Earlier this year, the CNCS Office of Research & Evaluation (ORE) introduced recipients of the 2017 AmeriCorps State and National Evidence-based Intervention Planning Grants from the Corporation for National and Community Service (CNCS). At the start of the summer, we checked in with the grantees to get the latest scoop on their program planning and see what lessons they learned along the way.  

By now, most of the grantees’ planning periods have come to a close. For some, program development will carry on through continued efforts, while others have compiled their findings, which provide valuable guidance for other organizations seeking similar types of grants. With that, we conducted a final follow up with the grantees to hear about their latest program development updates, overall experience with their grants, and what’s next. 

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It’s been a few months since the Office of Research & Evaluation (ORE) first introduced the seven grantees who received 2017 AmeriCorps State and National Evidence-based Planning Grants from the Corporation for National and Community Service (CNCS). Since then, the organizations have continued the planning process and begun early implementation of their programs that leverage AmeriCorps members to make a local impact and address pressing societal needs.

In our second blog, we catch up with these grantees to get the scoop on the progress made in program development, to understand their current priorities, and to learn about opportunities and obstacles they encountered along the way. 

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More than 6.7 million low‐income youth between the ages of 16 and 24 are either homeless, in foster care, involved in the juvenile justice system, unemployed, or not enrolled in or at risk of dropping out of an educational institution. Through programs such as AmeriCorps, the Corporation for National and Community Service (CNCS) recruits opportunity youth to engage in national service projects, and in return, these young adults receive mentoring, coaching, and skills development that position them for success after their service ends.

CNCS’s Office of Research & Evaluation (ORE) recently completed a study of opportunity youth who were engaged in service as AmeriCorps members. The study faced challenges measuring the impact of these national service programs due to small sample sizes and limited program capacity. To address these challenges and support a more efficient use of evaluation resources, ORE worked with its grantees to implement a “bundled approach,” which groups several smaller AmeriCorps programs together into a single evaluation.

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Building confidence. Improving lives. Strengthening communities. These are all intangible benefits often attributed to volunteering. At the Corporation for National and Community Service (CNCS), we engage millions of Americans in national service through AmeriCorps, Senior Corps, and the Volunteer Generation Fund. Our Office of Research & Evaluation (ORE) channels our passion for volunteering with a commitment to gathering evidence. By combining those two fields, we have developed the State of the Evidence Report which shares meaningful insights that not only reinforce those intangible benefits of volunteering, but reveal concrete benefits as well.

Everyone has their reason for serving in a CNCS program, and while it is often an expression of compassion and support for others, volunteers also benefit from service. Volunteers in general are 27 percent more likely to find a job after being out of work, and that number jumps to 51 percent for volunteers without a high school diploma. Looking specifically at AmeriCorps, a Tufts University resume-based experiment study found that 24 percent of resumes listing AmeriCorps service experience received a call back for an interview, compared to 17 percent of resumes without a service record; a statistically significant difference.  

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Last year, the Corporation for National and Community Service (CNCS) awarded 2017 AmeriCorps State and National Evidence-based Planning Grants to seven worthy organizations. The goal? To help these organizations develop their own national service programs with a focus on evidence and evaluation.

Evidence-based programming underscores the mission of CNCS’s Office of Research & Evaluation (ORE). We see program development as an iterative process, using evaluation and research as indicators for improving programs, impacting more lives, and building stronger communities. To that end, ORE helps further the school of evaluation by providing organizations with the resources and tools to incorporate evaluation into their own efforts.

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Joey Breems, CNCS, Office of Research and Evaluation

Several recent reports show how national service can be a useful resource in times of great need, whether directly responding to a disaster or supporting recovery efforts in the weeks, months, and years that follow.

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