Transcript_FY24 AmeriCorps Impact Webinar _09.28.2023 Page 1 of 18

AmeriCorps Impact Webinar Transcript

Results Driven Service: 2023 State of the Evidence

Mary M. Hyde:

Can you talk a little bit about lifting up and reaching underserved communities?

Jacob Saamba:

We're this intervention that makes them stronger, better, more effective people are more healthy, 

people are more resilient. To me, focusing on that end outcome is so important to celebrate, and I think 

evidence becomes a strong part of that. Data performance becomes a strong part of that because we 

are better at what we do. We're better at highlighting to future and current community partners what 

they can do.

Andrea Gibbons:

By having better data, it not only lets us measure our outcomes to different communities, but it also 

helps us target and know where we need to better serve underserved communities.

David Medina:

There are two important parts of making sure that evidence-based policymaking is equitable. The first, 

from our perspective is defining and prioritizing evidence in grant programs so that when you're 

evaluating grant applications you're looking at the research and data and evidence behind those 

proposed interventions. The second part of that whole evidence-based policymaking process is investing 

in evaluations.

You here at AmeriCorps for the last several years have invested at least 1% of your program dollars in 

evaluations. We know that you've been focusing those evaluations on nonprofits and communities that 

haven't had the resources for those evaluations in the past. Communities, in many cases, minority 

communities, by investing in those evaluations to build the evidence in communities all across the 

country and then prioritizing evidence in the grant making process, you're ensuring equity on both ends.

Andrea Gibbons:

I think we're on that road to make the changes in our culture and also to really unleash the value of our

data. We are a very data rich organization and if we can share more of that data, it will allow 

organizations and people to reuse it and to really help prove our value.

Sonali Nijhawan:

We're really lucky because our grant making happens on a national level, but also happens at state 

levels. So there's place for innovation and place for folks to be responsive to their communities.

Jennifer Bastress Tahmasebi:

I would like to continue to think about how we provide equity related to models and really start to 

spotlight certain models and drive our funding towards that as a way to focus our impact and also 

provide additional stronger technical assistance around certain program models. I would also be very 
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interested in looking at some of our longstanding grantees that have a specific model that may have not 

changed for 20 years, in creating the space for them to try out new implementation and research that.

Michael D. Smith:

We're coming up on the 30th anniversary of AmeriCorps. They don't think about the actual 

transformative impact that it's having on poverty, on jobs, on hunger, on homelessness, and so we have 

a responsibility to make sure that we are proving and improving the work that we're doing. We are 

embedded in the community. We are a part of the community. It's pretty easy for us to work with our 

state commissions, to work with our partners, to work with our grantees, to work with their community 

councils, to work with their beneficiaries. We are already there. We are part of the community, so we 

don't have to work hard to do that.

Katy Hussey-Stoniker:

Welcome to Results Driven Service, the 2023 state of the evidence on AmeriCorps impact. My name is 

Katy Hussey-Stoniker and I'm the Learning Officer for the AmeriCorps Office of Research and Evaluation.

Today's webinar is a celebration, a celebration of AmeriCorps' 30th anniversary and the state of our 

evidence. Our objective today is to share the framework built and the synthesize results that instruct our 

understanding of our impact, of our evidence building and research activities, and inform our decisionmaking processes. We'll also take a few reflective moments focused on how AmeriCorps makes a 

difference in the lives of individuals and communities through transforming federal resources into 

actionable problem solving for good. Next slide.

The Office of Research and Evaluation's mission is fourfold. We identify national service and volunteer 

trends, conduct research and build scholarship on civic engagement, measure national service impact, 

and promote evidence-based models and program expansion. We're excited to share the 2023 state of 

the evidence report that highlights a compendium of evaluation and research from all four of our 

mission directives. More importantly, the report identifies and accounts for our existing evidence, 

provides a framework for understanding the evidence and results, and is a wonderful tool to learn, 

improve, and communicate the valuable work of our agency and partners.

This webinar will present our current evidence base and we've also invited special guest presenters to 

reflect, provide experiential context and narrative to the evidence built, and yes, celebrate AmeriCorps' 

30th year anniversary. The session will be packed, so we're encouraging participants to place questions 

in the chat that will be compiled and answered in a follow-up Q and A document posted with the 

webinar recording, slide deck, and resources. Please be sure to place questions and comments you 

might have in the chat throughout the webinar. Next slide.

