Talking Points on the Serve America Act

Mon, Mar 9, 2009

Serve America Act

Looking for talking points on the Serve America Act?  Use the list below for guidance as you talk to your congressional representatives or write letters to the editor of your local newspaper.

The Economic Case for Service

  • The average full-time AmeriCorps position costs the federal government $9,621 plus an education award of $4,725. The average infrastructure job created by the stimulus package is projected to cost about $100,000, more than five times what a service job would cost.
  • Data shows that young people had a harder time finding employment during the summer of 2008 than at any other time since the 1940’s. The youth unemployment rate is now more than 20%. A recent Northeastern University study has found that the percentage of teens employed has already dropped from 45% in 2000 to about 33% today. This is a serious problem with potential long-term effects since early employment experiences help young people to develop skills and relationships that support future career success.
  • Nonprofits and low income communities have been hit hard by the economic crisis. They need human capital to help them meet the growing demand for services, especially when philanthropic giving has decreased significantly.
  • Churches, many of which deliver social services to the poor and needy, were expected to raise $3 billion to $5 billion less than anticipated in the last quarter of 2008.
  • United Way saw a 68% increase during the past year in the number o clals for basic needs such as securing food, shelter and warm clothing, and is receiving 10,000-15,000 more calls every month compared to 2007.
  • Increasing the number of funded service position not only contributes to our society in fundamental ways, but it also creates much needed jobs. With 9.4 million employees and 4.7 million full-time volunteers nationwide, nonprofits constitute 11% of the American workforce—greater than the auto and financial industries combined.

Serve America Act

  • Our goal is to pass the Serve America Act, which will reauthorize national service for the first time in 16 years and expand opportunities for Americans of all ages and backgrounds to serve, focused on the most critical problems we face as a country. The Act has tremendous bipartisan support, with leadership from Senator Edward Kennedy (D-MA), Senator Orrin Hatch (R-UT), Senator Michael Enzi (R-WY), Senator Barbara Mikulski (D-MD) and Senator John McCain (R-AZ).
  • More than 440 organizations around the country support The Serve America Act, including Habitat for Humanity, AARP, Boys and Girls Clubs, Teach for America, Lions Clubs International, Catholic Charities USA and hundreds more national and local organizations.
  • The legislation will:
    • Create 175,000 new service opportunities—many of them fulltime—in areas of national need, including education, health, poverty and clean energy, building on the success of AmeriCorps;
    • Link the full-time education award to the maximum Pell Grant award amount in order to keep up with the rising cost of college;
    • Create a Veterans Service Corps to provide additional support to returning vets and engage them in service;
    • Provide Encore Fellowships for retirees who commit to longer-term service, building on the model of the Senior Corps Programs;
    • Create opportunities for young people in low-income, high-need communities to volunteer to improve their own communities;
    • Establish a Volunteer Generation Fund to help nonprofit organizations recruit and manage more short-and long-term volunteers;
    • Provide a Social Innovation Fund to help social entrepreneurs scale effective problems;
    • Allow faith-and community-based organizations to meet growing needs in effective ways;
    • Improve and expand long-and short-term international service, expanding Volunteers for Prosperity.

Service Can Impact The Nation

  • Service offers a unique strategy for solving problems that the public and private sectors alone have yet to solve:
    • AmeriCorps members provide intensive national service that goes well beyond episodic volunteering. Full-time and part-time AmeriCorps members serve with community organizations from 20 to 40 hours a week, tackling tough social problems — illiteracy, school dropouts, disasters, crime, and homelessness.
    • America’s largest and most respected voluntary organizations, from Boys and Girls Clubs and YMCA to Big Brothers Big Sisters and Habitat for Humanity, participate in and strongly support AmeriCorps. They’ve seen how the sustained presence of AmeriCorps members helps them accomplish more and manage episodic volunteers more effectively.
    • After participating regularly in Citizen Schools for just one year, students from low-income households outperformed a comparison group on 6 out of 7 academic metrics, including attendance, suspension, and promotion.
    • In the three years since Katrina, AmeriCorps has deployed more than 4,000 corps members to the Gulf, where they refurbished 9,500 homes, built 1,450 new homes, completed 52,000 damage assessments, and trained and supervised more than 227,000 volunteers.
    • In the first six months of 2007, Mile High Youth Corps in Colorado helped 2,500 homes implement comprehensive energy conservation measures, saving homeowners nearly $300,000 and 1.1 million kWh of energy annually (and reducing CO2 pollution by more than 5,500,000 pounds).
  • Service is a powerful vehicle that leverages human and financial capital:
    • AmeriCorps members strengthen traditional volunteering and the volunteer sector. AmeriCorps has placed a high priority on recruiting and managing community volunteers as a way to help America’s nonprofits extend their reach and impact. Last year, 75,000 AmeriCorps members mobilized or managed 2.2 million community volunteers.
    • AmeriCorps generates new resources for nonprofit, faith-based and community groups. From 2000-2006, AmeriCorps grantees collectively raised more than $2.6 billion in non-Corporation matching funds—an average of $376 million a year.
    • Cost-benefit analyses of AmeriCorps programs have concluded that every $1 of investment results in between $1.50 and $3.90 in direct, measurable benefits: children tutored, playgrounds constructed, homeless men and women fed, hurricane victims housed.
    • The cost benefit analysis does not include the enormous indirect savings to society—for example, young people who graduate from high school and go on to tax-paying employment (a high school graduate generates $300,000 more lifetime tax revenue than a non-graduate), helping steer Americans away from paths that lead toward costly imprisonment and reliance on social services, or connecting the ailing with health services that prevent emergency room visits.
  • Social Entrepreneurs are devising new and innovative approaches to persistent community problems, focusing on delivering results. Some examples:
    • The average KIPP student starts fifth grade at the 32nd percentile in reading and the 40th percentile in math on national norms-referenced tests, and by the end of the 8th grade has reched the 60th and 82nd percentiles in reading and math, respectively.
    • An MIT study estimates that a young person who graduates from Year Up will earn, on average, $444,000 in incremental income over their working life, generating an estimated $137,000 in tax revenues ($25,000 in state, $112,000 in federal) in today’s dollars.
    • According to researchers at Johns Hopkins University, third graders working with Experience Corps members scored significantly higher on the Maryland School Performance Assessment Program than children in control schools.
  • Increased national service capacity leads to increased community service capacity, because national service volunteers have the skills and experience to manage and leverage the energy of community service volunteers:
    • Following Hurricane Katrina, 1,064 AmeriCorps members working in the Gulf Coast leveraged more than 138,000 volunteers in 2007 alone.
    • In 2007, about 550 Habitat for Humanity AmeriCorps members serving across 200 U.S. affiliates mobilized 215,000 community volunteers, helped build 1700 homes, served 2,000 families, and generated over $7 million in cash and in-kind resources to support local building efforts across the country.
  • We need to increase voluntary service opportunities because there is not enough capacity to meet the demand of Americans who want to serve:
    • Demand for national service positions has increased significantly: Applications to City Year are up 180% over last year; Teach for America has 35,000 applications for just 4,000 positions; and the AmeriCorps Online Recruitment System shows a recent spike in applications. For example, in February 2008, 3,159 applications were submitted. In February 2009, 9,731 applications were submitted.
    • YouthBuild turns away 14,000 young people every year for lack of space.
    • A recent study commissioned by AARP revealed significant untapped potential: millions of Americans ages 44-79 said they were likely to increase their volunteering in the next five years.