talking, quoting President
Bush, you were talking about these churches basically achieving
a certain social purpose and that they had certain goals that
he wants to see them achieve. How do we make sure--how do we
get accountability here? Will we have auditors, as Congressman
Edwards talked about, going into churches?
Mr. DiIulio. Well, I would just say that from my
experiences, knowing these organizations as I've come to know
them over the past 6, 7 years in particular, there's so many of
them that are relatively small. Congressman Edwards mentioned,
and others mentioned, Congressman Scott as well, the ones that
I know and have tremendous respect for as well, Catholic
Charities, Lutheran Social Services and so on. These are great
big organizations that are, you know, well-oiled and, you know,
and so on, and have tremendous reach and do tremendous work.
But we're talking here not exclusively about the large
organizations. We're talking primarily in some respects about
the smaller ones, and when these organizations traditionally
have applied, attempted or put their heads up to apply for any
kind of--they're providing housing rehab. They're providing
health clinics. They're providing homeless shelters. They're
providing prison ministries or preschools or job training or
welfare to work.
When they've put their heads up traditionally and said,
hey, we're providing these services and there are, for example,
130--actually I counted 135 different Federal youth-serving
programs stretching across a dozen or--stretching across seven
or eight cabinet agencies plus the Office of National Drug
Control Policy, plus the Corporation for National Service, step
forward and say we are doing this sort of work, how do we
apply, and if we do apply, do we have to stand down on who we
are, there's a great concern about very--the question you go
to, about accountability standards and so forth, and how do we
begin to go through a procurement process, which sometimes can
be so forbidding for some of these organizations.
But the rules, the procurement rules, the performance
standards and so forth that exist in law in these programs
would apply regardless of who the recipients.
Mr. Cummings. You would see the first Baptist Church of
Baltimore now in a position where with the money going directly
to the church that government has--would then have the right
and, seems to me, would have the duty to make sure that the
taxpayers' money is being spent for the purposes that it's
supposed to be spent for. Other than that--let me finish. Other
than that, we might as well walk out there and throw the
taxpayers' dollars out the window if we don't have some type of
accountability. So the question becomes, do we now have a set--
and I can tell you, in your statements, your statement you
made--you were talking about how you really don't know how many
churches might take advantage of this. Well, I can tell you
that in my District, there are a whole lot of folks that like
this idea. They like the idea of money coming directly into
their church.
And the other question becomes, how do we make sure that
there is accountability, and President Bush talks about these
layers of government. I mean, do we now have another layer of
government to oversee all of these churches because I can see
them in Baltimore, probably, maybe 200, 300 churches applying
for this money, and possibly maybe a third of them getting some
of it. That's just in one city, in my congressional district.
Mr. DiIulio. My understanding, Congressman, is that the
accountability, the procurement rules and procedures, the
fiscal accountability standards, the need to segregate accounts
to be accountable, goes to the program and the services
provided. It is not as if merely providing a service and having
a program opens your books to the government in all respects.
It's really in many respects, and I think you will hear this
when you hear from Pastor Donna in Philadelphia, who has gone
through this process and has had quite an interesting journey
through it.
But I think in many respects, it's no different from what
happens at my university research center when we receive a
particular Federal grant, do a particular piece of research, we
are part of a much larger entity, which is part of a still
larger entity, but the accountability standards and the
procedures apply to us in that program. It's not a sort of a
carte blanche going across the entire university.
Mr. Cummings. But when you have a small church, they may
not have all of that big stuff that you're talking about. It
may be the church. I mean, my mother's a pastor. She has about
500 members. That is the church, and these are the people that
are going to be applying for this money. She doesn't have a big
organization to tell her how to do her books. And the reason
why I ask that question is that we've seen some situations in
Baltimore where, not necessarily with these kinds of programs,
but where, say, like with certain AIDS money, a small
organization that thought they could handle it, they find
themselves now under Federal investigation.
They thought they could handle it, and then now the
government, Big Brother, is in that organization looking at
their books, Justice Department, FBI, into them deep, and all
they were trying to do--and probably didn't do anything wrong.
But in other words to them, they didn't do anything wrong, but
when government starts looking into it, it's a whole other
thing, and I wonder whether that defeats the very purpose that
we're aiming at.
Mr. DiIulio. Again, I appreciate those comments and
concerns, and the--I believe Dr. Amy Sherman of the Hudson
Institute testified in the House earlier this week, and she has
studied carefully the actual experience with charitable choice
over the past 4 years or so in nine States, that have been
among the more active ones in charitable choice things, and
while experience--Madison, maybe a lot of quoting of Madison
today, but Madison said experience is the oracle of truth.
If the experiences, as she summarizes it in her report, is
any indication, well, one would have to have those concerns,
there are real concerns. There just wasn't a whole lot of
problems in the nine States where she researched and looked
very carefully at numerous faith-based organizations, churches,
synagogues, others, as well as noncongregation-based faith-
based organizations that got involved in the administration of
Federal services in a variety of social services areas, which
doesn't definitively answer the question, but it does say the
experience to date so far is much more reassuring I think than
not.
Mr. Souder. One of the difficulties we are going to have in
today's hearing is that we've got all this pent-up demand with
lots of questions, and I want to assure everybody here we're
going to take different slices of this as your office gets up
and running, as agencies get up and running, but we also build
a hearing book with which to base other things on, and I want
to ask that you will submit as a followup, understanding we
will do additional hearings on this, one is a question came up
early on in the opening statements about the pool of dollars.
In other words, are we merely spreading the same number of
dollars thinner, and if you could submit a statement that would
kind of expound on two things you raised before. One is
obviously the leveraging of the dollars which you made, and
develop that theme a little more; and second, if you can talk
about the tax exemption, excuse me, the--those who don't
currently get a write-off, those who don't itemize and how
that's going to increase the pool of dollars, estimates from
the administration, how many additional dollars that would be.
Many of us feel that actually is the biggest thing in the sense
of putting more dollars in the hands of people, and yet we're
all obsessed with the charitable choice part.
Also, if you want to add a few words at this point but--and
I know this is in the developmental stage, and if I can put a
plug in, the compassion fund that was kind of a rhetorical
definition or a--and not necessarily a full concept at this
point in the State of the Union address, addresses many of the
concerns that Congressman Cummings and others and I have
expressed, and that we've tried to work out and are ready in
the education bill as we debate language of how we don't get
churches entangled in how we're going to help this 93 percent
that currently isn't involved, may not have attorneys in their
churches, may not have MBAs or CPAs in their churches, to
figure out how they're not going to get sued.
If you could add a few comments now where you see this
heading, I view this as long term, almost like the microcredit-
type situations that we have in the small business
administration where we have these centers that can help--I
mean, small churches are not going to have the resources to
figure out that between June 7th and June 9th a grant is coming
through for youth services. They don't have attorneys and CPAs.
So how do we make this an empowerment and as a supplement
to that? My assumption is that the 93 percent who currently
weren't involved in your example are predominantly smaller
units, or at least are disproportionately probably minority and
small.
Mr. DiIulio. Just to clarify, Mr. Chairman, 93 percent
weren't even aware of it. You know, couldn't name it, hadn't
heard about it despite all the--you know, even recently in
community town meetings we've gone to, you know, several,
scores, hundreds of people and still all this--it's hard
because these folks live--you know, they're living a different
existence. They're not picking up these newspapers. They're
dealing with these problems on a day-to-day basis out there
trying to resurrect hope and deal with people's lives in these
communities.
The 97 percent--the figure of 60 percent who would consider
it has been interesting. I was in Louisiana last week--it's
interesting whether it's Shreveport, LA or whether it's north
central Philadelphia, and you get the groups of folks together,
it's the same set of concerns and questions--I'm talking about
the folks that do the actual work--and what we hope to
accomplish--to add a few words, Mr. Chairman, as you invited--
with the in-progress concept of the compassion capital fund is
address the technical assistance needs of these organizations,
because as Congressman Cummings said, you know, a lot of these
organizations like to say--and I don't mean to be flip--but
looking at the 6, 7 years, if you could fill out a 52-page RFP
and all that, I don't know how much time you have left over to
actually do the work that you're trying to do, and in talks
with some of the organizations that have been out there for a
while, like Catholic Charities and Lutheran Social Service, or,
you know, huge organizations, many billions of dollars a year
in talks with secular or independent sector organizations like
Big Brothers Big Sisters, a real passion and a real interest in
having new collaborations, so that rather than either treating
these smaller community-based organizations and grassroots
Josephs and Josephines as sort of radioactive or, you know,
marginalized, we find new and better ways to get them into the
process.
So if they're providing social services and some of the
social services they're providing link up with government
programs that are addressing acute civic needs that aren't yet,
you know, well met, but they're able to find these new
partnerships.
This is really a multisector initiative. So the compassion
capital fund, in terms of helping to supply technical
assistance and support, helping to incent organizations that
are out there already to provide greater, reconnected in some
cases, to the grassroots organizations that in, again, many
cases are doing 50, 60, 70 percent of the actual work and
receiving less than 1 percent of the government money or
receiving virtually no private or philanthropic support as
well.
You have--lots of corporations have absolute bans on giving
to faith-based organizations. Even if you know they have
community-giving portfolios, they'll tell you, well, we don't
give. So while they do housing rehabs, we don't give to those
organizations. They have concerns.
We need to change that culture too. So we hope the
compassion capital fund will also, in addition to technical
assistance and capacity building, get in behind programs like
the model public private programs the President's expressed
such interest in during his budget address with Mayor Street of
Philadelphia, like this program, targeting best practices
mentoring on prisoners' children, where you get a quality world
class secular independent sector organization, cross-lace it
with churches, people in churches, and get these unparalleled,
unprecedented results in terms of both numbers, and I believe
when all the data are counted and all the studies are in, I
think we will be quite happy with the results.
Mr. Souder. Thank you.
Congressman Davis.
Mr. Davis of Illinois. Thank you very much Mr. Chairman.
Mr. DiIulio, I've heard lots of explanations about what the
initiative is, what it's designed to do. The one thing that I
have never understood yet is how much additional money are we
talking about, if we're talking about any additional resources,
to attack the problems that so many people are geared up for
and about.
Mr. DiIulio. Well, in the first instance, I mean the
three--to boil it down, Mr. Congressman, to the three key
goals, first of all, we're talking about increasing charitable
giving, both human and financial. So the President has very
clear--I mean, what's in the Community Solutions Act, the
deductibility for nonitemizers, which we think would increase
by $14 or $15 billion a year, and a lot of that giving would go
to independent sector organizations, community-serving ones,
both religious and secular.
With respect to charitable choice and with respect to the
provisions we've been discussing, basically what it does is it
opens up the entire range--would open up the entire range of
Federal domestic programs to organizations that are out there,
traditionally have not been a part of these government funding
loops. So while it may not be new--it certainly will be new for
their communities and for these organizations to participate in
this government by proxy system, having provided social
services for so many years.
Also, the compassion capital fund just mentioned, the
President has requested bunches of new discretionary spending,
I believe $67 million for starters, for targeting mentoring and
other social services on the children, youth and family of
prisoners. There's money for maternity group homes and a range
of other things. There's additional money as well in addition
to all the increases in all the regular cabinet agency budgets.
Mr. Davis. Let me just ask, are we saying that the $67
million is going to be new money? I understand the concept of
stimulating additional giving, but that's not coming out of a
Federal outlay. That's not--you can't count that yet. I mean,
that's a projection. I mean, I'm going to get excited because I
know that my local church is doing all this good work and I'm
going to give more than what I've already given.
Of course, in some communities, they've already given to
the extent that--that giving--I'm trying because I don't want
people that I represent to get all up in the air thinking and
believing that they're going to have some additional resources
to work with in their charitable not-for-profit activity. I
want them to fully understand what the concept is, and I think
there is some aspects of it that are great. I think it would be
great if people were given more. I mean, I really do. But I
want people to understand that and not to believe that they're
about to receive some additional assistance coming out of the
Federal Treasury, if it's nothing there for them to get.
Mr. DiIulio. Well, Mr. Congressman, I'll be happy to, as
the chairman suggested, get you a full recitation of, you know,
the numbers across the various programs, extant, discretionary
and so forth, but also just note that one of the purposes of
the--hasn't come up--is included in my testimony--but of these
cabinet audits of the Executive order requires our office to
create these cabinet centers for, and to perform is really take
a hard look at the extent to which these funds now are reaching
these actual community-based organizations and to what extent.
You know, there is this phenomenon which I've seen and has
been documented in some cases in cities all across the country,
in particular. I'm sure it applies as well outside of big
cities, but I happen to be a Philly guy, and that happens to be
my focus.
