July 24, 2003 | Read Time: 2 minutes
Changes in leadership at the Corporation for National and Community Service — the organization that oversees AmeriCorps — and efforts by Congress to free up additional money for the agency have helped ease the anxiety many charity leaders felt earlier this summer when a sharp decline in the number of AmeriCorps members was expected.
In August, Leslie Lenkowsky, the head of the Corporation for National and Community Service, will step down from his post. The Bush administration has nominated David Eisner, until recently senior vice president of the AOL Time Warner Foundation, as Mr. Lenkowsky’s replacement. The appointment is subject to Senate confirmation. The White House also appointed James F. Manning, an official at the Department of Education, to serve as the Corporation’s chief operating officer, effective immediately.
The move comes as the agency appears on the brink of resolving financial problems that led it to cut back on the number of new AmeriCorps members. The Corporation had previously announced it would hire only about one-sixth as many national-service workers as it had last year, having approved more members last year than the agency could afford (The Chronicle, June 18).
Congress passed legislation easing the requirements on how much money the agency must set aside in its trust fund to cover the $4,725 education grant each AmeriCorps member is promised in exchange for completing a year of full-time service. President Bush signed the bill into law, freeing up money for an additional 15,000 positions.
Separately, the Senate this month appropriated an additional $100-million for the Corporation, which would enable it to hire another 20,000 members this year.
Poor Manager or Scapegoat?
Mr. Lenkowsky, who was a professor at Indiana University-Purdue University’s Center on Philanthropy, in Indianapolis, has said he will return to academe. While some observers criticized Mr. Lenkowsky’s management of the agency, others suggested that he had been made a scapegoat in the congressional tug-of-war over the agency. Mr. Lenkowsky declined to be interviewed for this article.
Mr. Eisner — a consultant for Network for Good, a Web site that encourages people to donate and volunteer — left AOL Time Warner in June, when the company closed its Dulles, Va., office. Mr. Eisner has also worked in public relations and on Capitol Hill.
Charity leaders say they hope Mr. Eisner will improve communications with lawmakers who have been hostile to AmeriCorps. In fact, two of Mr. Eisner’s former bosses, Rep. Bill McCollum, Republican of Florida, and Rep. Dana Rohrabacher, Republican of California, voted against creating AmeriCorps and have since voted to dismantle it.
But Will Marshall of the Progressive Policy Institute, who helped set up AmeriCorps, believes Mr. Bush’s actions will prove more crucial to AmeriCorps than Mr.Eisner’s. “President Bush called for 50-percent expansion of AmeriCorps,” he says. “What matters is whether he is going to fulfill his promise.”
