National
Service’s History
Applications for AmeriCorps Far Outpace Available Slots
Office of Social Innovation and
Civic Participation.
Continued from Page 17
NEWSCOM
1993
President Clinton signs legislation to create the Corporation
for National and Community
Service and AmeriCorps.
Promoting Its Worth
Supporters generally cite the
following rationales for AmeriCorps, which gives its mostly
young members a stipend and a
scholarship for 10 to 12 months
of service, usually at nonprofits:
It is a low-cost way to help people in need; it helps build civic
leaders; and it provides an outlet for a pent-up desire by Americans to serve their country.
AmeriCorps applications have
risen from 360,000 in 2009 to
582,000 in 2012, though that
may partly reflect a lack of jobs
in a tough economy.
But some experts say it’s time
to sharpen those arguments
to put more emphasis on what
participants accomplish and
less on the feel-good aspects of
“service.”
National-service and volun-
teerism advocates need to ditch
the “culture of politeness” that
leads to “celebrating effort rath-
er than celebrating impact,”
says Aaron Hurst, president of
the Taproot Foundation. He and
others say the White House has
not helped by promoting one-
shot, low-impact “days of ser-
vice.”
Mr. Hurst, whose foundation
promotes pro bono services, says
AmeriCorps should refashion it-
self into a training program for
nonprofit workers. “That’s one
thing that would really shift
that discussion,” he says. “It’s
about jobs, it’s not about service
for the sake of service.”
How a Legislative Milestone
for Volunteerism Has Worked Out
The Edward M. Kennedy Serve America Act, passed in 2009,
was designed to greatly expand national service. The federal deficit
and other public-policy concerns have kept the law from achieving much
that was promised.
What It Called For
What Actually Happened
140,000
Number of AmeriCorps members in 2012
250,000
Number of members in 2017
$70-Million
2012 budget for Social Innovation Fund
to help charities expand effective projects
$80-Million
2013 budget for the fund
$70-Million
2012 budget for fund to help charities
recruit and manage volunteers
$80-Million
2013 budget for the fund
$5-Million
2010 budget for fund to provide management training to
smaller nonprofits; same amount to be spent in each of
the following four years
82,500
Number of AmeriCorps members in 2012
1994
20,000 AmeriCorps members
begin work in more than 1,000
communities.
S TEPHEN JAFFE/AFP/NEWSCOM
2002
January: President George W.
Bush creates USA Freedom
Corps to encourage volunteer-
ism. He also proposes to ex-
pand AmeriCorps by 50 per-
cent.
November: AmeriCorps sus-
pends enrollment of new mem-
bers because it does not have
enough money to pay for all of
the scholarship awards partici-
pants would earn.
$250,000
Minimum administrative payment to state national-service commissions
Other Efforts
n Additional college and summer service programs
for students
n Offer fellowships and scholarships to encourage
people 55 and older to volunteer
$45-Million
Social Innovation Fund budget in 2012
$50-Million
Amount President Obama proposed
for 2013
$4-Million
Volunteer-fund budget in 2012
$0
Amount President Obama proposed
for 2013
$0
Nonprofit training fund budget for 2012
$0
Amount President Obama proposed
for 2013
$200,000
Minimum administrative payment to state national-service commissions in 2012
Other Efforts
n 2011 budget eliminates Learn and Serve America,
the schools program
n No fellowships or scholarships created to help older
volunteers
2003
July: President Bush signs a
law designed to prevent future
AmeriCorps accounting problems.
September: A “Save AmeriCorps” coalition organizes 100
hours of testimony on Capitol
Hill to protest deep cuts to the
program.
2004
AmeriCorps receives a record
budget increase, to $444-
million. Membership rises to
75,000.
Flexible and Accountable
Congress and the White
House have also put pressure
on the corporation to show that
AmeriCorps programs make a
difference—and the agency’s
current strategic plan outlines
16 “performance measures” that
nonprofits that run AmeriCorps
programs must meet.