You have X percent of the actual work of a given kind going
on, and the folks who are doing the actual work, who are
supplying the volunteers, who are mobilizing, you know, the
resources, who are--the human resources, who are using their
church basements, who are using their auxiliary halls and so
forth and are often--you know, there is somebody who is in the
mix who is providing those programs and running those programs
through these organizations, but these organizations themselves
receive now little or no direct support. That's what I heard
constantly over the last 6 or 7 years, and so we want to also,
through this agency audit, take a hard look at how presently
what is it about the system that makes it so difficult for
funds to flow directly to the community helpers and healers
themselves who are closest to the people, the beneficiaries who
are actually getting served.
Mr. Davis. So you're saying one of the purposes is to try
and make sure that the actual resources get to the people at
the bottom--on the bottom line who are providing the services
as opposed to all of the other layers of the bureaucracy, other
entities that by the time it gets to the church basement, there
are only a couple thousand dollars left?
Mr. DiIulio. Yes, sir. I mean, Mr. Congressman, basically
in the mid 1990's, I directed the Brookings Institution Center
for Public Management and was somewhat obsessed with the
National Performance Review and the Government Performance and
Results Act. Of course, I knew that was going to change the
face of government forever, so don't take everything I say with
a grain of salt, but it has helped, I think in some respects,
but there is still these leaky bucket effects. There's no doubt
about it.
So there's a question of how much resources and how much
more full was that bucket going to be, if you'll accept that
locution, and then there's question of how much that's in that
bucket actually gets to the community helpers and healers and
the organizations that are at the grassroots that actually
deliver up close and personal the services.
It could even be health clinics. You don't think of
churches, synagogues and mosques or religious or faith-based
organizations being heavily involved in public and private
health service delivery systems, and yet you go around in
Philadelphia, you go around in Milwaukee, you go around to
other cities and you're going to find these organizations as
key supports, and whether you're talking about elder care, you
know, homebound elder care to frail folks, this growing
population, or Medicaid pediacare populations.
There's only one difference. They're doing the work, but
they haven't been able to get any of the resources. And the
government money, it's always been, well, that can't ever quite
touch, you just do the work, the money kind of goes somewhere
else. So it is a purpose of, or it is just sort of
descriptively, not editorially, see how this government by
proxy system, which has evolved, you know, as programs have
multiplied, 100 youth serving programs, 120, 130, 135, no one
has ever sort of looked at the implementation aspects as it
relates to the extent to which the funds are actually reaching
the community helpers and healers themselves.
Mr. Davis. Thank you. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Souder. Mr. Barr.
Mr. Barr. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. DiIulio, when Congressman Edwards gave some
introductory remarks, he mentioned the witches he has in his
district. They call themselves Wicca, but it's basically the
practice of witchcraft, and there are groups--at least there
used to be a group at Fort Hood, a military installation, that
were allowed to practice witchcraft while on active duty. I
have a problem with that, but that's not really the question
that we're addressing here.
I think some people bring up this notion of witches and so
forth, in other words, sort of weird fringe groups, whenever we
try to engage in the discussion about legitimate faith-based
organizations and their role to helping administer social
services, including those involving Federal funds. They say,
well, then you'd have to open it up to these witchcraft groups
and other sort of fringe groups.
I don't see that as a problem in what we're talking about
here, do you?
Mr. DiIulio. Well, I'm going to--I'm going to resort to my
lawyers in a minute. I'm a public administration guy. So when
this issue--I mean, scholar is basically at the core of what I
do, myself in American government studies--and when this issue
first came up and folks were saying, you know, how are you
going to decide on who is the list of approved or preapproved
procurement list, it baffled me. It wasn't that I felt I was
being set upon. It just baffled me because my understanding has
always been that as a settled matter of Constitutional and
public law that if you can afford the postage and you can fill
out the RFP, however onerous or streamlined it is, you can
apply, whatever organization, and the question is, well, once
you apply, you know, are they basing the decision on the extant
procurement rules and performance measures and so forth, or are
they asking who are you or do you have certain characteristics
that rule you out?
Mr. Barr. And the criteria that they use will be a very
objective criteria, will it not?
Mr. DiIulio. Well, it's about--I mean government--to my
knowledge, the Federal Government contracts for more than 215
different types of social services, actually, I think if you
were to count them all up, and Federal Government has programs.
The programs come first. The Federal programs are sitting
there, and the Federal Government has one Federal civil servant
in the area of domestic policy administration for every six
people who indirectly earn a paycheck from the Federal
Government through contracts, grants, vouchers, subnational
governments, nonprofits and for-profit organizations that
translate that Federal policy into administrative action.
Anybody who wants to put up their hand and send in the post or
fill out the forms and apply for social service delivery will
have to meet the specific terms of that social service delivery
program, regardless of what Cabinet agency it's in or whatnot
and----
Mr. Barr. And access to that process is the essence of what
President Bush is simply proposing here, to have fair universal
objective access to use of those Federal funds to provide
services that we in the government have determined, based on
our representation of the people are necessary and appropriate.
Mr. DiIulio. When I was in Shreveport last Friday, I heard
the same thing that I heard last night on the way out actually
on--all the days are running together--I guess it was Sunday,
this group that basically has 10,000 volunteers, and they get
in behind public and private health service delivery systems to
provide care to the frail elderly, and it's the same comment
comes up, says, you know, can you do something about the fact
that we've been providing these services we tried to apply, but
it's not far out groups or groups that some people may not like
or be unpopular. We're talking about, you know, small
community-serving Catholic organizations, or, you know, small
community-serving organizations of recognized denominations or
whatnot are saying, well, they told us at the Human Services
Department or the Department of Youth and Family Services where
we applied, we can't do it because our program is based in a
congregation.
So we told them it's not the church service. You know, it's
after the church service, we run a welfare-to-work, we've got
computer-assisted literacy, we've got a health care clinic.
Now, the same folks who are volunteers, they may be among the
congregation--a lot of people who are volunteers aren't even in
the congregation--that's another interesting thing--and they
may have secular partners, but they're told just because you're
congregation or you have this religious affiliation you need
not apply.
So the essence of it is the nondiscriminatory character,
they're sort of the only groups we've said, now, you can't
participate in government by proxy unless you stand down on
your religious character, iconography and so forth.
Mr. Barr. So the bottom line is, I guess you agree with me
that it's a red herring if people bring up this witchcraft
issue, it really isn't relevant? I mean, all we're doing is
saying if there are groups out there that believe, despite
their faith-based nature, can do a good job in meeting all the
criteria in delivering services, they're free to compete along
with secular organizations.
Mr. DiIulio. Everybody's got to run that gauntlet. I mean,
whatever that gauntlet--I mean, we like to make that gauntlet
more performance-based, more results-oriented, more, you know,
streamlined as a matter of just achieving civic results, but
yes, you know, it ought not to matter who you are. It ought to
matter whether you can meet the criteria and the performance
goals established within these Federal grantmaking programs in
the area of administration.
Mr. Barr. Do your lawyers have any different views?
Mr. Eberly. Your question relates directly to the question
that Congressman Edwards raised, which was, who will decide
what is a faith-based program? And the answer to that is no
one. In the truest sense, we are not about promoting, in this
case, faith-based programs who want a wider and more open
playing field. We want to include more groups who can come to
the table and apply for grants under carefully designed
circumstances, which is what charitable choice recommends and
presents, but it's all driven by desire to see results in
performance in the communities in America. We're kind of
hoping, in fact, that the Federal Government becomes more
results-minded, looks at more carefully how the Government
Performance and Results Act might work, not to privilege faith
and not to exclude faith, and I think the trend in public
administration--and by the way, with the Supreme Court is to
promote neutrality and nondiscrimination, and that means no
favoritism for religious or a religious or anti-religious
group.
At the end of the day anybody who would apply for a grant
and win a contract or grant to deliver social services is doing
so as a social service organization which may or may not be
faith-based or faith affiliated, but our defense on that
question is that we believe the best policy is a policy of
neutrality.
And the final point would be that, you know, if it is
actually the case that there are a few rather interesting
exceptions to the rule, it should certainly not doom a policy.
If we were to subject all that the Federal Government does and
all its programs to that kind of standard, we'd have--you know,
we'd be in serious trouble.
Mr. Barr. Thank you.
Mr. Souder. Mr. Scott.
Mr. Scott. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Let me make a couple of
comments first.
Mr. DiIulio.
Mr. DiIulio. That's close enough.
Mr. Scott. I just want to say that though 99 percent of the
things we agree, tax credits involving community groups,
including even faith-based organizations involved in the fight
against poverty and providing social services, we're just not
in complete agreement. The only problem is charitable choice,
the specific legislative proposal. You indicated that when you
go to McDonald's you don't fund McDonald's, but when the
Federal Government contracts for goods and services, there's a
stipulation that the groups will follow the civil rights laws,
and that's what we are waiving with charitable choice.
When President Clinton signed the bills including
charitable choice--wouldn't sign charitable choice as a big
bill, and when he signed it he made it specifically clear that
his view was, it was--the bill was unconstitutional to the
extent that it funded sponsors who were pervasively sectarian
organizations.
And so you don't have any problems because there have been
no rules and regulations promulgated to allow pervasively
sectarian organizations to actually get funded.
You mentioned Vice President Gore's comments to show the
bipartisan support for faith-based organizations. I'm not sure
exactly what he said, but the Democratic platform supported
involvement of faith-based organizations with the caveat that
those programs respect first amendment protections and should
never use taxpayers' dollars to proselytize or support
discrimination, which of course is inconsistent with charitable
choice.
A couple of questions, and the first couple may be
technical, and I think it may be unfair to spring these on you.
If you don't know, we can get the answers later. If a faith-
based organization gets funds, is that organization--those
employees entitled to a minimum wage? That's the question.
Mr. DiIulio. Carl?
Mr. Scott. If you don't know then I can go on to another
question.
Mr. Souder. We left the record open for 5 days for a
response if you want to do that.
Mr. Scott. Well, under anti discrimination laws as a
ministerial exception where if you're hiring a minister, you're
not only eligible to discriminate on--based on religion, but
also race or anything else you want to discriminate based on,
if you have a drug counseling program, is the drug counselor
eligible for the ministerial exception?
Mr. Esbeck. The ministerial exemption comes from the first
amendment. So the first amendment is there and not affected, of
course, by charitable choice. So however the courts apply it
presently, charitable choice does not change that.
Mr. Scott. Well, it changes it because if it's a federally
sponsored program, you would not be entitled to discriminate in
a federally sponsored program based on race unless you've got
charitable choice, and my question is, if the church is hiring
drug counselors with Federal money, would they be entitled to
the ministerial exception?
Mr. Esbeck. The Title VI still applies. Charitable choice
leaves that unchanged. Title VI prohibits discrimination on the
basis of the race, color and national origin.
Mr. Scott. Will charitable choice waive other provisions of
law?
Mr. Esbeck. There would be no discrimination using Federal
financial assistance on those three bases.
Mr. Scott. So the ministerial exception would not apply?
Mr. Esbeck. If you're using Federal financial assistance,
Title VI applies, that's correct.
Mr. DiIulio. And we'd be happy to answer these in more
depth. I feel left out. It's all on the lawyers now.
Mr. Scott. Do you interpret charitable choice to allow
proselytization during a program with volunteers?
Mr. DiIulio. The black letter--I'm going to take this one.
The black letter of it from 1996, and what's in the Community
Solutions Act says no funds for sectarian worship, instruction
or proselytization. Now can you have a program that has as a
component of the program prayer service or worship, you might,
but you can't fund it. You can't fund someone engaged in
sectarian worship.
Mr. Scott. Can you do it with volunteers?
Mr. DiIulio. No--I hate to give it to the lawyers. No.
Mr. Scott. You cannot proselytize with volunteers although
you're spending no money, no taxpayers' money for
proselytization during the program?
Mr. DiIulio. The program public funds--you know, in the
struggle to move from public administration to the higher
intellectual echelons of constitutional law where they make all
the money I'm told, too--I don't know about that--I have come
to--my reading, Congressman, is quite simple. If you look at
the whole body of case law, public funds need to be used for
public purposes and the advancing of public and civic purposes.
Now, the devil is very much, as is God, in the details, and
where the courts have looked at this from my not-expert reading
and on the expert readings of others who advise me, the courts
have, I think, been very careful to make very good, fine case-
by-case distinctions they're in the business of making. And so
we need to sort of contextualize the question, get down to
specifics, what kind of proselytization, under what conditions
are you talking? You know, some programs may be 9 to 5, some
may be from 9 to 12 and 12 to 5. You know people break out and
go and do the computer-assisted learning or the welfare-to-work
program, or they move across to the health clinic.