Our CEO would hope to be here today to celebrate in person, the release of the state of the evidence 

report that shows that through AmeriCorps' investment in national service and volunteering, we're 

improving the lives of our members, our partners, our communities, and our country. Unfortunately, an 

unanticipated scheduling conflict arose. He wanted to make sure though that we kicked off our 

celebration with a message that underscores how proud he is of our evidence, supporting the 

transformative impact of AmeriCorps, and continues to have an impact on so many lives. Now a 

message celebrating AmeriCorps evidence from Michael Smith, CEO. Next slide.

Michael D. Smith:

Hello, everybody. We often talk about AmeriCorps being a force multiplier and having a triple bottom 

line. That means AmeriCorps is good for organizations, it's good for members and volunteers and it's 

good for the community, but we don't often talk about how we know it's good. It's our research and of 
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course our research team and partners. This year we are celebrating AmeriCorps' 30th anniversary, and 

for three decades, AmeriCorps has been leading with evidence.

Evidence-based research gives us the tools that we need to identify promising local solutions and to 

apply what works in other areas. Together we work alongside our community members and partners 

who have their eyes, their ears, and their hearts on the ground. This is just one of the many reasons why 

building a platform of research and evidence is important because it gives us the tools to demonstrate 

that service isn't just a nice to have. It's a critical part of a healthy, thriving democracy.

Our 2023 state of the evidence report confirms and reinforces what we've seen over the last 30 years. 

Through AmeriCorps' investment in national service and volunteering, we are improving the lives of our 

members, our partners, our local communities, and our country. Among many key findings in the report 

indicate that AmeriCorps members build the necessary cultural competency to work and interact with 

people who are different from themselves.

AmeriCorps Seniors volunteers experience improved physical and psychological wellbeing due to their 

service experience, and AmeriCorps partnerships can help grantees meet their project goals. 

AmeriCorps can be a life-changing experience for those who serve, delivering new skills and experiences, 

and helping with workforce pathways by opening doors to education and diverse career paths.

Our research also shows that AmeriCorps helps create citizens who are more engaged in their 

community and more likely to vote. In fact, 86% of exiting members feel a personal obligation to 

contribute to their communities after their service year ends. So together we are creating new 

generations of civic leaders for our country. So in the coming years, what we're going to do is we're 

going to continue to focus our research on member and volunteer impact, and we're going to better 

understand what it means to create a meaningful service experience because we know that AmeriCorps 

really does bring out the best in America.

Scott Richman:

My name is Scott Richman and I'm excited to be a part of today's webinar and discuss the 2023 State of 

the Evidence report that Mathematica prepared for AmeriCorps as part of the building a Culture of 

organizational learning project. I'm just one person of a larger team, so I also want to acknowledge 

Michelle Bennett and Katie Gleason who are co-authors on this report, as well as Susan Lopez who 

directs the larger project for Mathematica. Next slide please.

So I'm going to start off by providing an overview of the 2023 State of the Evidence report, including 

how we carried out the evidence review using a framework we developed for the effort. I'm going to 

provide a summary of key themes that emerge from the body of evidence we reviewed, and I'll be 

focusing on the four main areas where the agency seeks to make an impact, which is at the individual, 

organization, local community, and societal levels. As I highlight key findings from each of these areas, 

you'll hear reflections from AmeriCorps staff, alumni and grantees along with Results for America, where 

they'll share their insights on how the agency builds evidence to support and enhance national service 

and civic engagement. Next slide.

So guided by its learning agenda, AmeriCorps generates and uses an incredible amount of evidence to 

inform how the agency operates and improves upon its effectiveness. Using evidence in this way helps 

the agency enhance its impact on national service members and volunteers, partner organizations, and 

the communities they serve. In order to do this, AmeriCorps prioritizes and regularly invests in building 

evidence. As part of a larger ecosystem, the agency, along with state service commissions provide 

funding and technical support to AmeriCorps state and national grantees to conduct independent 

evaluations of their interventions.
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Programs such as AmeriCorps NCCC, AmeriCorps Vista and AmeriCorps Seniors also generate evidence 

that align to the agency's learning agenda. The AmeriCorps Office of Research and Evaluation is another 

primary source of the evidence that the agency generates. ORE regularly conducts its own research, 

while also funding third party evaluations to generate relevant evidence on AmeriCorps programs, 

successful interventions, and civic life in the United States. ORE has also funded four research grant 

cycles between 2015 and 2022 that support researchers and scholars at higher education institutions to 

study civic engagement, volunteerism, and national service.

