Few churches seeking government grants

WASHINGTON — A distinct minority of U.S. congregations — just 7 percent — sought government grants in the past four years, a new study shows.

“Government grant activity is not tremendously important for congregations … even though they’re engaged in social services in a wide variety of areas,” said John C. Green, a political science expert at the University of Akron, Akron, Ohio, and author of the study. The study, released Dec. 5 at the annual conference of the Roundtable on Religion and Social Welfare Policy at the National Press Club, also showed that marriage counseling is the most commonly provided social service by U.S. churches.

Two-thirds, or 68.5 percent, of congregations surveyed said they offered marriage counseling. More than 50 percent of respondents said they provided a food pantry (63.5 percent), family counseling (58.8 percent) and senior citizen services (58.3 percent).

Most congregations were not familiar with Charitable Choice, a provision of the welfare reform law that increased governmental funding of faith-based social services. Twenty-eight percent of respondents said they were at least somewhat familiar with Charitable Choice, while 72 percent said they were not very familiar with it. Just 6.5 percent of congregations said a representative of their congregation had attended an outreach conference that related to Charitable Choice. Green said this was one area in the study that showed a variation among religious traditions.

“The historically black churches were much more likely to report a familiarity with Charitable Choice and attendance at conferences,” he said, with 42 percent of them knowing of Charitable Choice and 24 percent having attended a conference such as the ones offered by the White House Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives.

Congregations tended to get most of their revenue from individual contributions or special fundraising efforts.
The study was based on 1,692 responses to surveys that were sent to congregations; it has an overall margin of error of plus or minus 2.4 percentage points.