Friends,

One year ago, as President Obama signed the Edward M. Kennedy Serve America Act into law, he proclaimed that this landmark legislation would “connect deeds to needs. It creates opportunities to serve for students, seniors, and everyone in between. It supports innovation and strengthens the nonprofit sector. And it is just the beginning of a sustained, collaborative and focused effort to involve our greatest resource — our citizens — in the work of remaking this nation.”

Remaking this nation with engaged citizens is exactly what we will focus on during National Volunteer Week 2010, and one exciting, new tool for this work is the Volunteer Generation Fund created by the Serve America Act. With many states anticipating cuts in critical social services and the federal government facing low or no growth in domestic spending, we must apply creative, cost-effective initiatives to address pressing social ills. The Volunteer Generation Fund is such an initiative.

Competitive, small grants issued through this Fund to nonprofits and state service commissions will be applied to strategies to strengthen the nation’s volunteer infrastructure. Specifically, funds would be designated for activities that expand the reach of and enhance the effectiveness of volunteer activities that support the nation’s priorities of education, poverty, health care, unemployment, and the environment. For instance, an organization receiving a Volunteer Generation Fund grant could focus on recruiting, screening and placing corporate volunteers to tutor in at-risk schools. Another might apply the grant to training volunteer leaders to implement hundreds of volunteer-run financial literacy sessions for low-income, working families.

A modest investment to tap great potential

The Fund is not about spending money to get people to do what they already could or should do.

- it is about a modest investment in how public and private institutions – hand in hand with the millions of individuals who have stepped forward to serve — can unlock tens of millions of dollars in volunteer time and talent to meet the needs of our most vulnerable citizens.

- it is about recognizing the vast potential in concentrated community service initiatives. The federal government’s full-time national service programs engage approximately 100,000 individuals annually — the vanguard of our service leadership. But there are millions of Americans who are or could be engaged in part-time community service.

- it is about seeding the commitment to a lifetime of service in a vast segment of the population.

- It is about utilizing community service as a source of local innovation, applying the vast pool of committed volunteers to address real community problems in creative ways.

For instance, we know that engaging community volunteers as mentors with our youth has a direct effect on achievement and graduation rates. With a Volunteer Generation Fund sub-grant, a local nonprofit could design a program, unique to that local community, that trains and screens willing adults to mentor those young people most in need of intervention.

Building a Secure Foundation

Congress appropriated $4 million for the Fund last year, and the President’s proposed FY2011 budget for the Fund is $10 million.  But even at $10 million, that level of funding is only 16 percent of the amount authorized by the Serve America Act. During National Volunteer Week and beyond, we must let our elected representatives in Washington know that millions of people are ready to serve.

Our citizens have rallied around the President’s call, but the challenge before us as a nation is this: do we have the infrastructure, in our nonprofit sector, to meet the demand? Are we constructing a secure foundation to connect those willing to serve to meaningful, results-driven volunteer activities? The Serve America Act’s Volunteer Generation Fund can be that foundation.

National Volunteer Week is an opportune time to contact your lawmakers in Washington and convey your strong support for a fully funded Volunteer Generation Fund at the $60 million level for FY2011.

In the News

• $1.4 million awarded for research into generosity
• Latest figures on the hourly value of volunteer time
• Stories and videos about remarkable volunteers
• Photos from the Children for Children (now GenOn) benefit in NYC on April 13

In Service,

Michelle Nunn