Making Community Service a Habit: Views of a Key Leader

In an interview with The Chronicle, Leslie Lenkowsky, chief

executive officer of the Corporation for National and Community Service — the federal agency that administers AmeriCorps and other volunteer programs — reflected on President Bush’s plans to encourage national service. Mr. Bush, in his State of the Union address, announced the creation of a new “USA Freedom Corps” to help Americans channel their volunteer efforts by, among other things, expanding the AmeriCorps and National Senior Service Corps programs, which are run by the Corporation for National and Community Service. Mr. Bush said he will request an increase of $560-million to pay for expanded national-service and Peace Corps efforts.

Following are excerpts of Mr. Lenkowsky’s remarks:

How would you describe the Bush administration’s vision for how the federal government can promote national service?

The president has recognized a lot of people want to serve their country [following the September 11 terrorist attacks]. He also recognizes that the moment, the window of opportunity here, is going to be closing. I don’t think it’s closed yet, but it’s something we need to pay attention to.

Is there more that a president of the United States of America can do than simply to say, Come on, serve? Well, first of all, saying Come on, serve, is not a bad thing. We know that people who are asked are far more likely to volunteer than people who aren’t asked. But we have been working to try to put some muscle into this — to deal with the question of how does the federal government respond. Not that the federal government is the only place through which one can serve. In fact, one of the things I’ve been saying is, we are rich in opportunities to serve in this country. But the federal government could play a role and should play a role.

What do Mr. Bush’s proposals mean for your agency?

We have been re-examining all our programs. I’ve instructed our staff to be bold and to ask what is it that really we need to do to make these programs better programs. I mean, not just AmeriCorps, but Senior Corps and Learn and Serve America. What you are going to see is a vision of the corporation that’s not going to be your father’s corporation.

We are certainly going to build on the foundation that President Clinton laid, but we are also going to enhance and improve all our programs with a view to making them more accountable, making them more responsive to local needs, to reduce the barriers, the obstacles that people have in joining them — to make it clear that their purpose is not simply to provide services but also, and in some cases more so, to help build the organizational capacity of the nation’s charities.

How would you do that?

One measure of the success of our programs could be how effective they are in generating other volunteers. We’re going to want to see that our programs are sustainable, that is to say, that they really sink roots in the communities and develop a life of their own that’s independent of the corporation.

All these things are part of a major overhaul of the programs of the Corporation for National and Community Service that we think would give more Americans more opportunities to serve their country and also give real practical help to the nation’s charities.

This organization was sort of created in fits and starts. Some pieces of it go back to the War on Poverty. They are not always as useful, functional, now as they were then. For example, 60 percent of our foster grandparent programs, which is a War on Poverty program, cannot fill their slots. Why? Well, a couple of reasons. One is we have an income test for eligibility that is set very low. Fortunately, the good news is our seniors are not quite as poor as they used to be, but from our point of view that means our eligibility pool is smaller. Secondly, the eligibility [age] for foster grandparents is 60. We have a lot of early retirements and that period from 55 to 60 is a very fruitful time. Yet we are basically saying to those energetic 55-year-olds who are taking an early retirement, Sorry. You can’t serve. Those are the kinds of things we need to fix, and there are a host of them across all our programs.

What kind of reaction do you expect from Capitol Hill to the president’s proposals?

I wouldn’t want to predict what Congress is going do. There are still people who have legitimate questions about the organization. We think our proposals are a serious effort to address them. But obviously one of the reasons you have hearings is so that a lot of people can weigh in on that.

This agency has spent most of its history on the defensive. We’ve been controversial, in my opinion more so than we needed to be. Every year we go through a budget dance in which the House of Representatives votes to zero out AmeriCorps. Well, the times have changed now. We are able to go on the offensive. And I don’t mean to suggest braggadocio here. But the challenges we are facing now will be greater, not because we are being attacked and threatened with extinction, but because people are expecting more of us.

How much of the proposed increases in spending would help charities versus the police and other agencies?

We always have at the corporation had programs interested in public health and safety issues and disaster preparedness. We have had AmeriCorps members at the World Trade Center almost every day since September 11, working to help out there. We have in Florida, California, elsewhere, senior citizens working to backstop police forces. So there will continue to be some of that.

I do want to emphasize, though, that the White House understands that this moment is not simply a moment to mobilize people for homeland security. We did some research on when President Roosevelt created the Office of Civilian Defense in 1941, and we found a very interesting publication that said, How you can help? Point One was to do things that would be equivalent to homeland security today: Look out for strange planes, saboteurs, etc. But Point Two was, just help others in your community. Do kind things for neighbors, help the hungry, help people who are ill, and so on.

President Roosevelt understood that at a time like this there’s a kind of general interest on the part of people to help their community. They are not only interested in doing things for the war effort, they are doing things that build a stronger community. And President Bush understands that the two go together, that you don’t separate them. Not everybody is or should be involved in homeland security. But everybody can be involved in making us a stronger country.

How do you turn new public interest in community service into active participation?

Civic engagement is not something that you just understand, it’s something you have to practice. I like to say it’s a bit like making your bed. Your mother could tell you until she was blue in the face that you ought to make your bed, but until you start doing it, it doesn’t become an ingrained habit. The same is true about patriotism. We could sing God Bless America, we could wave the flag, we could say the Pledge of Allegiance. Those are good, and they are positive. But until we actually start practicing love and country and acts such as serving others, it doesn’t become a habit.

How will your organization work with religious groups? About 6,000 of AmeriCorps’s 50,000 participants now work with faith-based organizations.

We are going to play a large administrative role certainly in the faith-based initiative. That’s what got me into this. We certainly are going to be involved in the faith-based and community effort, as we have to be. When you are talking about America’s charities, it’s the civic institutions, the religious ones, that have their origins in religious communities that are now mostly doing human-service-type work that are a huge portion of them. You just can’t go into a community without finding them. And they do some of the best work around. You just have to see them. I’m privileged in my job: When I travel, I go to the worst neighborhoods and see some of the best people. You go into these poverty-level neighborhoods and you find devoted nuns and local and civic leaders putting together these extraordinary efforts to help young people, the homeless, and the hungry.

We need to give them some support. There is no part of our government that sees as its mission to help our nation’s civic groups while allowing them to maintain their independence and identification. And that should be our mission.

In a way, we ought to be for the civic world what the Small Business Administration is for small business. Just as small business is the lifeblood of our success as an economy, our civic groups are the lifeblood of our success as a democracy. And whatever programs we have are just a means to the end, which is making sure these groups are strong and get stronger. It’s an important means because a very important part of what makes our civic tradition so strong is the participation of ordinary citizens in them. And so by trying to cultivate that and assist that, we are really doing something useful for this tradition.