The State of Ohio is running a grant competition to enlist school districts, businesses, and faith-based and secular community organizations to join together to recruit mentors and connect those mentors with school students who need positive role models that will “help motivate and inspire them, as well as help them develop skills that lead to success in school and the workplace.”

What’s not to like? Even the specific inclusion of churches and other faith-based organizations is to be praised: these are stand-out elements in local communities and “mentor-rich” environments for recruitment, and trusted institutions in the lives of many of those students.

But there is this one-big-flaw. The application materials for this Community Connectors grant specifies as a mandatory partner for each grant application not only a school district and a business, but also a faith-based organization or a house of worship. Applications that don’t name a synagogue or church or religious charity are just disqualified.

The intention is right, but the method is wrong. Government grant programs cannot–constitutionally–require applicants to include a religious entity. That’s coerced religion, not good either for religion or government.

The State of Ohio needs to redesign its program. Make it clear that there is a level playing field: faith-based organizations have an equal opportunity with secular groups to win a grant as part of a coalition of groups. And make it clear, too, that successful applications will be broadly inclusive of the communities around the students who need mentors–i.e., not resolutely secular but instead dedicated to involving people and organizations of faith along with other people of good character and other values-strengthening organizations.