Can I just add, too, about in terms of the question--in
terms of the empirical side of it as well that goes to the
questions you've asked if I may?
Mr. Souder. Yes. You're a little over. If you can do a
quick summary.
Mr. DiIulio. I would just, and I understand--and I've
learned over the past 3 months, we--initially we had our first
meeting over with my friends at Brookings, Congressman. There
are lots of questions here that reasonable people can disagree
on. I would just make an appeal to folks, wherever they're
coming from on this, to consult the baseline realities in these
communities, remembering that so many of the groups we are
talking about right now are purely volunteer groups. The
question of hiring doesn't come up. So you take that number and
you subtract from it all those groups that don't hire anybody.
They're volunteers. Now they happen to be a church, synagogue
or mosque and the pastor. After research that the typical
character of the part-time person is somebody who works a 40-
hour job and then gives the extra 30 or 40 hours a week in
volunteer service, you know. They may be there on Sunday or
Saturday, but he's also or she's also there during the week but
that's it.
You know, the Cnaan data I mentioned referenced--and
referenced in my testimony, the average one of these groups in
the cities is 24 people, 15 from the congregation and 9 others
from, not the congregation, and in many cases there are no
employees at all.
And then quickly, second, one of our associate directors,
not here with us today, is Mark Scott, who's a former Air Force
captain, former--he's a library scientist, an engineer, kind of
a renaissance guy but also a church of God in Christ minister
from Boston. He's Reverend Mark Scott, and he's been doing that
outreach work with youth, working with police and schools and
so forth in Boston for over a decade. It so happens that in the
ministry he was part of in Boston--received a fair amount of
national attention and interest--so happens that the single
most well-publicized and well liked street outreach worker is a
young man named Kenny Gross, who happens to be an Israeli
defense force guy who came across and has done this remarkable
work with these Church of Christ in God ministers on the
streets of Dorchester for the past many years. Point being,
that not all of the groups that are out there that could take
advantage of the exemption do.
So not that this answers the constitutional or theoretical
question, but just to have it sort of the discussion
disciplined to the extent by the reality that out there, so
much of what we are talking about are pure volunteer-serving
organizations, many of which, you know, require all hands on
deck, and the last thing they think of in some cases is, you
know, what do you happen to--you know, where do you happen to
be coming from. If you're going to--willing to sign up to do
prison ministry or stay there to, you know, all hours working
with folks trying to help them find jobs, you're, in many
cases, more than welcome.
Mr. Souder. Congressman Edwards.
Mr. Edwards. Mr. DiIulio, I look forward to working with
you on what I think is wonderful legislation to help taxpayers
who don't itemize their taxes to receive a benefit from
contributing to charities.
Let me ask you this. You quoted the President as saying
something to the extent the paramount goals should be resolved.
I think that logically concludes, you're talking about
potentially billions of tax dollars on the table for thousands
of churches to compete for. You have to have audits of how that
money is spent, whether it's effective or not, whether it's
spent illegally or not. My question would be whether it's one
case or thousands of cases, when that occurs, when, say, that
money is spent contrary to Federal regulations, do we prosecute
the pastor, the board members of the church or the church
committee members who are involved directly in that program?
Mr. DiIulio. I don't know. Gosh, I don't know the specific
answer. I guess it would depend on the particulars of how that
came about. I do know that from what I have studied in relation
to your question, Congressman, is, you know, the question of
audits, and the question of performance audits in particular,
fiscal accountability standards, performance audits, and the
whole range of things that the Federal Government, through
Federal agencies, do is essentially in the business of contract
information, monitoring and compliance right.
Government Performance and Results Act went on the books in
1993, I believe. And if you look at the implementation of
Government Performance and Results Act with respect to sort of
the stop-the-clock in 1996 or 1997 or yesterday and look at the
actual implementation of that, you find that with respect not
only to performance, you know, how come--how is it that
grantmaking decisions get made year in, year out, you know? Why
have funds flown in these areas as opposed to others? The
agencies have to come up with a statement every year,
performance statement. They have to come up with a 5-year plan
every 3 years. They have to revise that plan. So there is a lot
of paperwork.
But there's not a whole lot of performance-based management
and measurement and the auditing procedures that are tethered
or would be tethered were actually implemented to the so-called
GPRA vary tremendously from cabinet agency to cabinet agency
and sub unit to sub unit. So you get this you know amazingly
complex administrative networks, and so it would depend----
Mr. Edwards. So who would have to audit? Who you prosecute
would have to depend on the situation.
My last question, you quoted Mr. Madison as saying,
``experience is the oracle of truth.'' I agree. Based on that
quotation, can you give me any examples throughout the history
of the world where direct government funding of churches,
synagogues and houses of worship resulted in more religious
freedom, more religious tolerance or more religious generosity
in addressing social problems than here in the United States
where, for 200 years, we've had the principle of separation of
church and state and no direct Federal funding of houses of
worship?
Mr. DiIulio. Well, I will try--I'm going to try to be more
concise and follow your example, and just say that I guess
you're not stating a condition contrary to fact, but I won't
accept the predicate of your statement in that this is not
about changing, so far as I'm concerned, any of our traditions
with respect to the separation of church and state. If it were,
you know, I wouldn't want to do it.
Mr. Edwards. Well, would you agree--let's be clear, I
think, factually, because the chairman wants to look at how the
programs are actually working. We do all agree that none of the
charitable choice language already in law money can go directly
to the church, to the synagogue, to the house of worship, not
necessarily having to go to separate 501(c)(3), right?
Mr. DiIulio. But the 501(c)(3) which is a device, is one
way of doing--it's one way of doing it, but not the only way of
doing it, and so the question really would be are funds going
for--to a social service organization to provide social
services in the same way it goes to all the other
nongovernmental providers of the same services? The fact that
the folks who are doing it happen to be based in, come from,
affiliated with or motivated by faith or faith-based
organization, in our view, ought not to mean they have any
higher burdens to meet, any steeper hills to climb.
Mr. Edwards. If I could ask then, with the time being
limited, one in respect to time and the other committee
members, if you could answer the question to the committee in
writing, whether in cases in other nations throughout any
period of time in the history of the world where direct
government funding to the houses of worship resulted in more
religious freedom, tolerance or religious generosity in
addressing some of the problems.
Mr. DiIulio. Be happy to.
Mr. Edwards. Thank you.
Mr. Souder. Thank you. We are not going to do a second
round with you. You've been here over 2 hours and 15 minutes,
since we were originally going to start this process, and we
appreciate that and we know we'll be having you back a number
of other times, but if I--it was great having someone else
other than me have to take their questions for once. I just
have to say that, and I'm sure we're going to have lots more of
these.
Also, for the record, if you could provide to the committee
any guidelines you gave to the agencies for how they're to do
their audits, because we would like to be able to then followup
in oversight hearings with the agencies and would like to have,
for the record, what kind of things you asked them to look for
and guidelines, and we'll continue to follow that process.
Once again, thank you for your time today. It's clear and
it was great to have this discussion in public, under oath, on
the record, many of the things that we individually have been
talking about, and I'm sure we're going to be working through a
lot more of the details.
Mr. DiIulio. Well, thank you, Congressman. Thank you to all
the members. Thank you very much.
Mr. Souder. Thank you.
If the second panel will come forward. Our second panel
consists of State and local officials who have gained
experience in administering faith-based programs as well as
service providers and intermediaries who are working on a daily
basis to improve their communities through faith-based actions.
The three individuals from Indiana, Texas and Michigan
represent States that scored high in the rating systems who had
implemented an evolved State-based--excuse me, that work with
faith-based organizations. And then we have three individuals
to testify who have been actually firsthand at the grassroots
level.
So if all six of you could come up, and stand while you
first come up, I'll swear all six together.
[Witnesses sworn.]
Mr. Souder. Thank you. Let the record show that all the
witnesses responded in the affirmative. I'll read the order
that they'll go. Debbie Kratky is the client systems manager
for Work Advantage in the State of Texas--excuse me, first is
Katie Humphreys, Secretary of the Indiana Family and Social
Services Administration in Indiana. And I'm proud that Indiana
received the highest grade. We have a Democratic Governor. We
worked together on many of these issues, and I'm pleased
Indiana received an A plus I believe on that rating.
Debbie Kratky is client systems manager for Work Advantage
in Fort Worth, TX, in Tarrant County. Loren Snippe is the
director of Ottawa County Family Independence Program in the
State of Michigan, and is an intermediary organization.
We have also then Donna Jones, who is pastor of the Cookman
United Methodist Church. I lost my order.
We have Bill Raymond, president of FaithWorks consulting
service in Michigan.
And from Baltimore Donna Jones Stanley, the executive
director of Associated Black Charities.
If you could start, Ms. Humphreys.
STATEMENTS OF KATIE HUMPHREYS, SECRETARY OF THE INDIANA FAMILY
AND SOCIAL SERVICES ADMINISTRATION; DEBBIE KRATKY, CLIENT
SYSTEMS MANAGER, WORK ADVANTAGE; LOREN SNIPPE, DIRECTOR, OTTAWA
COUNTY FAMILY INDEPENDENCE PROGRAM; DONNA JONES, PASTOR,
COOKMAN UNITED METHODIST CHURCH; BILL RAYMOND, PRESIDENT,
FAITHWORKS CONSULTING SERVICE; AND DONNA JONES STANLEY,
EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, ASSOCIATED BLACK CHARITIES
Ms. Humphreys. Chairman Souder, Representative Cummings and
other distinguished members of the committee, thank you for
this opportunity today to appear before you to provide
information about FaithWorks Indiana. This is our State's
initiative to involve faith-based and community-based
organizations in providing services to Indiana residents. We
call them Hoosiers in Indiana. So I will probably have that
sprinkled throughout my presentation.
As head of the Health and Human Services agencies for the
State of Indiana and as executive assistant to Governor Frank
O'Bannon, I'm pleased to outline some of the important work
being done for the people of Indiana by family and social
services and by the faith-based organizations and community
organizations across our State.
In the interest of time, I certainly am not going to repeat
what many of you acknowledged in your opening statements, and
that is, that as we move into--through welfare reform and come
up against the time limits, clearly we're dealing with people
who have been disenfranchised, people who have serious
difficulties in achieving self-sufficiency.
In November 1999, Governor O'Bannon announced the
FaithWorks Indiana program. And our program was intended to
widen the doorway for community-based and faith-based
organizations to access funding and support, to provide
services for Hoosiers throughout the State. During our--the
first 16 months we spent about the first 6 months actually
surveying, working with, talking to faith-based and community-
based organizations around the State.
We also spent the next 6 months developing the
infrastructure that would be necessary for this to be
successful because we wanted the community organizations to
have the infrastructure, have access to the data that needs
assessment, access to understanding reporting requirements in
order for the program to be successful. So we built the
infrastructure.
We then developed an RFP and went out for proposal, and I'm
pleased to say that we now have about $3\1/2\ million that are
going to approximately 40 faith-based organizations across our
State.
Again, you have already noted in much of the discussion
that faith-based organizations have historically provided a
wealth of services to individuals in their respective
congregations, but more importantly, many of these
organizations have provided services to people in their
neighborhoods. And I think our program, the reason I continue
to talk about faith-based and community-based organizations is
that we believe that many of the faith-based organizations, in
fact, provide an important anchor in their neighborhoods.
Some of the components of our FaithWorks Indiana
initiative, as I said, included gathering input from all of the
communities before we acted. We did a proactive outreach. We
did education, technical assistance. We had five regional
meetings around the State. We invited over 9,500 different
organizations to participate. Over 450 representatives of
faith-based organizations receive technical assistance through
these regional workshops or one-to-one consultation, and the
technical assistance consisted of the information on the
following topics.
No. 1, we talked to them about the charitable choice
provisions. We shared with them information about the needs
assessment so that they could tailor their proposals around the
needs of their communities. We talked to them about funding
opportunities, not just the funding opportunities that were
going to be provided through State resources, but we also have
developed an extensive set of materials so that these faith-
based organizations and community organizations can also access
other sources of funding. We don't want government to be the
only source of funding to these important organizations.
We talked to them about proposal writing, reporting
requirements, establishing a 501(c)(3)--and we do encourage
that although we don't require it--and we talked to them about
options for partnering with other organizations that might have
more experience.
Part of our infrastructure, we developed a 24 access to
information through our Web site. We know that there were over
1,600 hits during the first 3 months. Part of our Web site we
have a survey where we ask people to fill out a survey so that
we know whether they are actually faith-based organizations or
not.
We believe that the incremental approach that we have taken
toward developing this program is the best approach. We
appreciate the flexibility that we have through the charitable
choice provisions, and we would encourage you to continue to
give States the flexibility to implement this program, and I
would be happy to answer any questions in whatever order you
deem.
