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June 25, 2009
National Conference on Volunteering and Service
New National-Service Adviser Discusses Her Plans
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 how we can best support the president and first lady’s call to service,” she said.
More immediately, she said, she will be working with Congress as it appropriates money for Serve America Act programs. These include an expansion of AmeriCorps, an increase in the education award given to AmeriCorps members, a new Social Innovation Fund to help nonprofit groups expand effective projects, and a Volunteer Generation Fund to help nonprofit groups recruit and manage volunteers.
Ms. Norris said she is helping to coordinate efforts between the White House and the corporation as part of a “four-legged stool” that meets regularly to discuss ways to promote community and national service. The meetings include representatives of the corporation, the first lady’s office, the White House Office of Public Engagement, and the White House Office of Social Innovation.
Among her other goals, she said: Working to help nonprofit groups prepare for the administration’s big service push and ensuring that corporation officials are their “No. 1 cheerleaders.”
While Ms. Norris, who met Michelle Obama while working on the president’s campaign in Iowa, is one step removed from the White House in her new position, she says the move was good for her family and “for my heart.”
“Anybody who knows me knows my passion is service,” she said, adding that she taught government to high-school students for five years. “Anybody I would sit down with in the service world I could sit and talk to for hours.”
Ms. Norris reports to Nicola Goren, acting chief executive of the corporation. The agency is without a permanent head after President Obama’s pick, Maria Eitel, president of the Nike Foundation, withdrew her name from consideration last month.
June 24, 2009
National Conference on Volunteering and Service
Goodbye, "Nonprofit Sector." Hello, "Delta Sector."
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 commentator and professor of public service at Harvard Kennedy School, the panel moderator, asked Sonal Shah, head of the new White House Office of Social Innovation and Civic Participation.
Ms. Shah’s response: “We would be integrated into every discussion that takes place with every cabinet secretary. In every discussion [people would ask], ‘What’s the delta sector doing?’”
With White House endorsement of the new name, should we consider it official?
Conference Audience Cheers Recognition They Need Help to Manage Volunteers
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 leaders are worried that some groups won’t have the resources to manage the influx of new bodies.
Ms. Shah said the Corporation for National and Community Service, which operates AmeriCorps, provides some money for “capacity building,” but that government is not always the best source for such money. “We need to open up the dialogue throughout the country” with other possible sources like foundations and corporations, she said.
Nicola Goren, acting chief executive of the corporation, said in an interview that there had been “multiple discussions” during the conference between administration officials, corporations, and foundations about, “How do we come together and agree that’s an important issue that we need all to contribute to?”
She said the help could come in the form of money, or in pro bono mentoring or other management help.
“Foundations and corporations are really understanding the need,” she said. “I think we’ve moved the conversation to a place where we can get people to invest.”
National Conference on Volunteering and Service
Budget Constraints May Kill Some Serve America Act Programs
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 attract volunteers aged 55 and older; Serve America Fellowships, to provide stipends and education grants to certain volunteers; Campuses of Service, to provide grants to colleges for community-service programs; and a Nonprofit Capacity-Building Program, to provide $25-million over five years for management help to small and medium-sized charities.
The president also proposed spending $10-million on a Volunteer Generation Fund, which would provide grants to help nonprofit groups recruit and manage volunteers. That is down from $50-million envisaged by the Serve America Act. The only new program that remained fully intact in the administration’s budget was the Social Innovation Fund, which will provide $50-million in grants to help nonprofit groups expand effective social programs.
In an interview, Ms. Goren said the president’s overall budget for the corporation was set in February, before the Serve America Act created the new programs. She said they would have added about $200-million to the already increased budget — considered impossible in the current “tough budget environment.”
The president proposed a 29-percent increase in the agency’s budget for 2010, to almost $1.15-billion. That included money for 10,000 new slots for AmeriCorps, the main national-service program, bringing the total number to about 83,560 — slightly less than the 88,000 proposed by the Serve America Act. But Ms. Goren said the administration still aims to increase AmeriCorps members to 250,000 by 2017 as envisaged in the legislation.
Congress will still have its say in the matter. Ms. Goren says she expects the House to draft a bill appropriating money for the corporation in July.
National Conference on Volunteering and Service
Obama View of Community Service Seen Demanding More Accountability
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 issues like poverty, she said. “There’s going to be a lot more pressure on all of us to be demonstrating the results of our work.”
