AmeriCorps Employees Placed on Leave After DOGE Visit
“A 2017 AmeriCorps Inspector General’s report found that the services volunteers provided were ‘four to eight times more than the same services’ provided by other programs between 2012 and 2013.”
AmeriCorps placed employees at the Washington headquarters and around the country on administrative leave after a visit from DOGE.
AmeriCorp’s mission is “to improve lives, strengthen communities, and foster civic engagement through service and volunteering.”
NEW: The Trump administration has just placed the entire AmeriCorps agency on administrative leave pic.twitter.com/1lKgjyLIHb
— Sophia Cai (@SophiaCai99) April 16, 2025
Almost half of the 600 employees accepted deferred resignations.
It sounds like the agency has been wasting money:
A 2017 AmeriCorps Inspector General’s report found that the services volunteers provided were “four to eight times more than the same services” provided by other programs between 2012 and 2013.
“Each member’s ten months of service costs $29,674 (for FY 2014), more than a year’s tuition, room and board at a public university; for that sum, four individuals could obtain two-year community college degrees,” the report stated.
“Yet, despite this substantial investment, NCCC alumni achieve no better long-term outcomes than alumni of AmeriCorps programs that cost a fraction of that amount.”
That was due to several duplicative activities performed by grant recipients who worked in other AmeriCorps programs — all of which “cost significantly less per member.”
This isn’t good: “Up to 27% of NCCC program participants also failed to finish their 10-month service term — and ‘inefficient’ use of some teams in deploying to disaster relief areas was noted.”
The New York Post reported earlier that AmeriCorps let go of numerous young volunteers:
Volunteers with AmeriCorps’ National Civilian Community Corps (NCCC) program were abruptly sent notices Tuesday instructing them to pack up and go home, according to a memo obtained by The Post.
“In alignment with the Trump-Vance Administration priorities … AmeriCorps NCCC is working within new operational parameters that impact the program’s ability to sustain program operations,” the memo said.
“As a result, AmeriCorps is sending all NCCC members to their homes of record as soon as possible.”
AmeriCorps’s budget was $37.7 million in 2024, and it would have received $42.7 million in 2025.
The enrollees learned their roles would not exist by April 30.
“The work we perform for the American public is vital and we’ve now been stripped of our ability to do that,” an AmeriCorps employee told Politico. “I worry about the impact that this will have on grantees, members, and volunteers who have committed themselves to providing service for Americans.”
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then let the local Acorners take care of their issues
What’s an “AmeriCorps”? I don’t recall ever encountering it.
It is a Clinton created boondoggle pseudo jobs program. My memory is that it was supposed to be like Peace Corps but in America.
Yup, although the peace corps already did some aid work within the US so expanding that work might have made more sense than launching a whole new agency.
But, hey, press releases and photo ops.
Initially it came under some criticism because some of the initial work included partisan activities like voter registration in likely (D) areas. Their charter was quickly amended to prohibit such in the future.
They were the forerunner to 0bama’s attempt to create a civilian army within our borders. I’d look up his quote, but I’m too tired.
“We cannot continue to rely on our military in order to achieve the national security objectives we’ve set. We’ve got to have a civilian national security force that’s just as powerful, just as strong, just as well-funded.”
We gun owners thought, “WTF? Is he actually proposing supporting the constitutional civil Militia?”
Fat chance — he just greatly expanded Americorps. With an origin story like the above, it was entirely predictable what sort of rot the MRI was going to discover.
They’ve run several good programs in rural NM that get kids out into the national forest cleaning up campsites and clearing out trails. Any program that can get some of these kids away from their families and teach them to work, even manual labor isn’t a bad thing but when you’re 36 Trillion dollars in debt, it’s not really affordable. It’s time for local communities and states to start coughing up $$ instead of rattling their tin cup at the fed.
Or, you know, you could leverage actual non-government entities – like the original Boy Scouts of America, and local churches.
In principal it is a good idea. I think all 17-19 should be required to perform at least 1 year if not 2 of national service. Military, peace corps, and a functional americorps could all qualify for that service. However, it has to be functional.
It must be the “fat, unwashed, and out of shape” version of the military.