[The prepared statement of Ms. Humphreys follows:]
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Mr. Souder. I appreciate you doing a summary, and I should
have said this that, as you heard, we'll insert the full
statement in the record. Some of you have longer than 5
minutes, some of you have probably about like the 5 minutes,
that we'll try to draw it out in the questions and insert the
full amount in the record if you can summarize. The yellow
light goes off at 4, and then we've been a little generous with
the red light, more than, say, the Indiana State police.
Ms. Kratky.
Ms. Kratky. I'm honored to be talking with such a
distinguished group today. I think a little bit of background
concerning Tarrant County might be helpful in understanding how
we've become successful in collaborating with faith-based and
community-based organizations. Although our community has had a
long history of collaboration that began back in the early
1950's with Amon Carter Sr., that philosophy still continued.
In 1995, then-Governor Bush presented to the Texas
legislature a plan for bringing control of work force programs
and the funds that drive them down to the local level. In this
bill, known as House bill 1863, 28 different job training
programs were merged into one State agency, the Texas Workforce
Commission. That commission then was charged with establishing
28 different work force boards throughout the State of Texas.
This has placed the control and the policymaking decisions
concerning over $52 million into the hands of dedicated
volunteers in Tarrant County alone.
In preparation for this task, our executive director and
our chair made the decision to have public information sharing
sessions throughout our community, especially in the poorer
neighborhoods. The primary purpose of those sessions was to
simply listen. What we wanted to know was would this population
be interested in our career centers and if not, what services
did they need and how did they want those services provided.
After several months of carefully listening, our board
mounted a ``no wrong door'' policy for working with some of our
hardest to serve customers. One of the things that guaranteed
our success was that we had absolutely no idea what we were
doing, and because we had no idea what we were doing I think we
became successful.
The first step for board staff was to simplify the process.
Many small, community-based and faith-based organizations told
us from the very beginning that the reason they didn't
participate was because the process was too complicated. So
board staff sat around the table for several days trying to
figure out a way to make it easier. Our board chair challenged
us to maintain the full spirit of the law but to make it easier
for those first time participants to apply.
We had an information session. We also had training
sessions on grant writings and a good many other opportunities
to talk before we released that first RFP. We were pleasantly
surprised by the turnout, and we were even more surprised and
delighted by the dialog that took place during those sessions.
Tarrant County has continued to grapple with the issues
around faith-based organizations accepting government funds.
Tarrant area community of churches and the United Way of
Tarrant County have assisted in sponsoring workshops around
charitable choice and the role of government in faith-based
organizations. During these sessions, we've been able to work
out many of the issues surrounding separation of church and
state as well as other sticky political problems I have heard
addressed here today. The bottom line here though is that very
few organizations went into this process without at least a
basic understanding of working with the government agency.
Now the lessons our community has learned over the past 3
years could write a full dissertation. I spoke before a group
of pastors and other members of the faith community recently,
and I think three areas we discussed would be lessons for this
community.
The first lesson revolved around mission. I have two
examples to share with you. One organization struggled and one
organization flourished. The end result of both those programs
turned out to be a basic understanding of the word ``mission.''
The first organization had a real vision for taking illegal
aliens entering this State and guiding them through the proper
channels teaching them English and providing them with a trade,
and they were very successful and what a wonderful mission that
was.
But our mission at the work force board dealt specifically
with training and placement of citizens of the United States.
Our mission simply didn't match. This faith-based organization
attempted to change their mission. After several months of
grappling with this problem, the church decided against
pursuing the grant.
Another faith-based organization, though, studied our
mission and found a way to be flexible in their mission and use
our funds to serve U.S. citizens and use their funds.
Mr. Souder. You're going to need to summarize the last part
of your testimony.
Ms. Kratky. The second part of this process came from
outcome driven results versus bottom line results, and I think
that's something we've got to talk about with this particular
group.
So after the last few years in dealing with faith-based
organizations, what have I learned? I think it could be
answered by telling you I've been looking for this for 20
years. Our clients need the compassion and real concern these
organizations bring to the table. Those organizations need
funding and guidance that only government can bring. We are
juggling these needs in Tarrant County, but I'm going to tell
you, every day is a new day, and I have to pray every day that
we serve our clients with dignity and that we still maintain
the dignity of good taxpayer stewards of the taxpayer dollars,
and I'm hoping out of all of this will come some simpler rules
as well.
Mr. Souder. Thank you.
[The prepared statement of Ms. Kratky follows:]
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Mr. Souder. Mr. Snippe.
Mr. Snippe. I'm the director of the Ottawa County Family
Independence Agency, which is the local State agency that
administers the State of Michigan's public assistance and
family protection programs. The Family Independence Agency is a
State-administered agency with local offices in all of
Michigan's 83 counties.
When I was asked to come here today, I was asked to talk a
little bit about our role with the faith community, and to do
that I have to talk in the context of our Welfare Reform
Initiative in Michigan called Project Zero. Project Zero was
initiated in Michigan in 1996 just prior to the Federal Welfare
Reform legislation, and the goal of that Project Zero was to
reduce to zero the number of cash (AFDC) recipients who were
not reporting earned income. In other words, the goal was to
get everyone a job.
Ottawa County was one of six sites to participate in this
project, and we were the first of the six sites to actually
accomplish zero. When that occurred, we were sort of heralded
in the local, State and national media as the only place in the
Nation where everyone that was required to work was working,
and probably an adjunct to that was the issue that we utilized
the faith community in accomplishing that task.
When Ottawa County was asked to pilot this, it was a unique
opportunity for us to get involved in. As a State agency, our
rules come from a central source, from our Lansing central
office. Project Zero was a bit different, however. To
accomplish the stated goal, local offices were given the
opportunity to develop their own local community plan as to how
to attain zero, and we were also given the financial resources
to accomplish that task.
Of course, one of the first steps when any government
agency gets started we do a study. We had to take a look at
some of the issues that were barriers to employment. Of no
surprise were transportation to day care and day care, but what
one thing that came out as a surprise, at least as significant
as it was, was the lack of a family support system with many of
our families. And we've worked with families for years trying
to get them jobs. We arrange transportation, but we did little
in the past in establishing a family support system, and we all
know how important that has been in our own lives as we look at
how our values were developed, how we made career choices. When
we became adults how our parents sometimes helped or family
members helped with transportation or backup day care. Our
families however didn't have a family support system to fall
back on to.
So our Project Zero model consisted of four components: Job
search and finding jobs, transportation--a transportation
system. We addressed issue of child care. We addressed family
support. We did that by establishing a faith-based mentoring
program to address emotional support and encouragement that
were required by so many of our families as they transitioned
from welfare to work.
In the early 1970's many of our families or--our churches
in our community sponsored Vietnamese families. When they did
that, they established education committees, housing
committees, employment committees. These families couldn't
fail. They were surrounded with services, and we said wouldn't
it be great if our local churches would do that for the family
that lived next door. Well, with the advent of Project Zero, we
had the opportunity and the resources to do it, and we
contracted with a local nonprofit agency to recruit churches to
provide that support system.
We were fortunate to have a Good Samaritan ministries, one
of our local agencies, that was in the business of training and
recruiting churches to address social needs. Now, we many times
have referred people to that program before but on a very
limited basis. With Project Zero dollars, we were given the
opportunity to ask them to really establish a system to address
the high volume of families.
So under a contractual relationship with our agency, Good
Samaritan recruited congregations, trained congregations in
mentoring methodologies and agency protocols. They matched
clients with church congregations. They coached and monitored
churches and served as a liaison between agencies, churches and
clients. They also sent us monthly reports of their financial
spendings and also of the progress they were making with
families.
I should emphasize that we utilized churches. We didn't
necessarily recruit individuals. We did have individual contact
teams--individuals on a contact team with a family, but it was
the church that we focused on. As the contact team made those
contacts, they would often find that there were legal issues
that they had to deal with. There were car repair problems that
had to be addressed. Many things that they did not have the
expertise on and they then utilized the members of their
congregation as a multi-disciplinary team to find the resources
within that church to address the issues.
I should mention too that this program was completely
voluntary for our clients. We referred them to the program but
we always asked them if they objected to being involved with
this mentoring program with a faith-based organization. Very
few ever turned us down. In fact, I don't even recall that any
did. We also--the training program that was involved for the
churches focused on--they were in a position to provide help
and support. We expected that they not require participation in
religious activities or church activities.
Many families have been positively impacted by this
initiative. Church congregations and family mentoring teams
have provided assistance with budgeting, general life coping
skills, transportation, backup transportation, child care,
backup child care, car repair assistance, assistance in
purchasing cars, etc.
As a result, we think lives have been changed, families
have become self-sufficient, jobs have been retained and
friendships have been established. And probably one of the most
important things, not only did we address a need at the present
time for a family support system, we believe that through the
relationships that if there is a crisis in the future, this
newfound support system for these families, they will turn to
them before they turn to us again as a public agency. They will
look to their church family support system.
As a public welfare agency, we are pretty proficient at
determining eligibility for programs. We can offer some of the
financial assistance that people need. However, because of our
high caseloads, we're less proficient in offering the love, the
family support, the nurturing that many of our families
require, and we can accomplish this by partnering with our
faith community. They're in a much better position to do it
than we are as a public agency. So when Ottawa County, and in,
subsequently, in many counties throughout the State of
Michigan, we've called upon the churches and the faith
community to fill the void of the traditional family.
We've asked church congregations to serve in a mentoring
role. Churches have responded generously. I think something
else that we didn't really expect was what a greater
appreciation and understanding that they have gained, the
churches and our community, about the public welfare system.
There is now a mutual respect in Ottawa County that we have for
one another, and we work very closely.
So thank you for the opportunity to share Michigan's
welfare reform and Ottawa's story, and especially as it relates
to the faith community. We thought it was a great opportunity.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Snippe follows:]
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Mr. Souder. Thank you. Let me see if--we're having trouble
with our machine here. Let me see if we can get this set up
because I can see the time and nobody else can see the time.
Next is Reverend Jones.
Ms. Jones. Hello and thank you for the opportunity to
provide testimony to this event.
I will not be reading the written statement. Usually I just
make ad hoc comments based on the testimony that I have already
heard. One thing that was raised as relates to us is although
we are part of a larger denomination, when we began our program
we did not receive denominational support. Our denomination was
not in favor of Charitable Choice. So it wasn't until we were
significantly up and running and they actually saw it in the
paper did they know, and that was 2 years later. So we did not
receive any significant financial support. We didn't receive
any significant technical assistance. And even though our
denomination has legal advice, we did not receive it.
Also are we a small member congregation. We have 100
members at this time and it was less than 3 years ago when we
began the project. We are a congregation made up of people in
our community. Our community is north central Philadelphia. The
community is an economically depressed community. We have a
high school dropout rate of 65 percent. At the time we began,
46 percent for the residents of our community were receiving
full TANF benefits and less than 10 percent of the community
residents within our ZIP code of 30,000 persons were working.
At the time we began maybe about 5 years ago, we began
doing what normal churches do in our community to help the
needy. We started a food pantry. We had a clothing closet, a
soup kitchen, and people were coming in on a regular basis; and
we started seeing the same people week after week, month after
month, year after year. When welfare reform hit, we started
seeing more people. And people were coming to us not only for
food but they were also sitting with us and saying that they
were very concerned--they did not understand welfare reform.
They didn't understand what they were going to need to do, but
they knew they had to get a job. They didn't understand how
they could get a job without training or education. So they
were having a hard time dealing with the system and also
dealing with fear.
So we found ourselves doing a lot of ad hoc counseling; and
before we knew it, we were making phone calls to employers. And
before we knew it, we were offering tutoring because people
started wanting their GEDs. Before we knew it, we had something
going on and we wanted to expand it but we did not have the
resources.
At that time in Philadelphia, the metropolitan Christian
Council started to gather together church people that were
doing community ministry; and we were one of them. We all came
together, and we talked about Charitable Choice and that is how
we heard about it.
We were the only church of that group that decided to do
it, but we were also the only small church with no resources.
The other churches were large organizations. They already had
separate 501(c)(3)'s, so they didn't really have to do it. They
were already set up. We were a local congregation. We did not
have a 501(c)(3). Our congregation reflects the community. At
the time, I was the only person in the congregation with a high
school--with a graduate or upper level degree. We did not have
any professionals in our congregation. But our congregation has
and had a lot of love.
We looked into becoming a 501(c)(3). We brought in a
consultant to work with us to build the capacity to have a
501(c)(3). As soon as the consultant said to us that a
501(c)(3) would make us a separate secular organization, the
congregation said that is not who we are. We are a church. We
are not an agency. We want to remain a church. So we made a
decision to do what we do as a church. That was important for
the congregation because in this community where people don't
have a significant sense of accomplishment, it made a big
difference to them to say that our church does this.
