Earlier this year, the $2 billion Charles Stewart Mott Foundation began requiring the organizations it funds to certify that they do not engage in "terrorist activity." And the $10 billion Ford Foundation daily checks the names of its 4,000 grantees against the government lists.
Ford spokesman Alex Wilde said the group is legally bound under the USA Patriot Act to check whether its grantees are on the government lists of terrorists. "Beyond that," he added, "it's just the right thing to do."
Some of the provisions are drawing protests from a variety of charity officials, who say they are increasingly concerned that the government's zeal to stamp out terrorist-supported charities is hurting legitimate groups.
A half-dozen nonprofit organizations that receive millions of dollars in grants from the U.S. Agency for International Development have asked the agency to revise its detailed requirements.
USAID requires each aid group to certify "it has not provided and does not knowingly provide material support" to groups that appear on lists of suspected terrorists.
Aid groups that work with thousands of small overseas nonprofit organizations say the provision is overly broad and unrealistic.
The requirement is "just legally a bit over the top," said Michael Wiest, chief of staff of Catholic Relief Services, which last year received about $350 million from USAID. The group works with about 50,000 agencies abroad each year.
Wiest emphasized that his organization supports the U.S. war on terror but said that the USAID requirement is "asking you to certify things that no one could conceivably ever know."
However, Jim Kunder, USAID's assistant administrator for Asia and the Near East, who has been negotiating with aid groups to revise the requirement, said that under the USA Patriot Act, USAID must make such demands.
