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AmeriCorps: Tackling Tough Problems and Strengthening Communities

AmeriCorps engages more than 80,000 men and women in intensive service each year through more than 14,000 nonprofits, schools, public agencies, and community and faith-based groups across the country. AmeriCorps members help communities tackle pressing problems while mobilizing more than 2.6 million volunteers for the organizations they serve. Members gain valuable professional, educational, and life benefits, and the experience has lasting impact on the members and the communities they serve.

The information below includes facts and figures about AmeriCorps nationally and its collective impact. Use this information along with data and stories from your local program to tell your AmeriCorps story.

Focus on Results

The bipartisan Edward M. Kennedy Serve America Act has focused AmeriCorps' efforts in six key areas: disaster services, economic opportunity, education, environmental stewardship, healthy futures, and veterans and military families. To strengthen accountability, AmeriCorps programs are required to demonstrate their impact using standard performance measures.

AmeriCorps Fast Facts

  • 706,000: Number of people who have served as AmeriCorps members since 1994. 
  • 860 Million: Total number of hours served by AmeriCorps members.  
  • 2.5 million: Number of disadvantaged youth tutored, mentored, or served by
    AmeriCorps members in fiscal 2010. 
  • 2.6 Million: Number of community volunteers managed or mobilized by AmeriCorps members in 2008.
  • $480 million: Value of cash and in-kind donations leveraged by AmeriCorps members in fiscal 2010. 
  • 14,000: Number of nonprofit, faith-based, and community organizations served by AmeriCorps members last year.
  • $2 Billion: Total amount of Segal AmeriCorps Education Awards earned by
    AmeriCorps members since 1994.
  • $7.2 Billion: Amount of AmeriCorps funds invested in nonprofit,
    educational, and faith-based community groups since 1994.

Tackling America's Toughest Problems

AmeriCorps members make our communities safer, stronger, and healthier, and improve the lives of tens of millions of our most vulnerable citizens. AmeriCorps service isn't just nice: it's necessary, and its impacts are proven and measurable. Here are some examples of the work AmeriCorps members are doing.

  • Disaster services: From tornadoes and hurricanes to fires and floods, AmeriCorps members have responded to hundreds of natural disasters. In response to Hurricane Katrina, more than 17,000 AmeriCorps members have provided 8.5 million hours of service and managed more than 611,000 other volunteers.
  • Economic opportunity: VISTA, AmeriCorps' poverty-fighting arm, engages more than 7,000 members each year in fighting poverty by creating businesses, expanding access to technology, recruiting volunteers to teach literacy, and strengthening antipoverty groups.
  • Education: AmeriCorps places thousands of teachers, tutors, and mentors into low-performing schools, helping students succeed in school and gain skills necessary to get 21st century jobs.
  • Environmental stewardship: Members build trails, restore parks, protect watersheds, run recycling programs, and promote energy efficiency, weatherization, and clean energy.
  • Healthy futures: AmeriCorps members save lives through HIV/AIDS education and outreach, drug and alcohol prevention training, and connecting poor families to health clinics and services.
  • Veterans and military families: AmeriCorps supports the military community by engaging veterans in service, helping veterans readjust to civilian life, and providing support to military families.

Strengthening Nonprofits and the Volunteer Sector

  • Strengthening nonprofits: AmeriCorps members help faith-based and community groups expand services, build capacity, raise funds, develop new partnerships, and create innovative, sustainable programs.
  • Encouraging competition and local control: AmeriCorps is a model of devolution, pushing funding and decision-making to the state and local level. Most sponsors are chosen by bipartisan state commissions appointed by the governor.
  • Advancing social innovation: AmeriCorps invests in entrepreneurial organizations that have been recognized for their innovative approaches to citizen problem-solving such as Teach for America, City Year, YouthBuild, JumpStart, Citizen Schools, and Experience Corps.

Expanding Educational Opportunity and Building Future Leaders

  • Expanding educational opportunity: In exchange for a year of full-time service, AmeriCorps members earn a Segal AmeriCorps Education Award (equal to the maximum Pell Grant) that helps pay for college or pay back student loans. AmeriCorps members have earned more than $2 billion in these awards since 1994.
  • Creating future leaders: AmeriCorps members gain new and useful skills, advance their education, and become more connected to their communities. A longitudinal study has shown that AmeriCorps alumni are more likely to be civically engaged, to go into public service careers—such as teaching, public safety, social work, and military service—and to volunteer in their communities.

Leveraging a Powerful Return on the Investment

  • Public private partnerships: AmeriCorps leverages substantial private investment— more than $486 million in non-CNCS funds each year from businesses, foundations, and other sources. AmeriCorps has cut costs and become more efficient by supporting more members with fewer federal dollars.
  • Mobilizing volunteers: AmeriCorps is a powerful catalyst and force-multiplier for community volunteering. Last year AmeriCorps members recruited, trained, and supervised more than 2.6 million community volunteers for the organizations they serve.