Lakes Region Conservation Corps

[retired]

If you are getting paid, you are not a true volunteer, even if it is disguised as a stipend for "living expenses". Perhaps the real volunteers will continue to do the work. It sounds like the real loss of jobs might be the bureaucrats in Washington

[Descant]

Originally Posted by retired

If you are getting paid, you are not a true volunteer, even if it is disguised as a stipend for "living expenses". Perhaps the real volunteers will continue to do the work. It sounds like the real loss of jobs might be the bureaucrats in Washington

We've been saying volunteers. AmeriCorps is very careful to use the word "members". That makes sense. They give out $1.5B a year with 500 employees. In NH, that involved half a dozen sub groups that do the same services every year. I think one person per state could handle that, and s/he doesn't need a lot of DC overhead. Better to appoint somebody in each state and ask the individual states to supply a local office at low/no cost to the Feds.

[FlyingScot]

Originally Posted by retired

If you are getting paid, you are not a true volunteer, even if it is disguised as a stipend for "living expenses". Perhaps the real volunteers will continue to do the work. It sounds like the real loss of jobs might be the bureaucrats in Washington

It's fine with me if you think the government should cut AmeriCorps--that's a reasonable policy debate. Also a reasonable debate on implementation--this would make way more sense if they were planning in advance.

But let's not be cute or silly just to stir the political pot. Volunteers help out for a few hours at a time, when they feel like it, on projects they choose. AmeriCorps, regardless of what you call their roles, works full time, much harder than almost any volunteer, on pretty much whatever they're assigned. Even 50 typical volunteers could not replace 5 or 6 AmeriCorps people.

[John Mercier]

Funding is the issue.

I remember back when residing over NHOHVA that the non-motorized portion of the NRTP funds hardly got used. So that could help on some funding - and yes, at times contractors were paid to do the work.

There has to be many programs that because the lump sum of money is not that large, they just don't bother to seek grants on.