At the same time, groups can take advantage of the recent surge of interest in community service to build stronger volunteer operations. Ms. Lodal said. Her own group is starting to demand a higher level of commitment from its volunteers, channeling them into “a more rigorous, sustained, and long-term engagement.”
She said many volunteers are pleased to be more involved in measuring the impact of their group’s work, and of their own contributions.
June 23, 2009
National Conference on Volunteering and Service
Ways Nonprofit Groups Can Promote the United We Serve Campaign
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 for people to volunteer with their programs and “collaborate in new and different ways to expand your reach.”
National Conference on Volunteering and Service
Kellogg Foundation to Spend $1.6-Million on United We Serve Campaign
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 involved in community service.
June 22, 2009
National Conference on Volunteering and Service
First Lady Asks Americans to Make Community Service Part of Daily Lives
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 October 19.
Under a project negotiated by the Entertainment Industry Foundation, a Hollywood charity, ABC, CBS, FOX, and NBC will “include service themes and plots in our favorite TV programs, showing the celebrities we love getting involved to serve their communities,” she said.
“The idea is to emphasize for viewers across the country that service is a part of who we are as Americans,” she said.
Ms. Obama, who has made volunteering and national service one of her main causes as first lady, told the audience of several thousand volunteers, nonprofit workers, and others that such work should not be something “folks do occasionally, particularly around the holidays.”
Instead, she said, “the story of progress in this nation has always been the story of people who chose — in times of trials and struggle — to serve it.”
She urged individuals, nonprofit groups, foundations, businesses, and government to take part in the United We Serve campaign.
“Everything from organizing carpools and bike-to-work programs, to reading to children and registering people for library cards, to organizing community health drives and working with senior centers to promote exercise, to collecting and delivering food for families in need.”
She noted the “summer of service” will culminate with activities on September 11, which has been dubbed a National Day of Service and Remembrance in honor of the victims of the 2001 terrorist acts. But, she said, “this summer is just a preview of what’s to come.”
She directed people to Serve.gov, an administration Web site that matches people to volunteer projects. The campaign will focus on community and economic renewal, energy independence, education, and health care.
Nancy Pelosi, speaker of the House of Representatives, and Arnold Schwarzenegger, governor of California, spoke before the first lady. But someone less famous introduced Ms. Obama — Laura Kaneko, a member of the national-service program AmeriCorps who is working at the nonprofit group Girls Incorporated of Alameda County.
National Conference on Volunteering and Service
Details of New Online Volunteer Project Announced
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 Craigslist Foundation and YouTube, is running the administration’s volunteer Web site, Serve.gov., which is operated by the Corporation for National and Community Service.
“By bringing together amazing service opportunities from existing volunteer organizations, we hope to amplify their efforts and share ways to do good across the Web,” Paul Rademacher, a software engineer at Google who helped guide the project, said in a statement.
The All for Good announcement also highlighted the way some organizations are already using the project’s open-source technology, which is available to other developers.
YouTube, for example, has created “Video Volunteers” to link nonprofit groups with skilled video makers who can help them publicize their causes, using an All for Good widget on youtube.com/videovolunteers. MTV, the television network, has developed Serve.MTV.com to help bring All for Good opportunities to young people and has prepared two public service announcements to promote it.
All for Good announced that Jonathan Greenblatt, a faculty member at the Anderson School of Management at UCLA, is president of Our Good Works. Mr. Greenblatt has been working on the project since he served as a member of a group that advised the Obama administration during the transition.
Two nonprofit groups that originally were reluctant to participate in the project, VoluteerMatch and Truist, have joined the project after negotiating new terms with All for Good. (See The Chronicle‘s coverage of the genesis of All for Good and of the way VolunteerMatch resolved a difference it had with All for Good over licensing.)
National Conference on Volunteering and Service
Conference on Volunteering Opens in San Francisco
The 2009 National Conference on Volunteering and Service kicked off today in San Francisco, attracting nonprofit, government, and corporate officials who want to get Americans more involved in community service.
The event comes just two months after a landmark piece of legislation to expand volunteer efforts was signed into law by President Obama.
First Lady Michele Obama is scheduled to give the keynote address, and we’ll provide highlights as soon as they are available. We’ll also provide regular updates as the conference continues through Wednesday.
The conference is sponsored by the Corporation for National and Community Service and the Points of Light Institute, a volunteer and civic-engagement group.
Copyright © 2009 The Chronicle of Philanthropy