A February report by the Gov-
ernment Accountability Office
says the corporation is strug-
gling with that new approach,
especially “striking a balance
between providing grantees
with the flexibility to meet lo-
cal needs and holding them ac-
countable for performance.”
But Peter Frumkin, professor
of public affairs at the Univer-
sity of Texas at Austin and the
author of Serving Country and
Community: Who Benefits From
National Service?, says he wor-
ries the pendulum could swing
too far in the direction of em-
phasizing accomplishments be-
cause it seems more politically
palatable.
“You have to be careful because when you make the argument that it’s an efficient and
easy way to get things done,”
he says, “then the question is,
is this low-cost labor displacing
full-time work or even union
work?”
corporation from 2002 to 2004,
says the nonprofit world was not
ready for a huge influx of new
cash—and some groups may
have ended up mishandling it.
“Rapid, rapid growth is very
dangerous,” he says.
CAROLINE SCHIFF/ TAPROO T FOUNDATION
Aaron Hurst says the role
of AmeriCorps should be to
train nonprofit workers.
The best argument is that,
like the military, national service builds “civic commitment,”
he adds.
XINHUA/ZHANG YAN/NEWSCOM
2009
President Obama signs the
Edward M. Kennedy Serve
America Act, which authorizes
AmeriCorps to grow to 250,000
members by 2017.
2011
February: House Republicans
make the first of several at-
tempts to eliminate Ameri-
Corps.
April: Democrats fend them
off, but the program’s budget
is cut.
Two Views
While many national-service advocates are disappointed
by the slowdown of the Serve
America Act, others say it may
have headed off real problems.
Shirley Sagawa, a national-service expert who helped
draft the legislation creating
the corporation, says the additional money could have helped
spread AmeriCorps members
more evenly across the country.
“There are states out there managing just a few dozen members
when in fact they could absorb a
great deal more,” she says.
But David Reingold, a professor of public policy at Indiana
University, who worked at the
Selling Points
To true believers, winning
support for AmeriCorps is a
matter of educating lawmakers
and voters about its value.
When a group of nonprofit,
government, business, and aca-
demic leaders gathered in Janu-
ary in San Francisco to brain-
storm about the future of na-
tional service and volunteerism,
they agreed they needed “to do
a better job of telling the story
of the power of national ser-
vice,” says Michelle Nunn, chief
executive of the Points of Light
Institute, a group that promotes
volunteerism,
The corporation has stepped
up its efforts to highlight en-
dorsements from state and local
officials.
For example, Walter Mad-dox, mayor of Tuscaloosa, Ala.,
showed up at the news conference to announce FEMA Corps
and touted the work of AmeriCorps members who helped
Habitat for Humanity rebuild
houses after a tornado devastated his town last spring.
The agency is also asking
groups with premier nonprofit
brands like Habitat for Humanity and Teach for America to do
more to publicize their connection to AmeriCorps.
While not widely known, every participant in Teach for
America, which places college
graduates in public-school classrooms, is an AmeriCorps member.
The federal program provides only about 5 percent of
the group’s overall budget, but
every participant is eligible for
the AmeriCorps scholarship—a
critical selling point for those
who are required by state law to
take teacher-certification courses, says Kate Kavouras, Teach
for America’s managing director of public partnerships.
Meanwhile, the partisan battles over national service continue in Washington.
Sen. Barbara Mikulski, a
Maryland Democrat who has
both championed the program
and criticized it for bad man-
agement, praises AmeriCorps
members and says supporters
should press Congress to “con-
tinue investing in critical pro-
grams that help fill chronically
unmet needs.”
But Rep. Marlin Stutzman,
Republican of Indiana, intro-
duced the Volunteer Freedom
Act last month to eliminate the
Corporation for National and
Community Service. “My bill is
based on a simple truth: It’s not
volunteering if it comes with a
paycheck,” he says in a state-
ment. “Americans volunteer be-
cause we believe in better com-
munities, stronger families, and
personal commitments. Volun-
teering isn’t something we do
for our bottom line.”