Military isn’t for everyone regardless of shape. You will know that better than I and some service is better than nothing.
Clinton’s brown shirts.
Clinton was a piker. It took a pro to show how to really Mau-Mau America.
Are there any money laundering scams for leftist causes and politicos which weren’t being funded by my tax dollars???
Nope.
Conservatives donate their money to charity.
Democrats expect you to donate to their pockets through taxes.
What else is there to launder but the national treasury?
They take disadvantaged youths, usually black and Latino amd put them in some jobs training but it’s all NS for the most part
They don’t end up with real skills or ability to succeed
Gee, if only there was some type of local publically funded institution that hired degreed professionals who could educate and train ‘disadvantage yutes’ who would then earn some sort of certificate to show prospective employers these yutes completed their education, and are no longer ‘disadvantaged’ to the point where a whole other federal bureaucracy would be required.
If only…
I had no idea that make-work program was still going.
Government programs never end.
Especially temporary ones.
“Nothing lasts longer than a temporary government program.”
― Ronald Reagan
Government programs are the closest thing we’ll ever see immortality
They were up at the Vermont scout camp last summer doing 10-weeks worth of needed maintenance, and we gave them a rousing sendoff when they were done. But yes, while it was a big help to us, I don’t know if any transferable skills were acquired
I wouldn’t say it’s a bad program but its not an affordable program. We can’t sustain the current level of debt and that means cutting way back on unnecessary spending.
We had a summer jobs program in HS. The local textile factory (made Arrow Dress Shirts before it got shipped to Mexico) financed it, the City provided tools and trucks. We got min wage to clean sidewalks, overgrown yards with code violations, city parks and the like from when school ended in May, June, July and the first week of Aug before football practice started. Hot and humid in Bama in the summer. They got their money’s worth b/c they had the coaches supervising us and all of us were pretty good kids happy to have a job.
While that is laudable, I’ve never understood why taxpayers in Idaho, or Alabama, etc. are required to fund a pork barrel for a minor federal bureaucracy in order to provide local services to local projects which only benefit local people.
Let Vermonters take care of Vermont things. Trump was correct in closing this Clinton era money laundry.
‘.impact on……who have committed themselves to providing services for Americans’. Nothing is stopping them from providing their time without pay to deliver assistance to their own communities as volunteers….or was it more about the Pay/Benefits….especially the much higher pay of the program supervisors and administrators and not so much about ‘providing services’ after all?
Nothing is stopping them from providing their time without pay
Which, technically they were already doing, since the workers were supposedly “volunteers.”
It’s just like “higher education.” You don’t pay the students, you throw grift at the administrators.
These ‘volunteers’ were costing taxpayers roughly $3K per month according to the article.
It’s a reach to say that a program with a proposed 2025 operating budget of $42.7 million is “vital” to America. If only we could operate our (actually) vital programs on a few million per year.
What about Job Corps?
One of my friends in Washington state is very angry at DOGE – she teaches a (free to students) Tai Chi class to senior citizens. She usually has roughly eight students in her classes; three times per week.. She is convinced that the class (which she is paid to teach) will be canceled because of Federal funding cuts.
I daringly asked her whether a federal government 36 trillion dollars in debt should be paying for a tai chi class for eight people in a small town in Washington state. She got furious at me for that question. OF COURSE the Feds should pay.
OF COURSE ‘they’ should pay – all those people NOT in her immediate view – to make it free to her neighbors. Wowza.
Is she one of the gimmes who is now “sorry she voted for Trump?”
I suspect that we may see more of this sort of class as a way to lower medical costs/improve quality of life outside the pharmaceutical industry. Tai Chi is good for folks looking to improve and maintain flexibility, balance and movement. Seems like something every Medicare recipient ought to be doing.
I’ve long thought we should leverage the local schools to assist in communities. Hand out food boxes on weekends instead of EBT cards. Teach nutrition and basic household budgeting. Use the cafeteria to provide meals to every student 7 days a week; M-F = B/L + take home sandwich and an apple, Weekends Breakfast only +take home x2. That puts nutritious food into hands of children and those who qualify for assistance. IMO, it’s more effective to have an in kind program v cash program despite the jokes about govt cheese.