The U.S. House of Representatives is proposing to eliminate AmeriCorps, the 30-year program that empowers local nonprofit, faith-based, and community organizations to train and deploy community-oriented leaders across the country in response to our nation’s most immediate and critical needs.
If this happens, it will have a devastating effect on Public Allies and the work we do to provide essential services and leadership opportunities in underserved communities. Our work helps to address our nation’s deep economic, health, and racial disparities by investing in proximate leaders (those closest to the challenges) and building the capacity of nonprofit organizations to deliver direct services more effectively and with greater impact. We strengthen, prepare, and celebrate communities from the inside out.
Since our founding in 1992, over 10,000 Public Allies AmeriCorps Members have served a total of 17.5 million service hours. They have helped build the capacity of more than 3,000 local nonprofits to address community issues by leveraging their Public Allies training and their proximity to the challenges. This has led to an increase in the number of people served, improvements in the quality of services provided, the initiation of new programs, and a rise in the number of volunteers engaged. Over the past five years alone, Public Allies AmeriCorps Members have recruited and managed more nearly 99,500 volunteers who have contributed more than 160,000 volunteer hours in their communities.
Research shows that our work not only benefits our Members but that our equity centered leadership practices also improves the health of the communities served as well as the non- profit service organizations. Our proximate leadership strategy yields multi-tiered benefits: it fosters robust leadership development in individuals equipped with vital perspectives and experiences; it enhances organizational capacities through the rich, lived experiences of our Members; and ultimately, it weaves a stronger fabric of relationships and trust within communities. By reinforcing these foundations, Public Allies doesn’t just address urgent issues — it cultivates resilient, self-sustaining communities capable of bridging differences to achieve growth and adaptation.
Public Allies’ work, and the work of our National Service peers who want to ensure that all Americans can and should have the opportunity to serve, is more critical now than ever before. If we put AmeriCorps funding on the chopping block as Congress has proposed, it will prevent Americans who are too often overlooked from realizing their fullest potential, while further deepening the inequities that divide our country. We need to invest in expanding and strengthening AmeriCorps to ensure that leaders who are deeply familiar with our communities’ critical issues can channel the power of National Service into a transformative force. Without AmeriCorps, our country will be deprived of the equity-centered community leaders, changemakers and innovators our nation needs and deserves.
Your members of Congress are in the midst of a challenging debate regarding the federal budget and what the country should invest in. If you believe AmeriCorps is a valuable investment, we encourage you to contact your lawmakers and make sure they understand how AmeriCorps members and funding are being leveraged in their district/state to solve locally-determined challenges and priorities.