UPDATE: Faith-Based Advisory Council Has Announced It Will Present Its Recommendations to the White House on March 9
Written by IRFA
| 09 February 2010
The Advisory Council will take its final votes on its six task forces’ recommendations during conference calls on Thursday, February 25, 4-6 pm EST, and Friday, February 26, 2-4 pm EST. The public is invited to listen to the deliberations. Use the following number: 800-857-8628 and passcode: 9789555. (A recording of the calls should be available at that number after the calls have been completed.)
These final recommendations are the culmination of nearly a year of work by the taskforces and focus on reforming the faith-based initiative, global and domestic poverty, climate change, interfaith cooperation, and strengthening fatherhood.
The recommendations as adopted by the Council will be presented to the White House on March 9.
The final draft recommendations of the taskforces are listed below. Click on the title to see a pdf of that set of recommendations.
Click on the name of the task force to see and download the its recommendations.
Reform of the Office (church-state standards) 
Fatherhood and Healthy Families
Global Poverty and Development
Inter-Religious Cooperation
Environmental and Climate Change
Economic Recovery and Domestic Poverty
Separate Service Organization Required for Churches?
A story in the Feb. 22 issue of IRFA’s eNews for Faith-Based Organizations discusses the Advisory Council’s earlier vote on whether the federal government should require churches that want to receive federal funds to provide services to create a separate nonprofit organization for that purpose. Click on the E NEWSLETTER tab in the menu bar to find the archive and the Feb. 22 issue.
Overview of the Draft Recommendations on Reforming the Faith-Based Initiative
The “Reform of the Office” taskforce, for which the issue of religious hiring was off-limits, has made a series of recommendations which, if accepted by the Advisory Council, will be made to the Obama administration.
Religious Symbols: Faith-based organizations should not be required to remove or hide religious symbols in rooms used to provide federally funded services, although the organizations should be encouraged to be sensitive to the views and feelings of people seeking help.
Separate Organizations for Churches?: The federal government should explain the wide range of ways that houses of worship can maintain the appropriate church-state separation when they seek federal funds to provide services. Some taskforce members believe that churches should be required to establish a separate organization to receive the federal money and provide the servcies, but other taskforce members believe that churches must be free to decide on their own how best to protect themselves in their relationship with government.
501(c)(3): The federal government should make it easier for groups to obtain 501(c)(3) status, and state governments should make it easier for groups to obtain nonprofit status.
Alternative Provider: All beneficiaries should be able to ask for an alternative service provider if they object to a faith-based provider. This would expand a protection currently available only in programs with Charitable Choice language to all federally funded social services.
“Explicitly Religious Activities”: The government should use new terminology and examples to explain that federal funds awarded directly to faith-based groups cannot be used for "explicitly religious activities," although such activities can be offered on a voluntary basis, separately from the federally funded program.
Detailed Rules: The federal government should broadly use the principles of a Bush administration document, "Safeguards Required." The document stems from a court case in which a faith-based organization was found to have violated the requirement of the Bush administration regulations that inherently religious activities be kept separate from the services directly supported by federal funds. The rules are detailed and picky, because they were prepared for the case of an organization that had proven its inability or unwillingness to comply with the law and regulations.
Unbiased Grant Decisions: The federal government should take action to reassure the public and grant applicants that officials of the faith-based initiative do not make, and do not influence, funding decisions, and to remove even the appearance that the faith-based initiative might be misused for partisan ends.
Non-Financial Cooperation: Federal officials should make it clear that the initiative is concerned about more than federal funding and is intended also to promote non-financial governmental encouragement of and partnerships with community groups.
State and Local Use of Federal Funds: Federal officials should emphasize that most federal funding is awarded to private groups by state or local officials, not out of Washington DC, and that the federal church-state rules accompany the federal money.
Better Monitoring: There should be better monitoring of private groups that receive federal funds to make sure that all the rules, both church-state and other standards, are respected.
More Transparency: It should be easier to find the rules and guidance that apply to federally funded services, and to discover which organizations won the awards.
“Direct” and “Indirect” Funding: In order to help faith-based organizations decide which programs might be suitable for their participation, government officials should make it clear up front which programs are funded "directly" by government and which are funded "indirectly" and thus permit religious activities to be offered as part of the government-funded service.
