Fundraising for Faith Based Organisations

Faith-based organisations can often encounter obstacles to receiving funds from grant-making organisations. This article looks at how faith-based organisations can access funding for their charitable and otherwise good works.

Research by Charity trends in the UK shows that 5% of funding from independent trusts goes to faith-based causes, the same proportion as goes to international development.

The perceived obstacles to funding from trusts are due to a number of factors but mostly because of the following:

Governance and Purpose: The funder does not want to fund the promotion of religion or religious organisations
Beneficiaries: The applicant appears to discriminate on who will benefit from the project
Ethical Concerns: The faith-based organisation has ethical grounds for not applying to the funder
Financial Need: A false impression of the perceived wealth of the faith-based organisation
Not many Funders: They are only small numbers of funders prepared to fund religious organisations

Governance and Purpose

It is important that faith-based organisation are clear about the purpose of their community activity and that these purposes are enshrined in the governing document of the organisation. The organisation must examine whether it sees the promotion of religion, proselytising or working with a single identity community as integral to its remit and necessary to be part of the project aims and objectives. This may require some soul searching.

It is a simple fact that access to many funding sources precludes organisations from applying for projects which involve the promotion of religion or which have religious aims and objectives in their governing document. Religion is very often named as a specific exclusion in funding guidelines. Therefore it is often easier to access funding for projects which are clearly for charitable purposes without any element of promoting religion.

For many faith-based organisations where the promotion of religion isn't a direct aspect of their charitable work it will be better to set-up a separte non-religious charity to carry out this work.

However, if it is fundamental to the organisation that the promotion of religion is an integral part of their work it is equally important that this is shown in the governing document of the organisation. The organisation will then have to live with the fact fewer funders will support them. There are a few funders who will consider their application and it is also the case that they are likely to have more appeal to members of the same faith when it comes to appeals to fundraising appeals.

Beneficiaries

While many funders will exclude funding the promotion of religion, many will not have much difficulty in supporting a single-identity community providing there are good reasons for the project to cater for one such community. If for example a community in a particular geographical area is predominantly of one religious persuasion it would be unrealistic for a project to have an equally diverse range of religions who actually benefit from the project.

However organisations must make additional efforts to provide equal opportunities to all. It will be expected that this will go beyond simply having a written policy for the majority of funders to be confident in funding single identity projects. Organisations who work with a single identity community must ensure they justify and communicate the reasons why this is necessary to the funder.

Ethical Concerns

Many faith-based organisations have ethical reasons for not applying to certain funders. This can be because of the source of funds. Problem funders for many faith based organisations may include any funder which generates revenue from gambling.

For many organisations this rules them out completely while some faith organisations take a more pragmatic approach and permit their community projects to make the decision on whether to apply or not. The counter argument that many faith based organisations propose is that their is no really "clean" source of funding. Money from government is generated through taxes on all sorts of activities which many religious disprove of.

The simple fact is, if an organisation refuses to accept funding from certain sources their is no direct compensation for this decision. It may however be worth mentioning when applying to funders with a religious inclination themselves that you do not accept funding from "unethical sources" as this may influence their decision to fund you. But then again, it may not.

Financial Need

The financial need of projects run by faith-based organisations can also be misunderstood because the project is governed by a larger organisation, for example a church. Therefore the accounts which accompany the application may show a very large turnover. The funder may then assume that the church itself shold fund the project. This is another reason for separately constituting faith-based projects, giving them their own bank accounts and annual accounts which more realistically show the financial situation.

Not many funders

It is the case that not many funders exist to fund religious community activity as compared to broader secular community activity. A large number of secular organisation will of course fund faith-based organisations to provide secular community and charitable projects.

There are also enough funders of religious community activity not to give up all hope of ever being funded by one of them. A number of independent trusts have been established out of religious conviction. There are many Jewish, Quaker and other Christian denomination's grant-making trusts. Of those funders who do fund organisations with a religious ethos the following are just a few examples: