By Nancy Long
Executive Director
Executive Service Corps

The Serve America Act has the potential to be transformative for nonprofits and communities. The Act dramatically expands national service programs, providing many new opportunities, including Encore Fellows, Silver Scholarships, and a musician and artists corps program. Washington representatives have been strong supporters of national service. We owe particular thanks to Congressmen McDermott and Dicks, who are members of the national service caucus, to Congressman Inslee who proposed the Clean Energy Corps, and to Senator Murray, who successfully included the Volunteer Generation Fund, which will help build the capacity of the nonprofit sector to manage volunteers. The Serve America Act had bipartisan support nationally and in our state.

Washington has already received $4 million in stimulus funds for the AmeriCorps program—one of the largest awards in the country. New positions are targeted to some of our most economically distressed communities, such as Longview, Clallam, Forks, Spokane, Southeast Seattle, and small cities throughout the state.

In order to ensure that Serve America has the intended impact we need to encourage Congress to:

Reduce the federal match requirements. Because economic conditions make it more difficult for nonprofits to be project sites for national service, Congress should eliminate planned increases in match requirements or at least grant waivers that allow other federal funds and in-kind contributions to be used as match.

Fund Serve America Act fully and make grants competitive. Make sure that the appropriations are at the highest possible level and distribute a high percentage of the funds on a competitive basis.

It is important to think of national service not just a series of programs, but as a strategy that leverages the desire of people of all ages to contribute to their community. For this strategy to work, we will need to make significant new investments in the volunteer infrastructure. This is why Senator Murray’s sponsorship of the Volunteer Generation Fund is so critical to the success of these efforts. Most nonprofits do not have the trained staff and systems infrastructure to effectively engage volunteers, particularly skills-based volunteers. The Volunteer Generation Fund, supplemented by foundation support for volunteerism, will be needed for the promise of the Serve America Act to be realized.

Tags: Economy, nonprofit partners, public policy, Serve America, stimulus

This entry was posted on Thursday, June 18th, 2009 at 4:18 pm by Alaina and is filed under Economy, Policy, Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.