Since we began, we have served over 189 clients. We have an
87 percent success rate in job placement. And also we find that
right now as more and more people who have not successfully
traversed the whole welfare reform system--we are finding more
and more people with issues related to abuse and other
significant family issues coming to us because of the love and
support that we give and still finding confusion in county
assistance offices. And we are finding that we are serving as
an effective liaison between the people and the county
assistance offices.
We do education and training, job development, job
placement. We have a voluntary Bible study curriculum as well.
We are careful. Right now we have both private and public
dollars. We do not use public dollars for religious education,
and we do not proselytize. However, our clients continue to
tell us that it feels different; and we also find that we have
a greater reach. We can minister to people and to extended
family. Many times, someone will come in to us with a
significant problem that is not caused by someone in their
family that is on public assistance. We, because we're a
church, can knock on doors and go into situations that a public
agency cannot go in.
We have had situations where clients were victims of abuse.
They could come in to us. If we were a public agency, we
couldn't say what we say as a church. As a church we can say
you don't need to go home. If you have to, you can sleep here.
An agency can't say that. And we can followup with people at a
greater level, and we're glad to do it. Even though we can and
would if we had the income pay overtime, right now we don't
because our people that work for us don't ask for it. They stay
overtime voluntarily. But if they asked for it, we would pay
it.
I think the biggest issue for us is that what Charitable
Choice did for us is it allowed us to come to a table that we
normally would not have been invited to. And it also recognized
the good work that we were already doing.
Just in closing, my grandmother is from a small town in
Kentucky. And in that small town is a one-room schoolhouse that
she graduated from and went to Fisk University. That one-room
schoolhouse produced many wonderful people, but that one-room
schoolhouse did it at great strain on the organization. Now in
that same community, that same school is fully funded. It makes
a tremendous difference. It is not as though the school did not
do a good job when it was a one-room schoolhouse. It makes a
big difference when there is enough funding to really support
what organizations honestly can do.
And with that, I know my red light is on so I thank you for
the time.
Mr. Souder. Thank you.
[The prepared statement of Ms. Jones follows:]
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Mr. Souder. Next is Mr. Raymond.
Mr. Raymond. I want to thank you for the opportunity to
present this testimony today. And I am coming from the
perspective of a practitioner having worked in Ottawa County
with Mr. Snippe, as the executive director of Good Samaritan
Ministries, utilizing government dollars to mobilize
congregations to get more deeply involved with this process.
In my perspectives on the future of faith-based
initiatives, Charitable Choice expansion and greater
involvement on the part of faith-based organizations including
local congregations may be somewhat different than those
articulated by others. I want to talk about what I call
intermediary organizations. My specific interest is in helping
agencies and local congregations move into deeper levels of
community connections along a continuum of charity, service,
community development, advocacy and social justice.
My perspective is that productive and effective work to
alleviate poverty entails an integrated approach that includes
all of these pieces. In addition, I believe that effective work
in this arena needs the proper balance of professional
expertise, grass-roots experience, and volunteer mobilization.
To rely solely on professionally based services will never be
sufficient due to funding and personnel limitations. Over-
professionalizing can also lead to a sense of distance and
paternalism on the part of the helpers.
Conversely, to rely primarily on small, essentially
volunteer-driven organizations can limit the scope. I believe
that there is a way to combine the strengths of these
approaches, minimize the limitations, and achieve a more
balanced and integrated strategy with which to address the
questions around Charitable Choice and faith-based initiatives.
What I am talking about is a process of building
connections and capacity within communities and congregations
and developing a mechanism that helps average citizens become
part of the solution rather than simply disengaged bystanders.
Ordinary citizens are looking for ways to be involved and
Charitable Choice has opened avenues of involvement. For the
past 3 years, I have been working with communities,
congregations, and public and private human service
organizations to establish what I call intermediary consulting
organizations. This concept grew out of my work as executive
director of Good Samaritan Ministries in Holland and as a
consultant with a variety of groups and congregations
throughout the United States.
An intermediary organization is an equipping, training, and
capacity-building organization that exists between the faith
community and the human service community. It is not a church,
house of worship, or other religion congregation; and it is not
a traditional human service delivery agency. It exists to help
bring congregations and human being service agencies and
frontline ministries together in common interests, service, and
resource development within a community.
It is an organization that understands the culture, rules,
expectations, and processes of public and private agencies and
congregations. It is staffed by people who understand
community, agency, congregational, and family systems who can
then help make the necessary connections and translate the
competing realities and cultures that exist among those
differing systems.
I think these organizations are needed for a number of
reasons. One, public and private agencies often are interested
in soliciting help from the faith community, but are unfamiliar
with the cultures and the expectations of the various groups.
They lack experience in recruiting, mobilizing, training, and
supporting congregations.
Two, it is more efficient for government agencies to
interact or contract with one or a few central organizations
rather than try to maintain contact with numerous individual
congregations or community-based organizations. Intermediaries
can be developed along a variety of organizing principles with
different expressions in evangelical, ecumenical, or interfaith
opportunities. A faith-based intermediary is often better
positioned to win the congregation's trust than a government
agency.
An intermediary can also build trust with public and
private agencies and help them extend their mission by helping
to connect families and individuals to ongoing community
support systems. An intermediary can be an objective third
party or buffer that helps interpret different organizational
cultures, expectations, and ways of conducting business. It can
also help protect the rights of all involved.
An intermediary can act as a central contracting source to
channel resources to congregations and help smaller or
inexperienced congregations and groups negotiate relationships
with city, county, and State officials and private funding
sources such as corporations and foundations.
There are three basic approaches developing an intermediary
structure. The first is to work with an existing nonprofit
organization with considerable internal strength, capability,
and integrity. A second is to start a new organization when
there is no existing nonprofit. And a third is to work with
individual congregations as an extension of who they are as a
local congregation.
The scope of the project has to be taken into
consideration. The scope of these initiatives varies depending
on the type and the size of the community. For smaller
communities, one intermediary can be sufficient. In moderate-
sized communities, the picture becomes more complex and more
than one intermediary can be indicated. In larger urban areas,
several intermediaries may be indicated.
The types of faith-based organizations that are involved
need to be taken into consideration also. There are three broad
types of organizations: Large national and/or international
organizations from Protestant, Catholic, Jewish, and other
religious traditions. These very large organizations have high
visibility and well-developed infrastructure. There are also
moderate to large local or regional human service agencies and
organizations that exist in most urban and suburban areas in
the country. These local and regional organizations usually
have well-developed infrastructures and capacity and are key
players in the provision of social services in most
communities.
Many of these larger organizations have utilized a variety
of funding sources for many years, including government
funding, and have also developed an excellent track record in
providing and evaluating services as part of the human service
infrastructure in our society.
In the debate over faith-based initiatives in the past few
years, there has emerged a growing awareness of more front-
line, grassroots organizations, such as small neighborhood-
based services, community development corporations and
congregations of all shapes sizes and locations. In developing
an intermediary initiative, all the above organizations need to
be taken into consideration.
Too often, public and private organizations work
independently from one another and proceed from the assumption
that their work is mutually exclusive. The intermediary process
and attitude can help these different organizations discover
ways of working together. The larger organizations can take on
the role of an intermediary and begin to utilize their
expertise as teaching organizations and community-capacity
builders.
In turn, I believe many of the larger professional
organizations have much to learn from front-line grassroots
ministries and organizations. Poverty, welfare, homelessness,
and related social concerns are critical issues throughout the
country and faith-based organizations; and congregations could
be a key part of the solution process. This is not an attempt
to privatize welfare or to have congregations or other faith-
based organizations replace existing approaches, systems, or
jobs. It is a strategy to create strategic structured alliances
of professional accountability, frontline expertise, and
focused volunteer involvement that builds capacity and blends
the best of all approaches so that lives and systems are truly
changed. Thank you.
Mr. Souder. Thank you very much.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Raymond follows:]
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Mr. Souder. I appreciate your patience, Ms. Stanley; but
you get to be the summer-up. And then we will start into the
questions.
Ms. Stanley. Mr. Chairman, distinguished members of the
committee, I thank you for the opportunity to come before you
today to discuss issues surrounding the expansion of government
support for faith-based and community organization.
I also want to thank Representative Elijah Cummings for
inviting me here today. My testimony will include a very brief
description of Associated Black Charities, along with an
overview of our work in the community with faith-based
institutions and other organizations, along with
recommendations for actions and activities that we believe
should be implemented in order for faith-based institutions to
work optimally.
I have been executive director of Associated Black
Charities for the last 12 years, and the organization was
founded in 1985 to represent and respond to issues of special
significance to the African American community and also to
foster coordinated leadership on issues concerning these
communities.
From the very beginning, the black church leadership saw
the need for an organization like Associated Black Charities
and really strongly advocated for our creation. Through the
generosity of our individual United Way, corporate, and
foundation donors, Associated Black Charities has provided
approximately $6 million in grants and thousands of hours of
technical assistance to over 300 community-based organizations
in Maryland. About 1 million of our grant dollars have gone to
faith-based institutions.
Associated Black Charities is intimately familiar with the
rigorous standards of accountability for Federal dollars. Under
contract with the city health department, we provide staff
support for what is called the greater Baltimore HIV Health
Services Planning Council, and it is a body that is responsible
for establishing priorities for the regional funding for HIV
services and responsible for setting priorities for about $16
million in Federal funding.
We also understand the needs of our communities. Associated
Black Charities has been at the epicenter of every major
regionwide initiative of note for the last 16 years. As a
grantmaker, we recognize that without strong leadership even a
major infusion of funds can have minimal impact. Without
support and coordination, a fragmented series of programs is
frequently redundant and ineffective.
In 1994, we created the Institute for Community Capacity
Building in order to offer leadership development programs and
to provide technical assistance and training to faith-based
institutions and other nonprofit organizations. We received
advice and counsel from clergy. With funding from the Maryland
State Department of Human Resources in June 1996, we partnered
with Morgan State University to perform a study of church-based
human services, and the results of this human services study
informed our technical assistance work.
The copy of that study is available in the written
testimony.
The churches in the study represented several
denominations; and while mostly were Black, many of the
churches were racially mixed. Some of the findings were that
over half of the churches had someone that does coordination on
their staffs, but overwhelmingly these people were volunteers.
One quarter of the churches had tax-exempt organizations from
which human services programs were offered. One fifth of the
churches received some type of government funding and two out
of three of the churches indicated the need for technical
assistance. Of those reporting in our survey, the average
budget was $5,000.
We now work with something called the Faith Academy which
is a collaborative effort with several partners that provides
workshops and technical assistance to ministers and laypersons
whose faith institutions--and we have had Christians, Jews, and
Muslims in attendance--are involved in community outreach.
Workshops have focused on, or will focus on, organizational
development, economic development, real estate teaching
sessions, social, and community development, etc.
No one would ever expect that lawyers, accountants, real
estate agents, human resources professionals, etc., would be
able to do their jobs without training specific to the
profession or ongoing information relative to the field. So it
is with managing a nonprofit organization that is in the
business of helping people. Administrators of not-for-profit
organizations must be skilled and have a wide range of
knowledge in areas of human resources management, financial
management, facilities management, fundraising, and other
administrative areas.
Faith-based institutions are not-for-profit organizations;
and especially if they are going to develop and administer
programs serving the community, they must also have leadership
that is knowledgeable in these areas. Technical assistance and
training is necessary. Faith-based organizations like
community-based organizations must have the appropriate
infrastructure in place or a funding body must be willing to
commit resources in order to ensure that organizations have
enough funding to develop it.
And, finally, I offer for consideration the idea of using
intermediary organizations as funding vehicles in partnership
with faith-based organizations, if the Federal Government
decides to increase the availability of funding for social
programs. Intermediary organizations should be reflective of
the organizations with which they are partnering and have the
ability to assist in developing evaluation plans for programs,
monitor the program development and implementation, and offer
appropriate financial management and control mechanisms. And I
also thank the committee for allowing me to be here.
[The prepared statement of Ms. Stanley follows:]
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Mr. Souder. Thank you, and I should have said that
Congressman Cummings apologized. He had a meeting that he had
to go to and was extremely important. He was hoping to get back
before he had to head out tonight, but he wanted to make sure
that you all understood he was disappointed that he had to
leave.
A second thing is that do any of you have planes here? I
mean, we're past the time we originally said. How close are
you? If anybody needs to leave, just feel free to ask to be
excused because we have a number of questions, and this is an
opportunity to go across the board on some of the responses.
