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Does AmeriCorps Work?

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from: Harris Wofford
to: Doug Bandow

Posted Thursday, Dec. 9, 1999, at 3:30 AM ET

You are perpetuating a pervasive but dangerous myth: that the work AmeriCorps members do would somehow get done if AmeriCorps didn't exist. History suggests otherwise.

First, there have long been opportunities for a small number of people to serve full-time with organizations such as the Jesuit Volunteer Corps. But it was AmeriCorps that provided a quantum leap in full-time service. More than 150,000 people have enlisted, as many as have volunteered in the Peace Corps since it began in 1961.

You say that "full-time volunteers are valuable" but don't show where they are to come from. Who besides the wealthy or the saintly would be able to spend a year volunteering without something to live on? Just like the Peace Corps or the all-volunteer Army, most AmeriCorps members make a full-time commitment to serving their country. They take on some of America's toughest assignments for about $700 a month and a $4,725 education award to help pay for college. Most members come from middle-income families and couldn't serve without a living allowance. (And for the record, the 1995 GAO report you refer to explicitly states that the Corporation's contribution per AmeriCorps member was $17,600, not $26,000, and we have reduced that cost to $15,000 this year.) Second, you suggest that without AmeriCorps, traditional volunteers would take up the slack and perform services that AmeriCorps members are currently doing. This is a wonderful hope, but facts suggest otherwise. You see our nation as awash in volunteers, but research shows that only 10 percent of volunteer work helps the needy and less than 4 percent helps at-risk children. Instead, most volunteer work is with museums, civic groups, and other good organizations that are worthwhile but not focused on solving the critical problems of illiteracy, school dropouts, homelessness, and crime as AmeriCorps members are.

Third, you claim that AmeriCorps merely reallocates resources. Wrong again. AmeriCorps generates new resources. Not only do AmeriCorps members recruit and organize an average of 12 additional volunteers per member, but also organizations with AmeriCorps members are required to raise at least one-third of their program costs in matching or in-kind contributions. For example, in 1997-98, $208 million in AmeriCorps grants were awarded to local, state, and national nonprofits. This money generated $183 million worth of support--just short of a dollar-for-dollar match.

AmeriCorps has in fact sparked new private-sector investment in service. For example:

  1. City Year AmeriCorps has raised $28 million in corporate support.
  2. General Electric has given $1 million to support AmeriCorps members.
  3. AOL recently pledged more than $5 million to support AmeriCorps members working to bridge the digital divide for students who lack computer access.

Jeff Swartz, president and CEO of Timberland, credits AmeriCorps as a chief reason City Year has been able to expand from two cities to 11. "AmeriCorps' support for City Year has inspired Timberland and other corporate sponsors to get on board."

As to the Corporation's financial management, while challenges remain, we are making significant progress. Just this year we implemented a new Y2K-compliant accounting system that is modernizing our financial management. Almost all states are now participating in a Web-based reporting system to record and rapidly report AmeriCorps members' service hours. We have a new CFO on board to lead these and other efforts to make the Corporation's financial management well run and accountable.

The crux of our disagreement, I think, is really on the need for national action on the problems of the home front. No one doubts the need for a strong national defense. But you do not see the need for what General Colin Powell calls a "national offense" to solve our society's most critical problems. Powell recently said,

I have now had two years of experience with AmeriCorps and they are doing a great job, and sometimes they are misunderstood. They are given a stipend for their work, but what they do in terms of leveraging other individuals to volunteer ... is really incredible. So it is a tremendous investment in young people, a tremendous investment in the future, and I am a strong supporter of AmeriCorps.

While AmeriCorps members are making a difference in communities and in the lives of others, they are also making themselves into just the type of citizens that you and I want for the future--passionate, committed, involved. That's why AmeriCorps is so right for our time.

Before we close this debate, I hope you will visit in the "Fray" and read AmeriCorps members' accounts of their service. They make the case, more persuasively than I can, of the need for and value of AmeriCorps--and of service generally. They truly are doing what you propose: "meeting the challenge to look outward and exhibit real compassion."

While we obviously differ on several key points, the country needs a vigorous debate about how we engage young Americans in service. I've enjoyed this "Dialogue," and thank Slate for giving us this forum.

dialogues
entries
123456
from: Harris Wofford
to: Doug Bandow

Posted Thursday, Dec. 9, 1999, at 3:30 AM ET
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Doug Bandow is a senior fellow at the Cato Institute, a columnist for Copley News Service, and the author of The Politics of Envy: Statism as Theology (click here to buy it). Harris Wofford is a former senator from Pennsylvania and the current CEO of the Corporation for National Service, the agency that administers the AmeriCorps program.
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