Washington ? President Bush has succeeded in opening the checkbooks of five federal departments to religious organizations. Now he’s setting his sights on money doled out by the states.

The goal is to persuade states to funnel more of the federal money for social service programs that they administer to “faith-based organizations.”

Federal regulations now allow federal agencies to directly fund churches and other religious groups. Bush acted alone to rewrite these regulations after failing to persuade Congress to change the law.

Partly as a result, in 2003, groups dubbed “faith-based” received $1.17 billion in grants from federal agencies, according to documents provided by the White House to The Associated Press. That was about 8 percent of the $14.5 billion spent on social programs that qualify for faith-based grants in five federal departments.

That’s not enough, said Jim Towey, director of the White House Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives. An additional $40 billion in federal money is given out by state governments, he said, and many states do not realize that federal rules now allow them to fund these organizations.

“We’re on the sunrise side of the mountain,” he said.

To encourage states, the White House has hosted a series of conferences, Towey has met with state leaders and Bush has personally lobbied governors.

Towey’s office will also be looking for cases in which the administration believes state or local governments are not treating religious groups fairly. He cited a case last fall where the city council in Janesville, Wis., was urged by Americans United for the Separation of Church and State, a group that opposes Bush’s initiative, not to give the Salvation Army $250,000 to buy a building for a homeless shelter because worship activities would also take place inside.

Towey’s office told city officials that federal regulations allowed the grant to go forward.

“When it’s brought to our attention that a group’s being discriminated against, the federal government’s going to weigh in,” he said.

The coming year will also see a new $100 million drug treatment program get up and running, which allows addicts to use their government money to seek treatment from religious groups.

States have been slow to warm to the Bush initiative. An independent 2003 study of state efforts to contract with faith-based groups found little activity. That was partly because states did not see a need to target religious groups and partly because their budgets were so tight that there was little room for new contractors, said Richard Nathan, director of the Rockefeller Institute at the State University of New York in Albany.