A number of you said explicitly in your--I can watch this
and if it is OK, we will do 10 minutes with each one so we can
more fully have an across the board on our questions.
A number of you said that you did not require participation
in religious services, that Bible studies were separate, that
faith-based were separate components.
Could I have each one of you--if you have an individual
program like Reverend Jones, you can respond on your individual
program. If you are an intermediary group, respond for people
who are intermediary. If you are more associated with the
government branch, if you can say how you do with your clients.
The question that Congressman Scott asked earlier, do you
have a bright-line separation of prayer, Bible study, religious
activities from where the government funding occurs? Or does
sometimes the line get muddled? You want to start? And we will
go left to right.
Ms. Jones. Yes, we do have a line of separation, and we do
several things to ensure that clients understand what is going
on with the Christ-centered curriculum that we also use. For
one thing, we do have a 5-day orientation period where we
explain to everyone that the faith development curriculum is
completely optional; and we do it in a way that people don't
feel as though they have to feel bad if they don't accept it.
We have had Muslims in our program and we always offer the
resources of the imam at one of the local masjids and we also
have people that have no faith commitment and we let them know
that it is quite all right.
The second thing is that every day our educator, at the
beginning of the day and at any time, even during the faith-
development curriculum, she always begins--even for students
who say ``I want to be here,'' she begins by saying you don't
have to be here.
We also have the students sign a waiver at orientation that
says that they completely understand that the faith curriculum
is voluntary. We do the faith curriculum at the beginning of
the day, or we do it at the end of the day. So in that sense
the faith curriculum is kind of packaged in such a way that if
a student chooses not to come to the faith curriculum, they
don't have to feel bad that they are leaving class or that
their day is getting interrupted. So we try to do it in such a
way that the people's integrity and sense of respect is
maintained.
Mr. Souder. Thank you. Ms. Kratky.
Ms. Kratky. With 36 different contractors from various
different faiths, we absolutely have to have a clear
understanding that there are lines that you cannot cross. The
groups themselves in the very beginning decided how to do that,
and some groups do it just exactly as the pastor has described.
They may have services at 7 a.m., and start the program at 8 or
at 6 p.m., and end their program at 5. Others, however, have
opted not to blur the line at all not to offer any of those
services during the program; but instead make it known that
after hours if there is a need, they are available. But because
we do have so many faiths involved, we have had to be very
careful about how that is handled.
Mr. Raymond. In our situation, it was more of a mentoring
family support process so there is no definite curriculum
involved. It was more relationship based. And, again, when we
train volunteers, they were told that there is no proselytizing
and there is no expectation that the families would attend
their congregation or attend any kind of sectarian instruction
or Bible study.
One of the roles that an intermediary could play--there
were a couple of situations where congregations said we want to
be paired with a family to provide support but if we are paired
with that family, we expect them to attend our church. We
politely declined to make a connection to that congregation in
that situation, saying that is not allowed under these
guidelines and in good conscience we can't make that
connection. So to me that is an example of protecting the
rights of the participants who are involved in the process. But
that did not happen very often. The churches and the volunteers
understood what the process was and got involved simply because
they wanted to help the people deal with the life issues that
they were facing in making that transition from welfare to
work.
Mr. Souder. Ms. Humphreys.
Ms. Humphreys. We do have a bright line. As part of our
program, all of the services are funded through performance-
based contracting. And so we believe that the burden is on the
provider of the service understanding what they are supposed to
be doing in order to fulfill the terms of their contract. But
we have also put the burden on the recipients of the service as
well and have supported them in that.
We are in the process of developing materials. There will
be posters and pamphlets that will be available in the agencies
and churches that we're contracting with. And they will be that
``you are in the driver's seat.'' And it will explain to the
participants in the programs what their rights are as they
receive services from the contracting entities. So we have
taken a two-pronged approach to that.
Mr. Souder. Mr. Snippe.
Mr. Snippe. We were the government organization that
contracted with good Samaritan; and as Bill Raymond just
explained, the expectation was from our agency that Good
Samaritan Ministries would provide the training to the
churches, that this issue would be covered very clearly, and
that the expectations were very clearly established and the
lines were drawn.
As one of my bureaucratic friends in our central office
said, can you guarantee me that there will be no proselytizing
by the volunteers that are involved? I said, I can't guarantee
exactly what is going to transpire between a volunteer and a
client. All I can tell you is what is in our contract, what
training is expected, etc.
When churches would sometimes ask that question, what can
we say, we would very definitely give them an answer. On the
other hand, if a client would sometimes ask what motivates you,
you have been working with me for 6 months, you have helped me
buy a car, you did so many things. At that point in time, to
share your religious motivation for what is behind it was OK,
as long as they opened the door and it wasn't the approach of
the church that asked them to participate or it wasn't an
expectation of the church.
Mr. Souder. Ms. Stanley.
Ms. Stanley. This applies to me only as it relates to the
funding that Associated Black Charities has given to faith-
based institutions over the last 16 years. And in our
experience, the faith-based institutions perform these services
as their outreach services, as their missionary work. And, of
course, they are going to share their feelings, their faith
feelings with the people that they work with. That is not
necessarily to say that they will proselytize, but it is saying
that they are very faith-filled people; and that they do share
that faith with the people that they are working with.
So in the programs that we fund, we expect that the faith-
based institutions are going to share that; and that is not a
problem for our organization.
Mr. Souder. Do you receive any government funds? Because
you say that your primary funding came from the United Way and
then private sector funds. If you don't receive any government
funds, they can proselytize all they want. Do you have any
government funds?
Ms. Stanley. Not that we give to the churches, no.
Mr. Souder. And let me say, because I did not say this in
the beginning--and I am sure this is true for all of us--first
and foremost, we respect the work that each you are doing in
trying to help meet peoples's needs. If our questions seem
overly legal and overtechnical, it is because we are working on
legislation right now to make sure that we can work through
Constitutionally how we do this.
And we don't want to start each thing by saying you are
doing a wonderful work, you are doing a great job. We assume
that and each one of you wants to tell us the stories of the
great works that you are doing and we ask you technical
questions. One of the big things I struggle with is--when I go
like this, that means I am at 10 minutes. I will give a clue
when we're at 9 or 10.
One of the problems we have in intermediary institutions is
the combination of how do you do the adequate reporting for
government and accountability versus making sure you get the
maximum dollars to the individuals? I have toyed around for
years and I am thinking about dropping this in, but trying to
figure out how to do it as we go Charitable Choice legislation
of what Bob Woodson said years ago was a ZIP-Code test. That a
certain percentage of the dollars have to get into the ZIP Code
of where the people live. Because anybody who is working these
issues knows that the people who are most effective are there
from 7 p.m., till early in the morning, not those who work
there often in the middle and go when the problems go.
The number of pastors and community activists I met with in
Fort Wayne last week suggested to me that one of their concerns
is while they understand the need for intermediary
organizations, and several of you represent that, how not to
have, in effect, them have to go begging to the same
intermediary organizations that ignored them in the past. And
second, how to make sure that the bulk of the dollars for staff
and, say, coverage of health insurance and everything don't go
to the intermediary organizations leaving almost enough for the
people at the grassroots to pay the light bill. Could each of
you kind of address that question briefly? Why don't we start
this side first.
Ms. Stanley. Our organization is a nonprofit 501(c)(3). And
in the instances where we have acted as intermediary for other
organizations, there has been a cap on how much can be spent
for any program at all. How much on administration.
Mr. Souder. What percent is that roughly?
Ms. Stanley. Of the grant--10 percent.
Mr. Souder. Thanks.
Ms. Stanley. And it is different for every grant. In
tobacco restitution, it is 7 percent. And the Maryland State
legislature set that.
But it is our opinion that any organization that is about
the business of doing--helping people or about any business at
all, really needs to set up appropriate administrative
mechanisms. And in order to set up appropriate administrative
mechanisms, you have got to have the dollars to fund that.
The intermediary organizations, from the way that we
operate, all we are doing is taking some administration away
from the churches or other nonprofit organizations so that they
can be about the business of doing what they do best. And we
are just doing the administration and reporting and helping
them to do evaluation, etc. So we are taking away the
administration. They are doing the programs, and it works
beautifully.
Mr. Souder. Mr. Snippe, do you have any kind of caps, or
how do you address this kind of question?
Mr. Snippe. We contracted specifically with Good Samaritan
Ministries to administer this relationship-building program. We
did not contract with them to provide any specific direct
service. And so, again, they recruited and they trained. They
did it a whole lot cheaper than what we could, as a government
organization, hire our own employees to go directly to the
churches. They already had the relationship that was there that
we needed.
So we thought it was an effective use of dollars. And as I
said in my presentation, what we are buying ultimately on the
frontline was love, support, emotional support for the people
that we serve. We, as an agency, were providing the dollars for
rent, for food, etc. So they were doing what they were doing
best through the churches; we were doing what we were doing
best as a government organization.
Mr. Souder. Ms. Humphreys.
Ms. Humphreys. We really have taken a flexible approach to
this. We have not encouraged intermediary organization nor have
we discouraged. We too share everyone's concern about making
sure that as many dollars get to the direct service as
possible. And so we have encouraged organizations, if they are
not capable or don't have the breadth in their organization to
do certain things to partner with other organizations; but we
have not taken a firm position on intermediary organizations.
Mr. Souder. Mr. Raymond, you outlined lots of things of why
intermediary organizations are important and lots of
challenges. How do you view this particular subject and how to
do it?
Mr. Raymond. I view it--and that's why I used the term
``consulting'' in the middle of that ``intermediary consulting
organization.'' It is an organization that is not focused on,
in a sense, meeting a particular mission. Its focus is on to
help though neighborhood groups, congregations, meet their
mission. It is a lean, focused organization that provides
technical assistance, training, resource development from a
variety of funding sources, not just government.
I think all organizations need to have a diverse mix of
funding and the private sector could do a much better job of
stepping up to the table and providing funding. So the
intermediary consulting organization is really focused on
helping other groups meet their mission. Because as an
organization, or if I'm a traditional service provider trying
to work with congregations, often there is a dilemma of ``I
want you to help me meet my mission; and in the process, you
may or may not meet yours.'' But if I am focused on helping you
meet your mission, I will automatically meet mine as an
intermediary organization. So when I do my consulting and work
with groups, that is part of the attitudinal change that I
think some of the larger more established organizations have to
come to grips with in order to partner effectively with grass-
roots organizations and congregations in neighborhoods
throughout the country.
Mr. Souder. Ms. Kratky, in Texas, how have you related to
this problem of the intermediary and Reverend Jones's little
church and the accountability intermediary?
Ms. Kratky. Well, I think work-force boards really are an
intermediary organization, as it were. We are a quasi
governmental agency, and our funding comes primarily from the
Department of Labor and Health and Human Services. So we're
held to all of the same rules and regulations that have been
discussed earlier by Mr. DeIulio: procurement rules, preaward
surveys.
Our job is to make sure that the majority of the money goes
directly to the provider. We have a cap of 7 percent. Our board
made that decision in administration, and all the rest goes to
direct delivery. But it's our job to make sure that those
contractors do spend the money appropriately, and we monitor
that.
And I know when Congressman Scott was asking about audits,
we--I am sure many of our contractors would love to tell you
the horror stories of all of the audits that we have to do.
Some of our organizations have been audited in the past 3
months by the Department of Labor, by the Texas Workforce
Commission, by the Texas Department of Human Services, by
independent auditor, and by me. So I think they feel like they
get monitored quite well.
Mr. Souder. Maybe they can recruit someone for their
church.
Ms. Jones. Our experience has been that we have not had
significantly good experience with intermediaries. As a small
urban congregation in our community, there were no
intermediaries willing to fund us. So we would not have been
able to start if we were dependent on intermediaries. We did go
to intermediary organizations to get funding, but there were
none that would fund us.
The second thing is that now we have a track record, we
have gone to intermediaries; but we have only gotten very
limited funding. So right now it requires $134,000 a year to
run our project, and the funding we receive from the
intermediaries that are out there have been $10,000 or less. So
it is not enough to meet the budget for what we do. But that is
just our particular experience.
Mr. Scott. What was the $10,000? Say it again.
Ms. Jones. $10,000. You know, there were intermediaries
that worked with us with funds for a particular part of our
project or a particular project that we were doing.
Mr. Souder. I am convinced--one of the things that you hear
and we're all working with is that ``one size fits all'' is not
going to do a lot of this kind of stuff. And one of the things
is that what we have done in small business is that there are
tightening regulations as you go up the grant structure. When
you look at the microcredit programs around the world that we
have done international, and Bangladesh is one of the more
innovative, that the paperwork requirements, auditing
requirements based on the size of the grant; and there are a
whole bunch of questions that we each may ask. We may give you
a couple of written questions too.
