AmeriCorps

Organization Country: United States

Link to their website: https://americorps.gov/

• What do they do?

Americorps connects both youth and older folks with opportunities around the US where they can contribute to local community growth and development. They spawned out of the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC), created during the Great Depression by FDR, in order to provide jobs for the jobless and build necessary infrastructure at the same time. Their listed goal is to “make service to others an indispensable part of the American experience.”

• Who’s their audience?

Their audience is all Americans, but especially youth.

• What’s their approaches?

They have 6 focuses: Disaster services, education, economic opportunity, environmental stewardship, healthy futures, and veterans and military families.

• What’s their current program/project?

There are 10s of programs within each of their 6 approaches. Each program is locally focused, and Americorps connects them.

• What’s their organizational structure?

They are a government program that both directly connects with youth and with other, more local organizations. An example of this is Kupu, a program in Hawaii focused on environmental stewardship. Kupu has 6 month and one-year programs that are essentially paid internships, and Americorps provides the funding that pays the interns, and Kupu provides the direction. 

• Who funds them? (can be hard to track down, make an educated guess)

Government funding + private sector donations.

• What else stands out?

Americorps does much of what we aim to do, but for more than youth, and they largely only work with other organizations to provide them with people. The biggest difference is that Americorps is a government program, whereas we are not.

https://thewowfoundation.com/young-leaders-directory-2022