AmeriCorps Competitive Funding

AmeriCorps improves lives, strengthens communities, and fosters civic engagement through service and volunteering. AmeriCorps brings people together to tackle some of the country’s most pressing challenges through national service and volunteerism. AmeriCorps members and AmeriCorps Seniors volunteers serve with organizations dedicated to the improvement of communities and those serving. AmeriCorps helps make service a cornerstone of national culture. 

AmeriCorps will invest in existing and new partnerships with non-profit, faith-based, and Tribal organizations, and State Service Commissions, to get things done for America. The agency will prioritize investment in the most critical issues of this time — public health, climate and the environment, and education and economic opportunity — within AmeriCorps’ Focus Areas (Appendix 1: https://www.volunteerflorida.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/VF_AC_FY2024_Competitive_RFP.pdf#page=47) and will increase its efforts to ensure AmeriCorps members, AmeriCorps Seniors volunteers, and community-based volunteers reflect the communities where they serve. AmeriCorps will target their investments toward communities where the need is greatest, particularly those with populations that face racial inequality and poverty. These steps will enable more Americans than ever to strengthen the communities that need it most across the nation through their service.

AmeriCorps’ priorities for this funding opportunity are:

• Organizations leading service in communities with concentrated poverty, rural communities, tribal communities, and those organizations serving historically underrepresented and underserved individuals, including but not limited to communities of color, immigrants and refugees, people with disabilities, people who identify as part of the LGBTQIA+ community, people with arrest and/or conviction records, and religious minorities;
• Evidence-based interventions on the AmeriCorps Evidence Exchange that are assessed as having Moderate or Strong evidence. Please note that many of these interventions have demonstrated effectiveness in improving outcomes for individuals living in underserved communities and that the agency has committed resources to supporting grantees seeking to replicate and evaluate these interventions in similar communities;
• Veterans and Military Families, Caregivers, and Survivors – a program model that improves the quality of life of veterans and improves the well-being of military and veteran families, caregivers, and survivors;
• Faith-based organizations;
• Programs that provide additional benefits to AmeriCorps members aimed at enhancing member experience and bolstering member recruitment and retention such as paying more than the minimum living allowance, transportation, housing, food, etc.;
• Programs that create workforce pathways for AmeriCorps members, including deliberate training, certifications, and hiring preferences or support;
• Environmental Stewardship, including supporting communities to become more resilient through measures that reduce greenhouse gas emissions, conserve land and water, increase renewable energy use and improve at-risk ecosystems, especially in underserved households and communities;
• Community-based programs that enhance and expand services to second chance youth and/or engage those youth as AmeriCorps members;
• Programs that support civic bridgebuilding programs and projects to reduce polarization and community divisions; and providing training in civic bridgebuilding skills and techniques to AmeriCorps members;
• Programs focused on implementing or expanding access to high-quality early learning and those that prepare AmeriCorps members to enter early learning careers.

To receive priority consideration, applicants must show that the priority area is a significant part of the program focus and intended outcomes and must include a high-quality program design. Proposing programs that receive priority consideration does not guarantee funding.