The recent passage of the Inflation Reduction Act and its $369 billion climate spending package was a major step toward creating a cleaner and healthier climate future. But it left out one component critical to reaching the bill’s ambitious goals — people power. Specifically, the final legislation did not include a proposed 300,000 member Civilian Climate Corps, which would have mobilized a diverse cadre of young people to tackle climate challenges during a year of paid national service.
To address the long-term problems posed by the climate crisis, future generations must be given an opportunity to learn the skills to take meaningful action against climate change and fill new jobs in the clean-energy industry. Most young people seem up for the task. A poll conducted in May by Service Year Alliance, the organization I lead, found that 72 percent of those aged 18 to 28 support the creation of a Civilian Climate Corps and that 38 percent would consider joining.
The program, which had strong support in Congress, would have engaged young people in national service projects to address the effects of climate change while boosting pay and career-training opportunities for all those participating in AmeriCorps service programs, including the proposed Civilian Climate Corps.
The Partnership for the Civilian Climate Corps, a nonpartisan collection of approximately 100 service, conservation, workforce, and clean-energy organizations, is continuing to push for a national service corps to address the climate crisis by tapping into existing federal and state funding sources. In the meantime, philanthropy can build on this momentum to make climate-related national service opportunities widely available to young people of all backgrounds, especially those in low-income areas and communities of color hit hardest by the climate crisis.
This effort is tailor-made for grant makers looking for ways to bolster the federal government’s climate investments. Here are three ways donors can make a difference:
Invest in new and existing service programs in underserved areas. Organizations in low-income and rural communities often have trouble attracting the philanthropic funding needed to operate high-quality national service programs. They are nonprofits such as the Sustainability Institute in Charleston, S.C., a small AmeriCorps program that has engaged underserved youth in a range of climate and conservation efforts, including restoration of public lands and home-weatherization projects. But such groups could significantly expand their service components with additional resources.
Two primary obstacles stand in the way of expansion: the low pay provided to participants — typically little more than a living stipend — and the significant investment needed from philanthropy or local business for nonprofits to host AmeriCorps members. This is because AmeriCorps provides only partial funding to grant recipients, requiring these nonprofits either to dip into their own budgets to make up the difference or to rely on outside support.
The Schultz Family Foundation demonstrated how to address both of these problems when it teamed up with Washington State’s service commission, Serve Washington, to launch the WA Covid Response Corps early on in the pandemic. The program, which focused on addressing food insecurity during the health crisis, dramatically increased the number of food banks with AmeriCorps service members by covering 75 percent of the up-to-$10,000 host site fee required of nonprofits in that state. It also provided funds to boost the AmeriCorps stipend by as much as 68 percent, which allowed a more diverse cross section of young people to participate. More recently, the Schultz Family Foundation partnered with the Ballmer Group to expand the program and the number of participating community organizations.
The same strategy can be deployed to create more climate-related national service programs, allowing more youth from diverse backgrounds to serve in their communities.
Support recruitment efforts. The recent Service Year Alliance poll found that 77 percent of young people are somewhat or very concerned about climate change, but two-thirds are unsure what they can personally do to help protect the environment. In response, several efforts are underway to raise awareness and recruit more young people to climate service programs. All could increase their impact with greater philanthropic investment.
The Charles Stewart Mott Foundation, for example, is supporting the Service Year Alliance’s efforts to bring together five communities to share recruiters and practices to boost program participation in designated locations. And the Corps Network is specifically pushing for climate service by highlighting recruitment approaches and the stories of service participants at its annual conference and through a video campaign this summer.
Funding is also needed to help streamline and simplify the diffuse and often difficult-to-navigate world of national service. Tech platforms such as ServiceYear.org make it easy to search for and apply to paid service-year opportunities, including those focused on climate. But efforts such as these need to reach more people.
Create career opportunities. National service programs should provide a pipeline to climate jobs created by the Inflation Reduction Act. The Cisco Foundation, for example, is working with the Service Year Alliance to explore how to equip service participants for careers in the growing green economy. We are bringing together workforce-development leaders and clean-energy employers to ensure AmeriCorps members are developing the skills to use their climate service-year experiences to land well-paying jobs in industries such as energy conservation, climate adaptation, and green construction.
Programs such as PowerCorpsPHL in Philadelphia offer successful approaches for developing postservice paths to climate careers and could be spread across the country with philanthropic support. In collaboration with AmeriCorps, the program provides paid environmental-service opportunities along with postsecondary education, fellowships, and work experience in fields such as urban forestry, green infrastructure to manage stormwater, and solar and electric installation.
The historic levels of federal funding to address the climate crisis will not go as far as they could without the people to carry out the work. In the absence of a formalized Civilian Climate Corps, there is no better time for philanthropy to step in and help more environmental nonprofits create or expand their service opportunities with young people dedicated to healing their communities and the planet.