Mr. Davis, I went way over my time.
Mr. Davis of Illinois. Well, thank you very much Mr.
Chairman. And you have already indicated that Mr. Cummings had
a meeting that he had to attend. He had a lot of faith, but I
don't know if he had enough faith to leave redistricting in the
hands of his colleagues without being there.
Mr. Edwards. That is getting into miracles.
Mr. Davis of Illinois. But he did ask if I could read this
statement for him for the record in which he says:
Mr. Chairman, I am deeply disappointed that Reverend Lynn,
executive director for Americans United for Separation of
Church and State, will not be accepted and allowed to present
his testimony in person before this subcommittee. He is the
minority witness that we asked to come today and present his
views on the role of community- and faith-based organizations
in social services.
I understand, however that, his testimony will be entered
into today's hearing record. And of course, he appreciates the
opportunity for that.
Mr. Souder. And I want to say for the record that we did
not learn of the witness request until a few hours before the
hearing and we had already done the panels and Mr. Cummings and
I are trying to work out a future date for Mr. Lynn and we will
put the testimony in.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Lynn follows:]
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Mr. Davis of Illinois. Thank you very much. Ms. Humphreys,
I wanted to begin with you and ask: Have you experienced many
complaints of discrimination on the part of individuals who may
have wanted to work with any of the initiatives that you fund
and found that they could not do so?
Ms. Humphreys. The faith-based organizations themselves?
Mr. Davis of Illinois. Or individuals who may have had
complaints against the faith-based organizations.
Ms. Humphreys. No, we have not. We do onsite monitoring
with the programs that we have. And as I said earlier, we are
putting together materials that allow the participants in the
program to understand what their rights are as they participate
in these programs with respect to proselytizing and other kinds
of infringement on their rights to receive specific services.
But we have not received any significant complaints.
Mr. Davis of Illinois. Does the State of Indiana have a
concrete definition of what ``proselytizing'' or what might
constitute----
Ms. Humphreys. No, actually, we don't, but we do deal with
this issue through our performance-based contracting. And as I
said earlier, it is our position that we fund programs to
perform certain tasks and to achieve specific results. And
those programs do not get paid until they achieve certain
results. It is a graduated payment system. So for example: In a
training program, the faith-based organization might have a
certain percentage of participants who must receive their GED.
We potentially, through our contracting process, would
support some of the initial capital investment, the acquisition
of computers and that sort of thing, but the organizations must
perform according to the contract.
Mr. Davis of Illinois. And I know that there are a lot of
people who use terminology like ``God bless you,'' or ``you be
blessed,'' or ``have a blessed day'' and all of these. These
kinds of things in all likelihood would not be considered
proselytizing.
Ms. Humphreys. We would not consider that proselytizing.
Mr. Davis of Illinois. I also noted that in a performance-
based program--and it sounds like you are saying that one could
sing Amazing Grace and whatever they wanted to do, but if the
program had to do with individuals passing the GED test and
nobody passed, Amazing Grace just wouldn't cut it.
Ms. Humphreys. Correct. We are looking at results. We
assume that we are purchasing certain services to achieve
certain results.
Mr. Davis of Illinois. So you have not experienced any real
difficulty relative to individuals complaining about any of the
things that we have been hearing as possibilities?
Ms. Humphreys. No, there was one instance where there were
some concerns that came about as a result of one of our site
visits, and we have taken appropriate steps in counseling that
particular agency. And as I said, we are taking this parallel
approach where we are making sure that the contracting agencies
understand their obligations, but we are also trying to support
the participants in the program so that they understand what
their rights are as well. And we anticipate that as that is
implemented in the next 3 or 4 months, we may have evidence of
additional problems. But right now, we really only have
agencies that are 6 months into this.
Mr. Davis of Illinois. Has your agency, Ms. Kratky, have
either one of you experienced any what one might call extremist
entities attempting to be engaged in the activities?
Ms. Humphreys. If I could respond, we just put out another
RFP and had responses. And out of about 150 responses, only
about 50 of those will actually receive contracts; and only
about a third of those are faith-based organizations. We, to
date, have not had any faith-based organization that would not
be considered a, quote, mainstream, and please don't ask me to
define what that is.
Ms. Kratky. No, in fact we have a bidders conference after
we let every request for proposal, as required by our board
policy; and during the bidders conference, we talk a whole lot
about demonstrated effectiveness. So an organization
understands if you are going to go to all the trouble of
writing a grant, and that is no simple feat, that you have to
show demonstrated effectiveness. And so far, I haven't had any
extreme organization who has ever submitted a proposal because
I think they know that unless they could demonstrate
effectiveness they would be doing a lot of work for nothing.
So no. We have had over 1,000 customers served; and we have
never had, in 3 years, a complaint about a feeling that they
have been intimidated or required to do something that they
shouldn't have to do, either from the community-based
organizations or the faith-based organization. I think the
biggest complaint comes around areas as discussed earlier like
child care and transportation and those issues. Those seem to
be far greater.
Mr. Davis of Illinois. Have any of the providers had
experiences with questions of liability or size and scope of
activity that would mitigate against small faith-based
organization being able to participate?
Ms. Kratky. I think that's a great question. I think the
biggest challenge for us in this process is capacity building.
There are many, many fine small faith-based organizations who
want very much to participate, but capacity building and
infrastructure building is a significant issue. If you are
going to be an intermediary or if you are going to be, as we
are, a work force board, you have to be willing to do a lot of
technical assistance, onsite technical assistance and training
and that, I think, is a big challenge for all of us.
Mr. Davis of Illinois. Have you come into any who have
decided to consolidate or to amalgamate their efforts in order
to be able to do that?
Mr. Raymond. I worked with a project in Grand Rapids, MI
which is a collaboration of six faith-based groups, Catholic,
Protestant, Hispanic Ministerial Coalition, an African American
pastors association, and a couple of other ecumenical groups.
So those six groups formed a collaboration and are working with
family independence agency or public dollars in the Grand
Rapids area to be able to have a variety of organizations,
large intermediary and smaller groups involved in the process.
So I think that is an example to me of a good and creative
blending of size and scope and capacity because some of the
organizations can learn from the others and find out different
ways of doing things and be able to have the scope that the
family independence agency wants because it can be difficult
for a public entity to contract or connect with a variety of
smaller organizations. So this collaborative intermediary helps
give the scope that the State wants.
Mr. Davis of Illinois. Let me thank you all for your
patience as well as participation.
Mr. Souder. Will the gentleman yield to a supplement to
your question?
Mr. Davis of Illinois. Yes.
Mr. Souder. Because this came up in a number of my meetings
too. Like home health care, if it takes a certain amount of
insurance coverage and it takes a certain amount of liability
coverage of damages at the facility, have you heard that this
is keeping small groups from even applying?
Ms. Kratky. It's a line item. It can be a line item in the
grant. So that insurance can be covered through the grant in a
line item. And we would require that.
Mr. Souder. Is that true in Indiana as well?
Ms. Humphreys. That's correct.
Mr. Souder. And in Indiana, even though most people think
of us as a 99 percent German isolationist area, the truth is
that in Fort Wayne, we have the largest population of Burmese
dissidents in the United States, and clearly social services
are being delivered to them. We are becoming a center for
Bosnian Serbs, so we're getting applications coming through our
system now for those type of groups.
Mr. Scott.
Mr. Scott. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I want to thank you
again for allowing us to participate. And I want to thank the
panel because we have had excellent testimony. Reverend Jones
has testified before a committee we held a couple of days ago,
and I am delighted to see her again.
Reverend Jones, you testified at the last hearing and again
this time, that during the program, you don't need to
proselytize; is that right?
Ms. Jones. Right.
Mr. Scott. Did we hear that from everybody? That you don't
need to proselytize during the program?
Ms. Humphreys. Yes.
Mr. Scott. Obviously before and after it is available but
not necessary but, during the program, you do not.
Is there any--and Reverend Jones, you said day before
yesterday that advancing the mission of your program did not
require you to discriminate based on religion.
Ms. Jones. Right. That's correct for us.
Mr. Scott. Does anyone need the--I guess we call it the
flexibility to discriminate against people based on religion in
order to fulfill your mission?
Ms. Humphreys. No, sir.
Mr. Scott. The record will reflect that everyone had the
opportunity and no one feels that they need the right to
discriminate with Federal moneys for the first time in 60
years, certainly since the civil rights bills have passed.
I am intrigued on the question of capacity building, the
idea of intermediaries is something that we haven't really
discussed before. Reverend Jones, you indicated that one of the
reasons you liked this idea is that unsophisticated
organizations can get funding without the paperwork and other
things that usually come with government funding.
It seems to me that same problem that would be a
disadvantage to a small church would be the same disadvantage
to any small community organization. A neighborhood
organization trying to do an after-school program, I mean, you
know, they don't have election of officers, they are just a
group, everybody knows who the leader is, no 501(c)(3) tax-
exempt status and all of that. It is just a group that is doing
good work.
And it seems to me that intermediaries could provide some
of the technical assistance in getting a grant and could also
serve as the--there is a technical word for it----
Ms. Stanley. Fiscal agent.
Mr. Scott. Fiscal agent, that is exactly--so the taxes get
withheld, the moneys--when you come with an audit, you have the
paper trail and can have receipts and everything and you have
someone who knows what an audit is and when it comes they are
ready for it.
Mr. Raymond, I believe, you indicated that you provide
technical assistance for groups, some of which are straight up
religious groups. Is this service available to any group,
religious or otherwise?
Mr. Raymond. Yes.
Mr. Scott. So you open your technical assistance to anybody
that needs technical assistance in getting Federal or
government money to help do good works?
Mr. Raymond. The intermediary process--I apply that to the
religious community, because I believe that there are many,
many in that community that need this type of assistance and
need to work together more effectively. But it cuts across a
variety of issues, barriers, boundaries and to me it is part of
that community capacity building of helping different
organizations work together in a variety of ways. And I think
we need to pursue that more in our society both, hopefully,
through the Charitable Choice process but also other funding
stream so that whatever happens to Charitable Choice, there are
opportunities for collaboration and partnership building in
many ways.
Mr. Scott. Well, you don't need Charitable Choice to get
government money, so long as you don't proselytize and
discriminate. The old rules would work. You have the same
accounting problems under Charitable Choice that you would have
under the new rules or old rules. But funding faith-based
organizations is not contingent upon Charitable Choice.
Charitable Choice is a specific legislative proposal that
allows you to proselytize and discriminate. And from what I
have heard, nobody here needs that kind of flexibility in order
to do the good work that you are doing.
However, the technical assistance is another area because
small organizations, small churches, small neighborhood
organizations could benefit from the technical assistance,
fiscal agent, withholding the taxes, getting ready for the
audit, making sure--applying for the--filling out the RFP and
that kind of thing. These intermediaries appear to be able to
do that.
Reverend Jones, you said that you weren't getting help from
the intermediaries. If you had, after you got funded, would
having a fiscal agent be helpful to you?
Ms. Jones. There are more than one type of intermediary
from our experience. One is an organization that the government
funds to provide the service and then they subcontract the
services out. So when I responded before, I was talking about
those types of intermediaries. They receive the money from the
government and then they subcontract and then the grants were
just too small. The other type of intermediary are those
intermediaries who provide fiscal support, which I think is an
excellent idea. And also those that provide capacity building,
which I also think is an excellent idea. In our experience----
Mr. Scott. What is capacity building? What do you mean by
that?
Ms. Jones. Capacity building is that you could come in and
do training, monitoring, help people with results. In our
experience with the State of Pennsylvania, however, we did have
a monitor, and our monitor came to visit us monthly, plus as
often as we needed him to come. And he actually is the one that
worked with us for capacity building, so we did not have the
need for an intermediary. And we also hired a CPA so the fiscal
stuff was taken care of.
But as we expand the field of churches, I doubt that the
government will be able to provide a monitor for every church
that gets a grant. So I see that as an excellent place for
intermediaries that can do fiscal stuff and also do capacity
building to make sure that the smaller organizations,
especially first-time grant recipients, first-time recipient
and understand the language, understand the terminology of the
State, understand what the State means with their performance
requirements and things like that.
Mr. Snippe. Just a comment from an Ottawa county
perspective. We have over 300 churches and about 100 of those
participated in the mentoring program that I explained before.
There was--in no way would we have had the capacity to contract
with those 100 churches separately if we did not have Good
Samaritan Ministries serve as the in-between agency.
Ms. Kratky. Congressman Scott, there is something that you
might be interested in looking into. The Rockefeller Foundation
has just begun a project in three cities--Boston, I believe,
Nashville, and Fort Worth--to look at capacity building. So the
foundations are stepping up to the plate and understanding that
with more funding becoming available to faith-based
organizations, there will be a need for infrastructure building
and capacity building and Rockefeller has stepped up to the
plate to take that challenge on.
