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Dear Commission Colleagues,
AmeriCorps Week starts one month from today, and we are hope you are working with programs in your state to shine the spotlight on our members, alums, and programs. Please check out the new website at http://www.americorpsweek.gov/ for all the latest tools, resources, and ideas.
AmeriCorps Week Proclamations and Data
One of the big success stories from last year’s AmeriCorps Week was Governor’s proclamations. Thanks to the efforts of Commissions and Corporation state offices, 23 Governors issued AmeriCorps proclamations last year. We hope to have even more this year, and encourage you to seek one in your state.
To help you, we are providing a draft Governor’s proclamation, and state-specific data on AmeriCorps members, hours, and Segal AmeriCorps Education Awards earned since the beginning of AmeriCorps.
The attached draft proclamation has suggested language and includes places where you can fill in state specific information. You should feel free to edit the draft to fit your state’s circumstances, such as adding state AmeriCorps accomplishments or Governor focus areas.
The data on the attached one-pager shows state breakdowns of total AmeriCorps members, hours, and Segal AmeriCorps Education award earned since 1994. The data comes from the National Service Trust and reflect all AmeriCorps members (including NCCC and VISTA) who enrolled between March 1, 1994 and March 1, 2008. Some important notes:
- VERY IMPORTANT: Like last year, the state breakdowns for all three columns are determined by the AmeriCorps member’s permanent address as provided to the National Service Trust, or current address if no permanent address provided. It does not necessarily reflect where they served. While we would like to be able to give a state-by-state report on where every AmeriCorps members has served, several factors make such a report very difficult to do with a high degree of accuracy.
- The data includes members who are currently serving and those who exited before completing their terms.
- The chart shows individual members, not enrollments. The total number of AmeriCorps enrollments is much higher than 542,000, because a large number of AmeriCorps members have enrolled in a second term of service. For this chart, we are only counting distinct individuals who have served in AmeriCorps.
In addition to the state data, here are some recent facts about AmeriCorps on the national level.
AmeriCorps Fast Facts
- 542,000: Number of people who have served as AmeriCorps members since 1994.
- 705 Million: Total number of hours served by AmeriCorps members.
- $1.43 Billion: Total amount of Segal AmeriCorps Education Awards earned by AmeriCorps members.
- 1.7 Million: Number of community volunteers managed or mobilized by AmeriCorps members in 2007.
- 4,100: Number of nonprofit, faith-based, and community organizations that AmeriCorps members served with last year.
- $5 Billion: Amount of AmeriCorps funds invested in nonprofit, community, educational, and faith-based community groups since 1994.
In order to keep track of this year’s Governor’s proclamations, we’d be grateful if you can email a copy of the proclamation to Sandy Scott in the Office of Public Affairs at sscott@cns.gov. If there is a press release that accompanies the proclamation, please forward that as well. He will ensure that all Governor Proclamations get posted in AmeriCorps Week newsroom. If you have questions about the data or the proclamation process, please contact Sandy via email or at 202-606-6724.
We hope that the above information is helpful.
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