Jackie Norris, who just moved from First Lady Michelle Obama’s office to the Corporation for National and Community Service, dove into her new environment by attending this week’s big volunteering conference in San Francisco.

Ms. Norris, who left a post as the first lady’s chief of staff to become a senior adviser at the federal agency earlier this month, discussed her priorities with The Chronicle on the sidelines of the conference.

She said one will be helping the corporation develop a strategic plan for the next three to four years, when the agency will be expanding to carry out new programs authorized by the Serve America Act, as well as White House goals of getting Americans more involved in community service.

“It’s important that with the new funds, with the new programs, we really put a lot of time and energy in strategic thinking about the direction of the corporation and ...

Many people dislike the word “nonprofit” — after all, why should groups describe themselves by what they are not? But coming up with an alternative is a challenge.

Robert K. Ross, president of the California Endowment, a health foundation in Los Angeles, says he’s got just the word: “delta,” the Greek letter that signifies change. So, no more talk about the “nonprofit sector,” he said at the closing session of the National Conference on Volunteering and Service.

It’s now the “delta sector.”

“We need to be more intentionally about change and transformation,” he said. “Business as usual is leaving too many families broken and too many families and folks with hopelessness and despair.”

Mr. Ross’s suggestion quickly caught on during the panel discussion. “Where would you like to see social innovation in the delta sector at the end of two Obama terms?” David Gergen, a political...

Sonal Shah, head of the White House Office of Social Innovation and Civic Participation, got a big cheer at the closing session of the National Conference on Volunteering and Service.

It came after David Gergen, a political commentator and professor of public service at the Harvard Kennedy School, asked her whether enough people will volunteer for all the new slots are being created at AmeriCorps, the national-service program.

“We’re confident the volunteers will be there,” Ms. Shah said. “What we need to build is the capacity of the sector to manage them.” The audience roared.

The Edward M. Kennedy Serve America Act, signed into law in April, calls for the number of AmeriCorps slots to triple to 250,000 by 2017. Other efforts, like President Obama’s United We Serve campaign to get Americans to volunteer over the summer, will also drive more people to nonprofit groups. Charity...

While Congress was thinking big when it adopted the Edward M. Kennedy Serve America Act to expand the country’s national-service and volunteering programs, the Obama administration has decided the government can’t afford to pay for all of the new projects right now.

Nicola Goren, acting chief executive of the Corporation for National and Community Service, said that although the president proposed a big increase in her agency’s budget for fiscal year 2010, “it could not come close to what was contemplated in the [Serve America] Act.”

“We therefore had to prioritize this year and were not able to make big increases across all our programs, or propose funding for every new initiative in the Act,” she told participants at the National Conference on Volunteering and Service.

Among the programs that bit the dust: Silver Scholarships and Encore Fellowships, two programs designed to...

One theme of the National Conference on Volunteering and Service: The Obama administration’s view of community service is going to change the way people evaluate the impact such work.

Advocates have traditionally touted the benefits that volunteerism and national service bring to the people who do the work, as well as to the people they help. But President Obama sees the activities as something more — a way to help solve the country’s pressing problems.

“Now the focus is on, How does service action move the needle on key national issues?” Kirsten Lodal, chief executive of Lift, a group that recruits college students to fight poverty, said during a panel discussion.

With the federal government spending billions of dollars to expand national-service and volunteer programs through the Serve America Act, groups should be asking how to hold themselves accountable for making a dent in ...

Now that President Obama has unveiled the United We Serve campaign to encourage Americans to volunteer this summer, some nonprofit groups that already work with volunteers are wondering if they have to create something new.

“The answer is no,” Nicola Goren, acting chief executive of the Corporation for National and Community Service, told participants in the National Conference on Volunteering and Service. “You just have to keep doing what you’re doing.”

But, she said, groups can promote the campaign in various ways — by posting a link to the administration’s volunteer Web site, Serve.gov on their own sites; issuing a press release about their participation in the campaign; sending a message to their e-mail distribution lists; and posting stories about how their volunteers are making a difference on Serve.gov.

Ms. Goren also urged groups to think of ways to increase opportunities...

The W.K. Kellogg Foundation announced that it plans to spend $1.6-million on activities to carry out United We Serve, President Obama’s campaign to get Americans involved in community service this summer.

The foundation, in Battle Creek, Mich., said it would give $400,000 to grass-roots groups in each of four areas: New Mexico, Mississippi, Michigan, and the city of New Orleans.

“Investing in United We Serve is an opportunity to align our work with Congress and the new administration,” Sterling Speirn, the foundation’s president, said in a statement.

The announcement was made during the National Conference on Volunteering and Service in San Francisco.

The foundation said it was in the process of identifying grass-roots groups in New Mexico, Mississippi, and New Orleans. Spending in Michigan will go to HandsOn Battle Creek, a local organization that works to get young people...

First Lady Michelle Obama today echoed her husband’s call for Americans to make community service a part of their daily lives, urging them to avoid thinking such contributions are “helpful, but not essential.”

“This new Obama administration doesn’t view service as something separate from our national priorities,” she told the National Conference on Volunteering and Service as she kicked off the administration’s “United We Serve” campaign to get Americans to volunteer during the summer. “We have an administration that understands that service is the key to achieving our national priorities.”

Ms. Obama — who spoke after working with Maria Shriver, California’s first lady, and local volunteers to help build a playground at an elementary school in San Francisco — also announced that the four major television networks would promote national service on their programs during the week of...

As the Obama administration today kicked off its United We Serve campaign to encourage Americans to volunteer over the summer, a group of technology and nonprofit leaders formally announced details of All for Good, a new online application that aggregates volunteer opportunities from organizations across the country.

The announcement, made at the National Conference on Volunteering and Service in San Francisco, named the people who will serve on the board of a new nonprofit group, Our Good Works, that will govern the project that has been dubbed a “Craigslist for service.” They include representatives of technology companies like Google and FanFeeder, social-networking groups like Facebook and LinkedIn, and nonprofit volunteering organizations like Idealist and Network for Good.

All for Good, which is hosted by Google and developed by volunteers from organizations including the...

Politicians, celebrities, and nonprofit leaders—speaking to more than 1,200 people in Washington—today urged Americans to take up President-elect Barack Obama’s call for a new era of community service.

Speakers at the breakfast gathering, which kicked off a national day of service in honor of Martin Luther King Jr., said Mr. Obama’s presidency would give new momentum to the effort to get more people involved in solving the country’s problems.

“We have a champion in the White House,” said Alan Khazei, chief executive of Be the Change, a civic-engagement group in Boston that helped start ServiceNation, a coalition of more than 120 organizations that organized the breakfast.

“We all must double down now and seize this moment,” he said. “Otherwise it may pass us by.”

Mr. Obama asked people to volunteer on the King holiday, but also to make a commitment to work regularly to improve...