Encouraging Greater Private Support

Much attention about the faith-based initiative focuses on government funding of faith-based organizations; much of the action taken by Congress and the Bush administrations concerns regulations and laws related to how federal social-services money is spent. However, proponents of greater community service by faith-based and grassroots organizations have always been interested in expanding private support for such organizations and in ways other than through funding that government can utilize and support them.

As far back as 1995, then-Senator Dan Coats (R-Indiana) proposed a Project for American Renewal with multiple proposals to mobilize private charitable efforts, including the concept of a charity tax credit, which in effect would have enabled federal taxpayers to divert a certain amount of their federal taxes directly to poverty-fighting charities. The related idea of creating a federal tax deduction for charitable contributions that could be utilized by non-itemizers was featured in several versions of the CARE Act championed by Senator Joe Lieberman (D-Connecticut) and then-Senator Rick Santorum (R-Pennsylvania). The version of CARE finally adopted, in 2006, as the Pension Protection Act of 2006, included a series of charitable giving incentives, but not the non-itemizer deduction.

Many federal, state, and local agencies have created or modified programs to utilize volunteers from faith-based and community-based organizations, often as mentors. Headline disasters such as 9-11 and the Katrina hurricane have spurred action to expand government-supported disaster-preparedness and disaster-response networks to include small organizations, including churches and other faith-based organizations.

Federal, state, and local officials have used their 'bully pulpits" to highlight the community-serving work of faith-based organizations and to encourage individuals, corporations, and philanthropies to support that work more extensively. The White House Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives has pointed out that there is no basis for the view of some corporations and philanthropies that it is illegal or unconstitutional for them to give funding to faith-based and "sectarian" organizations. In March, 2006, President Bush hosted a national conference on faith-based and community initiatives, dedicated to encouraging greater private giving to organizations that serve the needy.