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Earlier today I was sworn in as the new CEO of the Corporation for National and Community Service. I am grateful to President Bush for nominating me, and to the Senate for giving me the chance to take on this new challenge.
This is a time of immense potential for national and community service. We are very fortunate to have a President who has made service and civic engagement a national priority. Congress has reaffirmed the value of our mission by proposing historic funding levels for our programs. You, our grantees, are becoming increasingly effective at meeting community needs in measurable ways, and public and grassroots support for the work that we do is perhaps at its highest level ever. In short, we have an incredible opportunity to seize this momentum to engage more Americans in service, strengthen the nonprofit sector, and meet vital needs in our communities.
We've arrived at this promising moment primarily because of you, your programs, and your outstanding members, volunteers, participants, and teachers, who are on the front lines tackling the big problems facing our nation. For decades our three Senior Corps programs-Foster Grandparents, RSVP, and Senior Companions-have tapped the skills and talents of millions of older Americans to address community needs. Through Learn and Serve America, millions of students-with their teachers and professors-have served their communities while practicing citizenship and strengthening academic skills in the process. Building upon nearly four decades of VISTA's success, AmeriCorps has added the NCCC and AmeriCorps State and National programs and engaged more than 300,000 Americans in meeting pressing local needs while also strengthening the capacity of our nation's nonprofit organizations.
To build on this foundation and achieve even greater success, we must move forward together. I know we've been through a difficult year, but this is a new day. We are committed to improving the relationship between the Corporation and its grantees. We will do a better job communicating about the key developments that affect you. We also will do better at soliciting your ideas and ensuring that those ideas help shape policy. Let's be clear that we have some hard work to do. The discussions that we must have related to the issues of sustainability, accountability, and performance measurement-which are very important to Congress-will not be easy. I am committed to engaging with the field in good faith to address these issues to ensure that our programs grow stronger, more accountable, and more effective while also garnering more broad-based bipartisan support.
Strengthening the Corporation's management is a critical issue and a high priority. We are well on our way to ensuring that management issues, particularly financial accountability issues, never again get in the way of the good works of our grantees. We also pledge to dedicate more time to helping you meet your needs, rather than requiring you to spend more time to meet our requirements.
So that we can build the strongest service movement possible, I need your help. I ask all of you to be positive about the future and open to change, so that together, we can chart a path toward strengthening service in America.
In the weeks and months ahead, I look forward to being able to get to know more of you, to hearing your ideas, and to finding ways to improve the relationship between you and the Corporation. Until then, a convenient way to reach me is by e-mail.
Sincerely,
David Eisner
Chief Executive Officer
Corporation for National and Community Service
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