Faith-Based Math Deciding Millions in Homeland Security Grants

By ANDRE FRANCISCO

Let's say that you are the head of a nonprofit. You've been around in the community for a while and you have a prominent building and location. You hear about the Department of Homeland Security's (DHS) Urban Areas Security Initiative Nonprofit Security Grant Program and want to apply.

The program is going to give out almost $19 million in funding this year to nonprofits to make them better prepared for a terrorist attack. The money is to support “target hardening activities” like training and equipment for high-risk targets in high-risk cities. As the director of your nonprofit, you’re worried about your security, so you decide to apply.

Here’s my advice to you: if your nonprofit isn’t a religious organization, don’t even bother. If you’re with a medical or educational organization and you’re really confident in your proposal, you can give it a shot—but don’t get your hopes up.

Why not? Because this program is structured to heavily favor religious institutions.

That’s bad news for nonprofits that aren’t affiliated with a religion, but it’s potentially worse for taxpayers, because taxpayer-funded grants might be going to organizations with inferior proposals just because they are religiously affiliated. Furthermore, communities with high-risk organizations might lose out on funding to protect them from terrorism because of a rule giving a significant advantage to religiously-affiliated groups.

Here’s how it works: the application is scored out of 40 points added up from 12 scored questions. But after those questions are scored, there is an extra bit of faith-based math done to reach the final rankings. From the DHS grant guidance:

To calculate the final score, the sum of each applicant’s Federal and State scores will be multiplied by three (3) for nonprofit organizations with religious affiliation, by two (2) for medical and educational institutions, and by one (1) for all others. Final scores will then be sorted in descending order and nonprofit organizations will be selected for funding from highest to lowest until the available FY 2011 NSGP funding has been exhausted.

So if a small nonprofit affiliated with a religious group (be it a church, a mosque, a temple, a synagogue or some other religious entity) filled out the application and received the worst possible rating—a score of one out of four—on answers for the nine major questions and an additional four points—a satisfactory score—for each on the minor categories (which are evaluated on a smaller scale), their score would be 13. (Technically, zero would be the worst rating, but zeroes are awarded when an organization “did not address” a subject instead of “poorly” addressing a subject.) But because they are a religious organization, their scored would be tripled to 39. Read that again: a religiously affiliated nonprofit’s grant proposal can get one of the worst possible ratings, but achieve a nearly perfect final score.

But if the nonprofit Metropolitan Opera Association wanted to get a grant to help protect the Metropolitan Museum of Art, it would have to get a near-perfect score to even compete with a small religiously affiliated nonprofit that earned the worst possible rating on its proposal.

This practice of giving preferential treatment—and almost unbeatable odds—to religious organizations stems from President Bush’s creation of the White House Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives and an executive order allowing religious organizations to compete for federal grants. 

President Obama has continued the practice (albeit with some small changes), and has yet to address the major concern that many groups have with faith-based grants, which is that they are allowed to discriminate when hiring based on religion even though they are receiving money from taxpayers (of all religious persuasions). Religious organizations aren’t allowed to use federal money for religious activities and they can’t discriminate on who they help based on religion, but they are allowed to keep discriminatory hiring practices.

While this practice is bad for nonprofits that aren’t religiously affiliated, the larger issue is that this money might not be getting to the organizations facing the most risk. There are surely many religious organizations that deserve money to help them prepare for a terrorist attack, but their need should be judged on equal footing with nonreligious nonprofits.

Andre Francisco is a POGO communications associate.

Image: Arenamontanus.

Follow @andrefrancisco

Comments

[Dan]

Well, this sounds ominous, until you actually see who has received money from this program. For FY2009, not a SINGLE faith-based organization received any of the approximately 9M given out that year. The recipients were state agencies, offices of homeland security, emergency management offices, state public safety offices, etc, along with a few ports and a couple universities. Given the other restrictions in the program, I doubt very few faith-based orgs would even qualify to apply to begin with.

[DBP]

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion...

[ginny sheen]

Is this a joke? I thought this policy left town with President Bush. I am not a person of faith, although I do believe that faith-based non-profits do a lot of good work. However, I am appalled and resentful that taxpayer dollars go to these organizations at all, let alone with preferential treatment. It is particulary galling that many of these same organizations worked/still work so diligently against things in which I DO believe (e.g. a woman's right to choose-still a right,but effectively non-existent in much of the country). It is already difficult to be a citizen and taxpayer in this country. One would think that atheism and agnosticism are right up there with communism, totalitarianism and Marxism. We pay for their opportunity to tell us we're all anti-American, as we have seen on many, many occasions. For those of us who share this sentiment, to protest is like spitting in the ocean. In fact, to protest even out loud is to invite derision and ostracism. If we are permitted to check a box to donate money to those who campaign on "GOD and Country", we ought to be able to check another box that says our tax dollars should go to those non-profits that do important work, and do not hold us in disdain. I did notice, however, that in this piece rejecting disrimination in employment, Mr. Francisco himself used the phrase "of all religious persuasions." I would amend that to say "of all citizens." I include myself among the latter, as I have no religious persuasion. I guess this is just another exclusion to endure. I was inclined to make up a submission name, but I am tired enough of all of this to pass on anonymity. By the way, I would have put my name to this as "ignore me," but I think it is safe to assume that there is no need for that, as I am, apparently, anti-American. I give up. If ever should come a time when I feel included, I assure you that I will become far more involved in matters affecting taxpayers. In the meantime, I suppose I will be obligated to support the religious beliefs of others-just more of the same from the governing and the governed that I and many others endure for the sake of citizenship.