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On the last day of April, around 250 people gathered at a Washington, D.C., hotel to honor members of Congress who have championed volunteerism and national service.
Legislators on both sides of the aisle “passionately recommitted to supporting this work,” said AnnMaura Connolly, president of Voices for National Service, which lobbies to expand service programs and hosts the annual awards. But this year’s event followed the Trump administration’s recent moves to dismantle AmeriCorps, the 32-year-old national service program and federal agency that nonprofits and communities nationwide rely on.
AmeriCorps dispatches about 200,000 Americans to a diverse array of community service projects. Corps members — who are mostly 18 to 26 years old — work in classrooms and after-school programs and with veterans. They do disaster recovery and conservation work on public lands. They support name-brand charities like Habitat for Humanity and the American Red Cross as well as local organizations and faith-based groups that rely on corps members to deliver their programs. In essence, AmeriCorps powers nonprofits, schools, government agencies, and other organizations with vetted labor paid in part by the federal government.
Staff from Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency arrived at the agency in mid-April and soon announced substantial reductions to its 500-person headquarters staff and $1 billion budget. Advocates fear the cuts will erode the values of community and service that have been a source of national unity.
“We’re losing a sense of idealism that we’re all trying to work together to make the country better,” said Catherine Milton, the first executive director of AmeriCorps’s predecessor, the Commission on National and Community Service. “It’s picking away at something that’s really important in the country.”
Often described as a domestic version of the Peace Corps, AmeriCorps has had bipartisan support since its creation. There have been other attempts to cut its annual budget, now totaling $1 billion, and staff, currently at 500 people. But these latest reductions — and the abrupt manner in which they occurred — are unprecedented.
“We’ve never seen a cut of that size,” said Kaira Esgate, who leads America’s Service Commissions. Both red and blue states saw their entire grant portfolios slashed. In some states, a few programs were spared.
“The cutback in AmeriCorps doesn’t help,” said Leslie Lenkowsky, another early leader of the Corporation for National and Community Service. “It’s one of many things that are creating a chilly climate for civic engagement and public service.”
Rooted in Bipartisanship
The vision for a modern American national service effort emerged in the 1980s. “Social entrepreneurs” were looking for ways to encourage service among young people through new nonprofits like City Year and Teach for America. Members of Congress were introducing legislation that aimed to incentivize community service.
In the late 1980s, President George H. W. Bush created the Office of National Service in the White House and worked to encourage volunteerism through his Points of Light Foundation. In 1990, he signed legislation authorizing grants to support demonstration programs in schools and nonprofits around the country.
Meanwhile, Democratic Senator Edward Kennedy set out to create a domestic Peace Corps that offered pay for longer-term service opportunities. A number of states were already experimenting with programs, and Kennedy and his staff pulled together bipartisan ideas that led to the founding legislation.
“We certainly realized at the time that we’d be able to do things on a small scale, but if we wanted to do it on a larger scale, it would be good to have federal money involved,” said Milton, whose 2023 book, Creating AmeriCorps: Bipartisanship in Action, traces how the agency went from an idea to federal program in just a few years.
In 1993, President Bill Clinton signed the law to create the Commission on National and Community Service, which was renamed AmeriCorps in 2020.
“It was there as a beacon for how to create something that would both serve the community, but really help bring people together from very different backgrounds,” said Milton.
‘Common Goal of Serving’
DOGE cuts have already ended 1,000 programs and the work of more than 32,000 AmeriCorps members and senior volunteers.
On April 15, the roughly 750 members of the agency’s National Civilian Community Corps were informed that they would be immediately discharged from their service terms, which had several months remaining. The full-time residential service program, modeled after a New Deal effort that put young men to work on public lands, employed young people between age 18 and 26 to address community needs.
Corps members received a small stipend, a $7,000 scholarship, and health insurance for what is generally 10 or 12 months of service. That income and benefits were abruptly cut off, and the education awards will be prorated.
“It’s jarring, it’s painful; it’s a shame all around,” said Conrad von Moltke, 24, who led a team of eight corps members.
In Ahwahnee, Calif., his team built cabins and worked to mitigate the risk of wildfire at a summer camp for kids and adults with mental and physical disabilities. Following Hurricane Helene, they traveled to North Carolina to help distribute emergency aid and clean debris. They had recently finished a stint repairing affordable housing in a gentrifying neighborhood in Portland, Ore., when the crew was abruptly sent home.
“This organization was doing such a good thing” by helping to develop young adults into responsible citizens, von Moltke said. “It really fostered a unique sense of community all around this common goal of serving the public.”
AmeriCorps is a public good that’s hard to quantify. By some estimates, national service generates $17 in benefits to the U.S. for every tax dollar invested.
As rationale for the cuts, the White House has cited the agency’s failure to pass an audit for the past eight years. According to a 2024 report from the Office of Inspector General at AmeriCorps, the agency has made progress but failed to produce auditable financial statements.
Grant-termination letters sent in late April informed recipients their “award no longer effectuates agency priorities.” But, said Esgate, “there’s not been anything that’s gone out about new priorities under the Trump administration.”
The Trump administration moved to eliminate AmeriCorps in each year of the president’s first four years in office, but ultimately funding was increased. The president’s budget proposal this year, released May 2, again calls for eliminating the agency. What will happen in a rescission package, which would request that Congress claw back previously approved funds, and appropriations bills remains to be seen.
In late April, more than 20 states sued the administration over the cuts to the agency staff and grant funding. And on May 6, a coalition of community organizations filed another suit attempting to block the administration’s attempt to dismantle the program without congressional authorization.
Jennifer Bastress Tahmasebi, interim agency head of AmeriCorps, did not return a request for comment. An estimated 115 career staff remain at the agency, according to America’s Service Commissions.
“There is a lack of information right now about next steps,” said Esgate.
What’s Next?
Some AmeriCorps grantees, like the Refill Jackson Initiative, are turning to other sources of funding to keep their corps members employed.
“We’re going to continue our work,” said Caitlin Brooking, executive director of the workforce development nonprofit in West Jackson, Miss., which has nine corps members on staff. In the short term, the nonprofit is tapping into foundation and corporate support, though benefits like health insurance and the tuition stipend are harder to replace, she said. The cuts “really put us in a position to break promises to our members and to the community.”
Participants in the Refill Jackson Green Corps get professional experience and workplace safety credentials while helping revitalize neighborhoods in West Jackson. Following their service, corps members are better positioned to get in-demand jobs in the state.
“It’s really been a win-win-win situation,” said Brooking, adding that some of those “intangible benefits” to AmeriCorps will be hard to replace.
Milton, who now serves as a commissioner for California Volunteers, the state’s service commission, views the latest cuts to AmeriCorps as a larger threat to our civic fabric.
“Even if smaller programs survive,” she said, “to not feel like you’re part of something bigger is a shame.”
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