National Service Agency Grants Aims to Spur
Expansion of Volunteer Services

Eight nonprofit organizations across the country will receive challenge grants from the Corporation for National and Community Service, Leslie Lenkowsky, Corporation CEO, announced today. A total of $6 million will be distributed to the organizations, which must provide at least $2 in private funding to match every federal dollar.

"The organizations we selected will use these grants in a variety of ways, including engaging a total of 30,000 volunteers in community service," said Lenkowsky, who added that his office received "excellent" applications from 53 organizations, with a total request of $31 million. "I look forward to working with these organizations as they begin their new projects. To expand service opportunities on the scale the President has called for will take the involvement of all sectors. These challenge grants will spur additional private support to help us create a culture of citizenship, service, and responsibility."

This is the first time the Corporation has conducted a challenge grant competition. The grants are designed to assist nonprofits in securing previously untapped sources of private fund to build sustainable service and volunteer programs. Organizations receiving these grants must either greatly expand services by increasing their volunteer pool to meet community needs or offer new services through expanded citizen engagement.

Those organizations that will receive the challenge grants are:

Big Brothers/Big Sisters, a national network of community-based affiliates that matches caring adults in a one-to-one mentoring relationship with young people who are faced with barriers due to family circumstances, poverty, or inadequate education, has been a leader in mentoring for nearly 100 years and uses both community-based and school-based strategies for matching adults and youth. BBBS will use its $750,000 grant to fund challenge grants to local affiliates to develop new school-based matches and to build sustainable support at the local level. Currently, the cost of a school-based match is $500. The local affiliate would receive $250 from the challenge grant and would raise the other $250 locally. In this way, the challenge grant will leverage private support, while increasing the pool of adult volunteer mentors by 13,000 to 14,000. This would move BBBS toward the goal of increasing the number of children served from the current level of 258,000 to 1 million by 2010.

Communities in Schoolsserves 200 communities, creating independent collaborations between schools, other community entities, and volunteers to ensure coordinated efforts on behalf of needy children, to help them succeed in school and prepare for life. CIS will use its $650,000 grant to distribute mini grants to seed the next generation of CIS programs. The strategies proposed include a mix of sustaining and enhancing existing projects and inspiring new projects for the future. The activities will result in at least 2,000 new volunteers engaged in service. In addition to the distribution of mini grants to seed new CIS volunteer programs, the proposed grant includes establishing institutional roots by opening of one new state office and five local programs. CIS also proposes to improve training and provide technical assistance in volunteer generation and management.

City Year, Inc.was founded in 1988 with one site in Boston and has since expanded to City Year programs in 12 metropolitan areas across the country. Activities primarily consist of: tutoring, providing classroom support, and implementing educational after-school programming for children; leading middle school students in service through the Young Heroes program; and engaging volunteers to participate in community service on national service days. Using the $561,000 grant, a national alumni association will be formed with alumni-led chapters in three cities, engaging more alumni in continuing their service commitment through local City Year programs. In addition, the proposal includes a strategy to expand City Year programming to New York City and Little Rock, Arkansas. The hallmark of this objective is to replicate a City year program with members or "Fellows" who would make a commitment to serve in the program without the benefit of an education award.

Greater DC Cares, founded in 1989, is the largest volunteer mobilization and placement intermediary in the Washington Metropolitan area, and currently carries a roster of over 5,000 active, intermittent volunteers. It partners with more than 400 local non-profit service providers in the region, recruiting and placing volunteers with these groups for both one-time and longer-term service. By building on the existing DC Cares network, the organization will use the $500,000 grant to expand volunteer service in the area in three ways: enhancing region-wide recruitment, training, and placement of at least 2,500 new volunteers; enhancing capacity of local non-profit service providers; and collaborating with local providers to develop and strengthen plans to provide disaster preparedness and response support.

Hope Worldwideis a faith-based organization founded in 1991, with programs serving disadvantaged children and the elderly, providing education and delivering medical services in developing communities. With its $500,000 grant, it will expand of its Saturday Community School Program, in which volunteers provide academic enrichment and instruction, to include a program in Philadelphia. The program currently operates in Los Angeles, Chicago, Miami, New York, Patterson, N.J., and Washington, D.C. This project compliments efforts by other national service programs through its uses of a Saturday program model, rather than an after school model. The activities will result in at least 5,000 new volunteers, recruited by 150 current Saturday School volunteers.

National Association of Community Health Centers provides professional support services to more than 800 community health centers furnishing needed preventative and primary health care to medically underserved communities in over 2,000 sites nationwide. The $500,000 grant will be used to expand the Community HealthCorps from serving 40 communities in 14 states to serving hundreds of communities in at least 30 states; and building capacity of non-HealthCorps health centers to establish new volunteer programs or expand existing programs. In this first year, NACHC expects that health centers will recruit 1,000 new volunteers. Within five years, NACHC anticipates that more than 2,500 AmeriCorps members will be serving nationwide.

The New Mexico Community Foundation serves and invests in New Mexico's communities, building community resources and partnerships, with a special emphasis on rural communities. The foundation will sub-grant its $500,000 grant to member organizations to support the development of state-wide service and volunteerism. The collaborative focus is on the expansion of the volunteer management infrastructure of community and faith-based organizations and increasing the integration of service-learning into school and college curricula. More than 50 percent of all New Mexico public high schools will participate in service-learning programs, exposing nearly 20,000 high school students to service concepts, program development, and community service opportunities. In addition, 100 new organizations will be trained in strategic planning, volunteer recruitment, mobilization and management, and other infrastructure building skills. The grant also includes creation of the Center for Volunteer Action and Nonprofit Management Assistance at Volunteer Albuquerque.

Teach for America is a national professional corps of recent college graduates of all academic majors, who commit two years to teach in urban and rural public schools. More than 9,000 members have participated in TFA since its inception in 1990, with a goal of impacting the educational disparities that cause students in low-income areas to achieve at levels lower than their peers in higher-income areas and as a result, they do not have access to the greater life prospect that comes with academic success. TFA will use its $2 million grant to expand its corps by 40 percent, providing another 800 teachers for thousands of additional students in the first year.

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