Washington D.C. – Aiming to tap the skyrocketing popularity of social networking sites like Facebook and MySpace to promote social good, the Corporation for National and Community Service today announced $2.3 million in grants to use social media to engage college students in service to meet community needs.

The grants provide seed funding to six organizations to develop the next generation of technology innovations to support college student service. The grant program, the first of its kind by a federal agency, capitalizes on two emerging trends: the strong civic attitudes of today’s millennials and college students, and the explosion in use of social networking sites.

Administered by the Corporation’s Learn and Serve America program, the three-year grants will go to Tufts University/CIRCLE/Massachusetts Campus Compact, Youth Venture, the Phoenix Project, Middlesex County College in New Jersey, South Dakota State University, and DC Central Kitchen. Descriptions and amounts are below.

“Today’s college students have a strong altruistic bent, and are working in extraordinary ways to tackle some of our most pressing problems,” said Corporation CEO David Eisner. “We want to further ignite this idealism by investing in strong organizations that will use the power of social networking to bring lasting change.”

Eisner announced the grants before hundreds of civic, government, and education leaders gathered at the National Conference on Citizenship annual meeting at the National Archives today. Eisner also announced $1 million in grants to five universities to conduct in-depth on research on national service and volunteering (see related release).

According to UCLA’s annual survey of incoming college freshmen, more than two out of three (66.7 percent) of entering freshmen believe it is essential or very important to help others, the highest this figure has been in the past 26 years. More than 86 percent of college students spend time on social networking sites each week, and both Facebook and MySpace report having more than 100 million users.

“The Internet is the new frontier for service and activism, and it’s extraordinary what young people are doing to mobilize for change online,” said Stephen Goldsmith, the Corporation’s board chair and a Harvard professor. “But millions of college students have yet to translate their civic attitudes into action. These grants will help do that, by reaching students where they are and giving them concrete ways to get involved.”

More than 70 organizations applied for the grant competition. The awardees will use social media and Web 2.0 tools such as Facebook, MySpace, Craigslist, and blogs to mobilize and engage students in high-quality service programs; develop innovative methods of providing service to community partners; and increase institutional support for student-driven service projects. Lessons learned will be used by other national service and volunteer programs to boost recruitment and retention efforts.

The grants are part of a larger initiative by the Corporation to engage five million college students annually in service by the year 2010. Data from the Corporation’s Volunteering in America report shows that in 2006, approximately 2.8 million or 27.2 percent of college students volunteered through a formal organization, giving 297 million hours of service worth an estimated $5.6 billion. The Corporation fosters campus service through Learn and Serve America and AmeriCorps grants to spur service-learning; the Segal AmeriCorps Education Awards that members earn in return for their service; encouraging greater use of Federal Work Study funds for community service, recognition programs such as the President’s Higher Education Community Service Honor Roll, training, research, and other initiatives.

The Learn and Serve America College Student Social Media grantees are:

• Tufts University/CIRCLE/Massachusetts Campus Compact, Boston, MA; $570,000: Tufts University, CIRCLE, and Massachusetts Campus Compact will use their grant to link higher education institutions, nonprofits, businesses, and government to better deliver services and meet local needs in the Boston region. The grantee will also play a lead role in evaluating the six social media projects, collecting lessons learned and future implications.
      
• The Phoenix Project -- Springfield, VA; $550,000: The Phoenix Project, a statewide nonprofit in Virginia, is partnering with the Craigslist Foundation and the George Mason University’s School of Public Policy to build a higher education-focused phase for Project Entry Point, a non-profit management and volunteer site currently in development. The tools developed under this grant will include profile pages, volunteer hour counters, online tutorials, and skills-based volunteer matching. Subgrants will be issued to Virginia colleges and nonprofit consortia to promote adoption of the online tools, market the site, and provide beta-testing. The site will then launch nationally, allowing for widespread adoption and use based on the popularity of Craigslist.org.
      
• Youth Venture -- Arlington, VA.; $500,000: Youth Venture will use Learn and Serve America funding to run an online competition awarding minigrants to student Venture Teams at New York University and nationally for the purpose of creating student-led service programs that address critical local needs. Student teams will submit proposals and a national audience will vote online to select the winners. Selected teams will complete an e-learning experience and top-rated Ventures will be recognized nationally. Youth Venture will also develop its existing social media presence (GenV.net) to recruit student participants and promote service.
      
• South Dakota State University -- Brookings, SD; $450,000: The Midwest Consortium will partner with the Applied Information Management Institute and the Students in Free Enterprise (SIFE) chapters of member colleges and universities in Nebraska, South Dakota, and Western Iowa. The project, supported by Learn and Serve America, will employ social media tools such as PBWiki, Facebook, podcasts and Blogger to engage students in service, increase collaboration between students and communities, and leverage student energy and talent to strengthen neighborhoods. Students will work with community partners and lead community needs-assessment forums to develop service projects focused on alleviating poverty.
      
• Middlesex County College and the Bonner Foundation -- Edison, NJ; $180,000: With support from Learn and Serve America, Middlesex County College and the Bonner Foundation will engage Bonner students in developing and implementing Web 2.0 strategies to engage other students in service. Training on social media will be provided at all Bonner conferences and annual meetings. Subgrants will be issued to ten campuses to seed innovative models that can be replicated nationally. Middlesex and the Bonner Foundation also will partner with other national college student groups to implement service projects using social media tools.
      
• DC Central Kitchen, Washington, DC, $100,000: DC Central Kitchen, supported by Learn and Serve America funding, will incorporate social media strategies into their existing network of college programs to engage students in service projects to alleviate hunger. Student leaders will work with social media leaders to establish the best tools to market hunger-related projects and motivate students to serve. The initiative will increase the number and scope of Campus Kitchen programs nationally.

The Corporation for National and Community Service is a federal agency that improves lives, strengthens communities, and fosters civic engagement through service and volunteering. Each year, the Corporation engages four million Americans of all ages and backgrounds in service through its Senior Corps, AmeriCorps and Learn and Serve America programs. For more information, visit http://www.nationalservice.gov.

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