Mr. Scott. And part of this could be teaching churches--I
mean pervasively sectarian organizations, how to run an after-
school program with their own money.
Ms. Kratky. That's right.
Mr. Scott. How to have literacy programs, how to involve
children, how to give awards around graduation time so that
children receiving reinforcement are not just the athletes but
some of those doing well in academics, making sure that anybody
on the Honor Roll gets recognized. Teaching how to do that,
even if you are teaching that process to pervasively sectarian
organizations, would not be a problem. It is just when you
start spending government money to advance one religion over
another, we start getting into problems.
Mr. Chairman, I thank you, I think this has been an
excellent panel.
Mr. Souder. Mr. Edwards.
Mr. Edwards. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. And let me also add
my thanks for your commitment to addressing service social
problems throughout our country.
Could I ask if each of you has a written policy on
proselytizing, could you send a copy of that to the committee?
I think one of the questions is not only your good intent to
not use public dollars to proselytize, but how do we, despite
all good intentions, get that out to the hundreds and thousands
of entities and tens of thousands of individuals who would be
using Federal funds in this process?
I would like to go back to the fundamental question of do
we need new Charitable Choice legislation or what is wrong with
the longstanding law that has allowed Catholic Charities,
Lutheran social services, and other groups to use Federal
dollars, but under three conditions: That they set up a
501(c)(3), they don't proselytize, they don't discriminate.
In answering Mr. Scott's questions, you said you don't
believe you need to proselytize with Federal dollars, you don't
need to discriminate in job hiring with Federal dollars based
solely on someone's religion. That takes us to the only other
reason to have any Charitable Choice legislation and that would
be arguing that money should go directly to the church or house
of worship rather than the 501(c)(3).
And, Reverend Jones, you said that your church chose, for
various reasons, not to set up a 501(c)(3). But my concern
about not setting up a 501(c)(3) is this: In my home town, the
Governor's home county of McLennan County, TX, Waco, TX, a
charter school was set up several years ago under State law.
People of good faith and intention set up this charter school.
They now, 2 years later, 3 years later, cannot account for
half a million dollars of taxpayer money. They did not pay
payroll taxes. And I don't think they had any intention other
than in good faith to provide a good education of children in a
low-income area of my area, of my home town. The children had
to repeat a year of education and the taxpayers lost half a
million to $2 million.
If we have thousands of churches getting money directly.
Despite all good intentions, some of them may not have an
accounting firm or intermediary to help them. And I fear
greatly that we will end up having to prosecute churches, as
the founders of this charter school in my home town and the
Governor's home county, prosecuting pastors and board members
of churches, congregation members for misuse of Federal
dollars. Not out of any malicious intent, although there might
be some out there in the world that would use Federal money for
selfish purposes; but they are going to get prosecuted simply
because they were not accountants, CPAs, etc.
Tell me what is wrong with this argument: let's have the
Federal Government provide resources to help churches, houses
of worship, figure out how to set up a 501(c)(3). Provide that
resource to help them. Let's continue the longstanding law you
can't proselytize or discriminate in job hiring using Federal
dollars.
Tell me what objection any of you might have to that
argument. What is wrong with that? I ask that honestly. Tell me
what is wrong with that argument. Let's set up 501(c)(3)'s,
require that. Can't discriminate. Can't proselytize.
Ms. Jones. For us, the 501(c)(3) issue was related to our
understanding of what it meant to be a house of worship and the
context out of which we do ministry, which is related to our
ideology as a house of worship. And, as I stated earlier, for
the people in my congregation, it meant that who we were--we
were not a church doing ministry, because that organization was
separate and secular.
The other thing is that I believe that every organization,
including nonprofit organizations, have had and will have and
can have issues related to misappropriation of funds. The issue
I think is training, guidelines, and everything else. When we
began the project and we sat with our State monitor, it was our
monitor that sat with us and said, OK, Reverend Jones, that you
need to make sure that there is a separate account. You need to
make sure that you hire someone, because there will be an
audit.
And once we had that information, OK fine. So I would say
that for houses of worship, it would be the same as for other
local nonprofits, that we would be instructed whether through
an intermediary or the State or grant-writing process. But the
other thing is that even with instruction, there is always room
for misappropriation and that is not just with churches.
Mr. Edwards. I agree, but my concern is that the specter of
the Federal Government prosecuting churches all over America
really creates great concern for me. And I believe that even
the concept of religious freedom and the separation of church
and state.
Could I ask you, Reverend Jones, in your case, what could
your church do legally--what could your church do receiving
this money directly as a church that you could not have done
had you set up a 501(c)(3)?
Ms. Jones. As far as the service that we offer to our
community, there is no difference. As far as the way--the
impact of doing this ministry on our local congregation from a
pastor's standpoint has been significant. We are able, as a
church, to offer services that we just couldn't do before. If
we set up the--and for those folk that are from small
communities, our urban communities or communities where people
don't often have a sense of great success, the impact of this
ministry on Joe and Jane Average in my congregation when they
pass through and see the work that they are doing, we had a
situation some--in fact some of our folk are back here from our
program--we had an open house and one of the members of our
church was there, Mr. Pryor, and he spoke afterwards about how
good it feels to him that this is part of our ministry. And how
much it means to him because he was denied a job. He had to
leave a job because of his lack of education.
When we said ``separate, secular, nonprofit'' to Mr. Pryor,
his first response was that means we are not doing it. And at
our level, at the grass-roots level it means so much to our
people to have that sense of ownership around this ministry.
And as soon as the consultant said it is not yours legally,
that was the issue.
Mr. Edwards. How much money does the church receive on an
annual basis from the government?
Ms. Jones. From the State? Probably about $70,000.
Mr. Edwards. $70,000. Do you have an intermediary that
handles the finances?
Ms. Jones. No. We do--we hire an accountant.
Mr. Edwards. You do hire an accountant?
Ms. Jones. For the government--for the funding that we
receive for our transitional journey ministry. We have separate
accounting for that than from the funding that we have with the
local church.
Mr. Edwards. Do you have a written policy on not
proselytizing?
Ms. Jones. We have a written policy--yes--yeah, we'll be
sending that.
Mr. Edwards. OK. Can you at least--and I'll finish with
this, Mr. Chairman.
Can you at least see--while, you know, you are success
stories all of you here, and bless you for that--if all of a
sudden you're talking about tens of billions of dollars of
Federal funding going out to tens of thousands of entities all
over America, that we could end up with a lot of churches
getting in difficult trouble with Federal auditors and Federal
agents, and then prosecutors, for not setting up a separate
501(c)(3)?
Ms. Jones. I don't see that would be a big difference. For
one thing there would be--the paperwork required to apply for
any Federal grant, if any church can get through it, they
probably are able to do the necessary safeguards to ensure they
run a credible organization. That's No. 1.
The other thing is that the average church isn't going to
be applying for $1 million. I think the average church will be
like us. We are not $1 million organization and we're not going
to be. You know, the $60,000 $70,000 that we receive is what we
needed to do what we do because we're a small organization.
Mr. Edwards. If this is implemented 20 years from now, I
hope in all good faith that you're right. I'm afraid that
experience shows that there will be, not necessarily through
maliciously intent, but just accounting difficulties and
problems, a lot of churches are going to be having to face down
Federal auditors.
Would the rest of you just--finally, my original question--
any of the rest of you see any fundamental problem with the
idea of not proselytizing, not discriminating, and let's have
the government help people set up 501(c)(3)'s?
Ms. Kratky. I've been dying to answer that question, since
I'm a fellow Texan. I'd also like to talk about it from the
governmental standpoint, when you asked why charitable choice
and why an organization should not establish a 501(c)(3), to be
quite frank, from my standpoint, I would have lost three of the
best contracts I had because they were from the faith community
and they specifically did not want to lose their faith
identity.
They provide me--for every $1 I give them, I get $2 or $3
in match, and if you know anything about government finance, to
get a lot of grants, like Welfare-to-Work, you've got to have a
one-to-one or a one-to-two match; and when you can count
volunteer time at $11 an hour, you're getting--and if I'm
paying $50,000 for that grant, but I'm getting $150,000 in
match, and I'm getting success, then that for me personally--
it's not really--it doesn't have to do--as a governmental
entity, it isn't about church or state for me. It's about
getting services for our clients and getting the most bang for
the buck in Fort Worth.
Mr. Edwards. And those three churches would have refused to
provide volunteers if they'd set up a 501(c)(3)?
Ms. Kratky. Yeah, primarily because the money wasn't
enough. They didn't need $50,000 or $60,000; they needed
$20,000 or $30,000, and to set up a separate 501(c)(3) would
not have been expedient or cost effective.
But I do understand your point, and I believe that's why in
Tarrant County we feel so strongly about having strong
technical assistance and strong monitoring.
Mr. Edwards. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. And respecting the
time of the committee, if there are any others who would like
to submit written responses to the question, I'd appreciate
that.
Mr. Souder. I appreciate both of you joining this debate.
We are at the front end of what's going to be an interesting
series of votes as different bills move through.
I wanted to make sure, for the record, that--I thought I
saw in the testimony that Indiana initiated their program after
TANF passed, after welfare reform?
Ms. Humphreys. Correct.
Mr. Souder. And in Michigan it was just before. There was
welfare reform, but it took a State law basically that really
initiated the program?
Mr. Raymond. It was pre-charitable choice.
Mr. Souder. But there was a State initiative that did it?
Mr. Raymond. Yes.
Mr. Souder. And in Texas it began just before national, but
Governor Bush initiated the law and it passed in the State?
Ms. Kratky. Yes.
Mr. Souder. Because there's no question this type of stuff
was allowed in the past, but even the charitable foundations
moving toward this were stimulated by a combination of State
and Federal law.
That--another point in searching through, it's been
interesting debate about the 501(c)(3), and while it's
interesting to you, we're actually trying to debate which way
to go in the legislation; and I personally don't understand why
somebody wouldn't set up a 501(c)(3) if the technical
assistance was there to do it. But it's important for us to
understand that some people don't, and if they want to take
what I believe is a rather extraordinary risk that their whole
church is going to get audited, I'm not sure I should be the
person making that decision and that's what we're wrestling
through.
But, at the very least, we need to be able to have some
sort of intermediary organization that--for those who want to,
because it's true, for a $30,000 grant, you're not going to go
through all the headaches. There's also, I think, a concern if
the boards were the same; is it really different anyway than
having the church sued? And at the same time, if the boards
aren't the same, then the church doesn't have control and
there's not the ownership.
It's a very thorny thicket, and it's one of the things that
we're trying to work through in this process. And you heard me
say it and you also heard the White House office say it, in
that the irony is the focus here from the perspective of the
new administration, the charitable choice is the tail, not the
dog. The dog has to try to figure out how to get more funds
into the different organizations and the tax reform will do it.
The compassion fund right now is not in the bills, and
bluntly said, I'm not on the House bill because I believe that
this question of how we are going to work through this question
is a difficult question. And we are having some differences
that we are trying to air and learn in the process as we move
through.
A third point is that as we--well, you heard our debate,
and it was interesting discussion, about private money and
public, which leads to the big question that many of us are
searching through because kind of like the--a lot of people
have misunderstood what the thrust of a lot of this is. We are
trying to reach many small institutions that are largely in
urban centers, to some degree rural, who have been left out of
the existing system; and it's fine to talk about its being
allowable, but the questions are what reasons aren't they in,
and that many of them are very small and many of them don't
know about it.
And the question to me from a lot of people in the minority
community is how in any new system do you protect that it isn't
just going to be the same old people who got the grants and
that it isn't going to be the large institutions, and how can
we help people at the neighborhood level who are the flowers
blooming in many of the toughest areas in the country? How can
we get them, to some degree, involved in this process, without
which is what I'm very concerned about; and the reason we can
debate even when we disagree on the fundamentals is, I'm
concerned that while I believe as a committed Christian that
part of being a Christian is caring and helping others, and if
somebody is hungry or doesn't have shelter, you can't really
talk to them about salvation.
It isn't ever the business of the government to fund the
theological part of the church. And I'm worried that if too
many people get hooked into the works part that it will
undermine the theological part of the church; and thus, I'm
trying to figure out where these lines are, too, and we are
trying to work this through.
We are not likely to ever totally agree, but we have a lot
of the same questions. And in trying to work through this,
you've been a tremendous help today. We will continue to have
hearings, and you will have been some of the first people to be
involved in that process and we appreciate it very much.
With that, the hearing stands adjourned.
[Whereupon, at 5:55 p.m., the subcommittee was adjourned.]
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