The coronavirus pandemic has been especially challenging for child care providers. Child care providers faced lower enrollment with many families out of work or working from home, while at the same time navigating how to keep facilities sanitized while following public health guidance. Expanded child care hours were needed by some essential workers, and governments wanted to be sure that enough daycare programs remained open even if the child counts were low. Congress responded by authorizing, in the CARES Act, $3.5 billion in additional funding for the Child Care and Development Block Grant Program, the federal-state program that funds childcare for low-income families. Unfortunately, in providing that needed extra funding, Congress chose a funding method—grants—that can exclude faith-based child care providers from equitable participation. Such exclusion is especially troubling during the ongoing pandemic, as the goal of the funding is to help child care centers remain open to serve the needs of workers and families. As discussed in this article, grant funding comes with religious freedom restrictions that prevent many faith-based providers from participating. During this unprecedented time, an all-hands-on-deck approach is needed to prevent the creation or worsening of child care deserts in places where such providers are most needed.

Both faith-based organizations and workers are being directly impacted by financial challenges related to the ongoing public health crisis. In this moment, we have heard anecdotally from many faith-based organizational leaders that they continue to have questions and challenges regarding how to navigate government support programs that could benefit them and their workers. Through recently enacted legislation and new guidance, the United States Congress and the U.S. Department of Labor have made changes to the unemployment insurance system that affect individuals across the country, including in the sacred sector. For congregations and faith-based nonprofits who face decisions about laying off employees who serve as frontline ambassadors for the organization’s work, these provisions that offer both enhanced unemployment options for workers and work-share options for employers can offer some hope that these invaluable individuals and their families will be sustained financially through this pandemic and beyond.

In this current COVID-19 crisis, local, state and federal governments are taking a wide range actions, some of them unprecedented, that affect the ability of faith-based nonprofits to sustain their basic operations and to provide services. Governments are also adopting new policies that directly influence the quality of life of the employees of faith-based organizations and the well-being of people in the communities those organizations serve. Are these aid programs, expenditures, and prohibitions, positive or do they need refinement? Advocacy and lobbying are activities, protected by law, that faith leaders and faith-based organizations can speak to government and the public about the justice and effectiveness of these and other policies. Advocacy helps the government know what works, and helps organizations affected by government policy seek changes important for their own religious freedom and effectiveness and for the good of the people they serve.