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Does AmeriCorps Work?

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123456
from: Harris Wofford
to: Doug Bandow

Posted Tuesday, Dec. 7, 1999, at 3:35 AM ET

Five years ago, as AmeriCorps was launched, many questioned whether such a program would work. Would nonprofits and faith-based organizations be able to harness the people power of AmeriCorps members effectively? Could a system as devolved and decentralized as AmeriCorps work? Would young people respond to this new call to service? And what could they accomplish?

After five years, these questions have been answered. AmeriCorps has taken its place as part of America's proud tradition of service. The 150,000 people who have joined AmeriCorps demonstrate the idealism and love of country America needs. In communities across the country, AmeriCorps members represent a powerful, quiet patriotism on the home front.

Through their own direct service and the service of volunteers whom they recruit and mobilize, AmeriCorps members are helping solve problems in hundreds of communities. Whether it is increasing reading scores in Washington, D.C., helping Habitat for Humanity eliminate poverty housing in Georgia, or helping bridge the digital divide between the technology haves and have-nots in Seattle, AmeriCorps members are getting things done that vitally need doing.

AmeriCorps works because it recognizes that nonprofit and faith-based groups are often more effective than government at solving social problems. Dedicated AmeriCorps members help nonprofits such as Boys & Girls Clubs, the YMCA, and the American Red Cross accomplish more and make more effective use of occasional volunteers. In five years, AmeriCorps members have helped recruit and supervise more than 2.5 million volunteers. More than 13,000 AmeriCorps members serve through faith-based organizations such as the Sisters of Notre Dame, the Catholic Network of Volunteer Service, and the National Council of Churches.

AmeriCorps is therefore on the front lines of a growing new consensus on the role that the three main sectors of our society--government, business, and the civic sector of nonprofits and educational and faith-based organizations--have to play in helping this country meet some of its greatest challenges.

That consensus crosses party lines and is being voiced increasingly by the leading presidential candidates. It goes beyond saying that the era of big government is over. It calls for the independent sector to take the leading role in solving critical social problems. It also calls for business to respond in larger measure to these needs. And it recognizes that government resources at all levels are required, but on new terms in which government is a junior partner.

You do not seem to understand the legislative structure and present reality of AmeriCorps. You oppose the principle that "government should steer the so-called independent sector," and you say Uncle Sam should not take the "senior management position in the service business."

We agree. AmeriCorps is a junior partner in a cooperative system in which the civic organizations are clearly in the "senior management position." We are enabling them to engage extra people power to accomplish their goals.

The answer to your question "service to and organized by whom?" is simple. It is organized by those local and national nonprofit organizations, and it provides service to those most in need.

AmeriCorps service meets the test you proposed for service to America: It is "voluntary, decentralized, shaped to meeting personal rather than political needs, and a natural outgrowth of people's compassion and sense of duty."

You seem to be saying that there is no need for such service on such a scale--that individual charity as now generated is sufficient, that full-time service for a year or two cannot make a great difference in helping local communities solve their problems. If so, there is a real argument between us.

As to your comments about our financial management, you should recognize that devolution is not without risk. AmeriCorps' decentralized approach has tremendous benefits, but it also poses challenges. In such a large decentralized system, there are bound to be instances of unacceptable activity by local nonprofits. When we discover them, we deal with them promptly and severely.

There is no task the corporation takes more seriously than being a sound steward of public resources. We have made substantial progress on financial management, and last year we received a clean opinion on our balance sheet. Our goal is to be a model not only of how to get things done for America but of sound fiscal management as well.

As we continue this discussion, I hope we can look at the future of national service and volunteering. How can the independent sector be fortified to meet the critical needs that government is not able to meet? Do you disagree with the growing consensus that the way to meet these needs is through public-private and federal-state-local partnerships with the independent sector in the lead? As we enter the 21st century, what do you propose as the way to call this nation to civic greatness?

dialogues
entries
123456
from: Harris Wofford
to: Doug Bandow

Posted Tuesday, Dec. 7, 1999, at 3:35 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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