Diversify and Grow AmeriCorps for an Equitable COVID-19 Recovery
We are now well past the half-year mark of the pandemic, and the damage it has wrought is coming into focus. Unemployment—and youth unemployment in particular—initially soared and has stayed high. Hundreds of thousands of Americans are dead. And, both in terms of lives taken and its economic toll, COVID-19 has disproportionately harmed Indigenous, Black, and Latinx communities that were already severely disadvantaged compared to their predominantly white counterparts. COVID-19 did not create disparities along racial and ethnic lines, but it has revealed and exacerbated the inequities in access to quality health care, housing, education, and economic opportunity that we have allowed to fester.
This pandemic has also laid bare another challenge: the limitations of our government, and our public sector more broadly, in times of crisis when they are most needed. A global public health emergency, overlaying and worsening underlying structural inequities, should have been an opportunity for government to prove its worth. But, with some exceptions, our federal, state, and local governments have struggled to lead. Now, many face dramatic layoffs due to revenue cuts, which will further harm their effectiveness and ability to support communities.
In the vacuum left by government, the COVID-19 pandemic should have been an opportunity for community-based nonprofits to serve—and save—their local communities. And so many did step up, supported by philanthropists who chose to adjust priorities in this moment. But these nonprofits also face uncertain futures, challenged by what a multi-year economic recovery will mean for their finances.
While far from a silver bullet, an expansion of national service with a focus on increasing diversity and equity among Corps members, coupled with an investment in building capacity and innovation at the Corporation for National and Community Service to rebuild the public sector more broadly, could produce a triple-bottom-line solution: tackle unemployment for young people, especially young people of color, and better prepare them for careers in high-growth sectors; help local communities recover; and expand a path to public sector careers for the innovative, diverse next generation, rebuilding trust in government along the way.
Expand AmeriCorps to hire 1,000,000 diverse young people over the next several years, speeding our nation’s recovery from the pandemic.
AmeriCorps already hosts over 75,000 diverse young people a year across three main programs (Americorps State and National, VISTA, and NCCC), all of which provide a modest living stipend and an education award to use toward repaying students loans or on further education. Congress should expand the programs to fund 250,000 AmeriCorps positions a year over the next four years, with new openings focused on helping rebuild the communities that have been hit the hardest by COVID-19. This would provide extra capacity to state and local governments and nonprofits to support these communities across areas such as education, health care, and economic opportunity.
A dollar invested in AmeriCorps recoups over three dollars from higher tax revenues and reduced spending on social programs over the long term.
Two key pieces of legislation would lay out a strong framework for this expansion: the bipartisan Cultivating Opportunity and Response to the Pandemic through Service (CORPS) Act, introduced in June by U.S. senators Chris Coons (D-DE) and Roger Wicker (R-MS) and co-sponsored by a bipartisan group of sixteen other senators; and Representative David E. Price (D-NC)’s Pandemic Response and Opportunity Through National Service Act, with sixty-seven bipartisan cosponsors. The CORPS Act would cost about $16 billion, a drop in the bucket compared to the $2 trillion CARES Act. Moreover, due to its public–private nature, AmeriCorps actually creates a net savings for taxpayers. A dollar invested in AmeriCorps recoups over three dollars from higher tax revenues and reduced spending on social programs over the long term. When one also counts gains for society in health, education, and productivity from AmeriCorps members’ service, the value of benefits gained for every dollar invested grows to over $17.