Office of the CEO
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Message from CEO and Board Chair of the Corporation for National and Community Service on the Release of the Strategic Plan for 2006-2010 |
Dear National Service Colleagues,
We are very pleased to present the final version of the Corporation’s Strategic Plan for 2006 to 2010. The full plan is now posted at www.nationalservice.gov, and we will be mailing our grantees and partners a printed copy shortly.
This plan is the result of a year-long collaborative effort between the Corporation and our network of grantees, project sponsors, staff, and participants. Throughout its development, the Corporation received more than 700 comments. Thanks to that honest and thoughtful input, the final plan is a much stronger document that provides a blueprint for using the Corporation’s resources wisely to work with our thousands of partners large and small to build a culture of citizenship, service, and responsibility in America.
Now that the plan is complete, the real work begins. This plan sets ambitious goals for the Corporation for the next five years, including specific performance targets. It defines our overall mission and guiding principles, and reinforces our commitment to management excellence.
Our plan also does something more: it lays out a national vision for volunteer service. We at the Corporation believe that a better future for all Americans will include a more widespread culture of service, more opportunities for all young people to succeed, more schools that encourage citizenship, and more older Americans using their lifetime of skills to give back to their communities.
Our plan embraces bold national goals in four specific focus areas: mobilizing more volunteers, ensuring a brighter future for all of America’s youth, engaging students in communities, and harnessing baby boomers’ experience. This vision includes specific targets for the country to reach by 2010, such as 75 million Americans volunteering, 3 million more at-risk youth with mentors, 3 million at-risk youth serving others in their communities, service-learning in half of all K-12 schools, and 3 million more baby boomers engaged in service.
Reaching these goals will require the Corporation to work in close partnership with all of our grantees and partners, and with the larger nonprofit sector. This need for collaborative effort is more important today than ever before given the tough budget environment in Washington. In a time of fiscal austerity, it is even more important to focus our efforts, provide clear direction, and make the best use of our resources.
Please do not let this plan sit on a shelf. Read it, refer to it, and take up its ambitious but reachable goals in order ensure that our nation has the means to face the challenges not only of today, but also of tomorrow.
Stephen Goldsmith
Chairman of the Board
David Eisner
Chief Executive Officer
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