ECFA Bamboozled the Senate Finance Committee, Now Leads Non-Accountability/Non-Transparency:
Seventeen years ago, Senators Chuck Grassley (Rep.) and Max Baucus (Dem.) of the Senate Finance Committee had been interested in issuing subpoenas to six different ministries who appeared to be abusing the tax code and using their ministries as their personal piggy banks. The Senators were also interested in closing apparent loopholes in our religious non-profit laws.
Along came the Evangelical Council for Financial Accountability (ECFA) to the rescue, or so it seemed…
Fourteen years ago, Senator Grassley, decided against issuing subpoenas to these ministry’s leaders and informants following complaints of harassment. Ex-employees received letters threatening litigation if they testified. Instead, Grassley called upon the Evangelical Council for Financial Accountability (ECFA) to form a task force to try and address the glaring problems without any new legislation. ECFA was created by Billy Graham along with some other folks decades ago to give ministries a platform to willingly (or not) share portions of their financial information without any government interference.
Unbeknownst to Senator Grassley, ECFA’s task force included some lawyers and CPAs working for the very ministries they had investigated and not surprisingly, ECFA recommended only new legislation which would have loosened the tax code, not strengthened it, and thus blew any chance of reigning in the wild abuses we see daily.
ECFA, Supposedly Assisting Transparency, Stopped Being Transparent … The Hidden 990
Form 990, while far from perfect, tells the public who are the highest paid employees and where the money goes in general. ECFA has not filed any new forms 990 with the IRS since their 2020 form 990. They still post the 990 only on their own website; the 990s no longer show up on websites of the IRS, ProPublica or Guidestar. What is offensive is that they stopped being transparent with the government and are not setting an example. At a time when it’s critical for churches to be more transparent, they are doing the opposite.
In 2019, ECFA began to claim it was an association of churches and churches do not have to file form 990s. There is no evidence on the IRS website that ECFA applied for this reclassification. They simply declared themselves an association of churches.
Here’s a screenshot of the ECFA’s previous status as a public non-profit organization (see the check mark) prior to 2019:
ECFA, a Toothless “Lion”, more Like a Toothless Old Stray Alley Cat
Oral Roberts, at one time the most prominent televangelist, did not see self-policing by a voluntary accreditation agency like the Evangelical Council for Financial Accountability (ECFA) as an adequate substitute to filing (990) reports with the IRS. Asked whether his ministry was a member of ECFA, the Rev. Roberts responded:
“We were invited to be a member of that … but we believed there was no teeth in it; and I think that has been proved by the PTL thing. Ours was so much stronger; our auditing procedures and our filing of the [Form] 990 every year…. We have a corps of auditors…. Anybody in the United States can get a copy of our [Form] 990 report at any time, by writing the IRS; it is available to the media, to everybody in America…. Why wouldn‘t all file a [Form] 990 – why?” (Note that Oral Roberts University became an ECFA member in 2009).
In 1987, then-Congressman Dorgan posed the following question: ―What kind of accountability is now required; what kind of information is required, is information sufficient now, is it available to allow those to whom the appeal for funds is directed to make reasonable decisions about the advisability of contributions? (Federal Tax Rules Applicable to Tax-Exempt Organizations Involving Television Ministries: Hearing Before the Subcomm. on Oversight of the House Comm. on Ways and Means, 100th Cong. 8, 1987)
