States and Foundations Unite to Bolster National Service Programs

When federal AmeriCorps funding was abruptly slashed this spring, programs that send hundreds of thousands of young adults to provide on-the-ground assistance in schools, health clinics, and disaster-recovery sites suddenly faced the prospect of shutting down. Though most of that funding has since been restored, the turmoil laid bare how dependent the system is on Washington and how quickly federal decisions can upend community-based programs nationwide.

That fragility has spurred a rethink of how national service is financed. This fall, the Service Year Alliance launched the Center for State Service Innovation, backed by $1 million grants from the Carnegie Corporation of New York and the Einhorn Collaborative. The plan is to help governors and state service commissions expand yearlong paid service programs through state investment, philanthropy, and policy change.

Additional funding sources for service positions like those supported by AmeriCorps — which President Bill Clinton once called a means to “reach across all our divides” — were in the works before this year’s upheaval, but the timing made it urgent, said Kristen Bennett, CEO of Service Year Alliance, a nonprofit that promotes national service work. “The disruption over the past several months has just underscored the need for more partners, more funders, and more champions to come to the table to support service at all levels,” she said. 

Can States Fill the Gap?

The majority of paid service opportunities are federally administered through the AmeriCorps agency, which over the past decade has mobilized more than 1.3 million people to address community needs. The question now is what states can realistically shoulder when federal support is uncertain. 

California offers the most visible test. With more than 11,000 service slots financed by a mix of state, federal, and philanthropic dollars, the California Service Corps is bigger than the Peace Corps.

Under Gov. Gavin Newsom, the state has built programs like the California Climate Action Corps; College Corps, which helps students earn tuition assistance through community service; and the Youth Service Corps for young people not enrolled in college. Even in the midst of a state budget crisis, the state has maintained a commitment to service. This fiscal year, the state has invested $185 million in service, supplemented by more than $66 million in federal AmeriCorps grants.

“The only limitation [to scaling these programs] is political will — how motivated our elected officials are to invest in the next generation and create opportunities for people to come together and solve problems,” said Josh Fryday, who directs the Governor’s Office of Service and Community Engagement.

Fryday called the California Service Corps “a total win-win-win.” Participants gain skills, networks, and financial help for college while earning a paycheck. Communities benefit as members collectively contribute about 5 million hours of service each year — tutoring students, supporting food banks, reducing wildfire risk, and more. Because the experience inspires a lifelong commitment to civic engagement, he said, “we’re giving young people the tools to stay involved in their communities long after the program ends. We’ll reap the benefits of that for generations to come.”

4 States to Watch

California is one of four initial partners for the new Center for State Service Innovation:

• California will work to sustain the nation’s largest state investment in service positions.
• Colorado will seek new state funding to create 400 additional positions annually focused on expanding mental-health services and strengthening work-force pipelines through service.
• Kentucky will pursue private and philanthropic support for new service positions aimed at addressing work-force shortages statewide.
• New York, led by the State University of New York, will work to secure new investments and expand its Empire State Service Corps to 1,500 annual positions.

Together, these projects mark the beginning of the center’s push to create 3,000 new state-based service positions each year. Other states — including Maryland, Minnesota, and Utah — have also built or expanded state-funded corps in recent years.

“Much of the most interesting innovation in national service has been happening through state investments,” Bennett said. “Our vision is that the center can provide the frameworks, resources, and leadership to help more states do the same.”

Colorado’s Approach: Linking Service and Work Force

In Colorado, Lt. Gov. Dianne Primavera said AmeriCorps has become a tool for community problem-solving and work-force development. 

“AmeriCorps is nimble enough that we can address some of the most important community needs that we have,” she said. The state was the first to integrate service positions with Department of Labor–recognized registered apprenticeships, and about 80 percent of service members in Colorado earn credentials and certificates that can lead directly to careers.

Its growth hasn’t been linear. Last year, the state had roughly 1,500 paid service participants, but this year that number will be closer to 800.

In the wake of the pandemic, Colorado launched its Youth Mental Health Corps with seed funding from Pinterest and the Schultz Family Foundation. That effort has deployed 100 members who serve in schools as first points of contact for students struggling with stress, loss, or family crises. The state has also partnered with Gary Community Ventures, a Denver-based philanthropy, to sustain the effort.

“We’re kind of living in an era of instability right now,” Primavera said. “We’re not sure that we can, or want to, rely on federal money, and the state can’t backfill all the cuts. We’re hoping that philanthropy will step up and help us continue these programs that are really critical.”

Catalytic Philanthropy

Philanthropy has helped states test and launch programs that governments later absorb.

In California, donors like the Aileen Getty Foundation helped the state pilot its Climate Action Corps program, which now places around 400 young people around the state to plant trees, perform wildfire mitigation work, and improve public parks. Once the program demonstrated its success, the legislature appropriated tens of millions of dollars to sustain it. Later backing from the Waverley Street Foundation, Susie and Mark Buell, and Wendy Abrams’s Eleven Eleven Foundation helped expand the climate corps approach to other states.

After the federal American Climate Corps was shut down in January 2025, California’s own Climate Action Corps continued uninterrupted because it’s housed at California Volunteers, the state office focused on service, and backed by state dollars.

Fryday said private funding often supplies the runway for states. “What we’ve shown, and what we’re going to continue to prove, is that the states can also step up in creating service opportunities,” he said. “It’s something that states should be funding, supporting, and creative about.”

Similarly, the National Governors Association, with funding from the Schultz Family Foundation and the Annie E. Casey Foundation, is helping states link service work to local job pipelines through its Service-to-Workforce group.

Despite a handful of successes, scaling up depends heavily on state leadership and budget stability, said Kaira Esgate, CEO of America’s Service Commissions, which represents 52 governor-led state and territorial service commissions across the United States.

“State budgets go up and down,” said Esgate, whose group is a partner in the new center. “For those states where there is significant state funding, it’s because there’s been a governor or a legislator who really cares about this work and goes to bat for it.”

A System Under Pressure

The federal infrastructure that underpins AmeriCorps remains fragile. The agency’s staff has fallen to about 300 — less than half its size at the start of this year. More than 70 percent of those remaining are furloughed during the government shutdown, Bennett said.

Most funds for the current fiscal year have been restored following a lawsuit filed by 25 state attorneys general.

Still, the April grant terminations forced some nonprofits to cancel or delay their AmeriCorps programs. Even after funding was reinstated, some programs failed to recruit enough participants, particularly in schools where the academic year was already underway. “It’s going to take us a long time to be able to rebuild to the same levels that we were prior to all of these activities from earlier this year,” she said.

Looking ahead, uncertainty looms over next year’s federal appropriations.

For Bennett, that volatility underscores the case for shared financial responsibility. As AmeriCorps weathers budget and political pressures, the question is no longer whether national service can survive but whether it can evolve into something more resilient — with states, philanthropies, and local communities sustaining what has long been a unifying civic endeavor with bipartisan support.

“Everyone is more committed to making sure that communities and leaders know what this investment does and to do what we can to protect it,” Bennett said. “We’ve felt what it feels like for it to fall out from underneath the sector overnight, but people are feeling scrappy and there’s interest in thinking long term about how to become even more resilient.”

The Einhorn Collaborative is a financial supporter of the Chronicle of Philanthropy.

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Update: Following publication, the story has been updated to reflect the size of Einhorn Collaborative’s grant to the Center for State Service Innovation.