So overall, the agency produces a high volume of evidence from these various sources, and this creates 

a critical need to periodically bring together and review all this evidence to help identify themes, 

strengths and limitations in the evidence base. This can help advance the field's knowledge base around 

national service and civic engagement, and also inform how AmeriCorps goes about its planning efforts 

and identify where more evidence is needed. Next slide.

So back in 2017, AmeriCorps ORE took the step of conducting a large scale evidence synthesis and 

created the 2017 state of the evidence report. This report synthesized results from research and 

evaluation activities conducted between October 2014 to June 2017. The report identified a variety of 

key findings about the state of the evidence at the time, and I've highlighted a few of those findings here 

in the slide and we'll actually hear about some of these areas when we're discussing the 2023 findings.

So the 2017 report noted how volunteerism and AmeriCorps service can benefit individuals economic 

opportunity by increasing the odds of finding employment. The report also highlighted how Americans 

who volunteer, older Americans who volunteer can experience health improvements such as by 

studying how those who volunteered were more likely to report being in good health than those that 

did not volunteer. Finally, the report discussed how AmeriCorps funded interventions provide a return 

on taxpayer investment as several studies demonstrated the cost savings associated with AmeriCorps 

funded interventions. Next slide.

So all of this helped set the stage for this new 2023 State of the Evidence report. The purpose of this 

report was to synthesize the evidence that AmeriCorps has helped build since the 2017 report to further 

advance the knowledge base on national service, volunteerism, and civic engagement. To help guide 

how we reviewed and synthesize this evidence, Mathematica worked collaboratively with AmeriCorps 

ORE to develop what we call the State of the Evidence Framework. So this framework consists of four 

domains that help define where the agency seeks to build evidence in pursuit of its mission to improve 

lives, strengthen communities, and foster civic engagement through service and volunteering. Next

slide.

So here is what the framework looks like and the four domains it includes. So one domain is AmeriCorps 

participants, and these are the individuals who join AmeriCorps as members or volunteers to serve local 

communities through AmeriCorps programs. Then there are the AmeriCorps partners, and these are the 

grantees and sponsoring organizations that use AmeriCorps funding to implement service projects in 

their local areas. The next domain is communities, and we define this domain as the individuals, groups, 

and local areas that experience services from AmeriCorps funded partners delivered by AmeriCorps 

members and volunteers. Then finally, we have the society domain, which pertains to national service, 

volunteering and civic engagement in the United States. Our report uses this framework as a foundation 

for identifying what new knowledge has been generated in these key areas. Next slide.

So the evidence review we conducted includes studies published between July 2017 and December 

2022. Our goal essentially was to pick up where the 2017 report left off with regards to new evidence 

that was generated since the time of that report. The studies we reviewed were produced by a variety 

of sources. This include AmeriCorps program grantees, AmeriCorps ORE itself, along with the research 

grantees and external contractors that AmeriCorps ORE funds.
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To be included in the review, studies needed to have met at least one of the following criteria. Studies 

could have had AmeriCorps participants as the focus of the research such as characterizing who 

AmeriCorps participants are or the benefits they experience. Studies could have focused on assessing 

AmeriCorps funded interventions where AmeriCorps participants were involved in delivering services 

that AmeriCorps partners provided to communities. Finally, studies could have also broadly been 

focused on advancing the field's knowledge base about national service, volunteerism or civic 

engagement. Next slide.

So to conduct our evidence review, we first compiled studies from the AmeriCorps Evidence Exchange 

and the AmeriCorps ORE research grantee profiles, and we also received some studies directly from 

AmeriCorps ORE. In total we reviewed 116 studies for the report. To carry out the review, we extracted 

information on each study's subset of focus, including the relevant AmeriCorps focus area and topic 

areas. We gathered information on the interventions that were examined along with the intended focal 

populations. We also quoted studies by their research design or the approach that the research used 

and also documented the studies outcomes of interest and the main findings for each of the studies. 

Next slide.

So to give you a brief sense of the studies that we reviewed, nearly half of the studies were produced by 

AmeriCorps program grantee evaluators. AmeriCorps ORE research grantees and reports commissioned 

by AmeriCorps ORE were the next most common types. We also found that nearly two-thirds of the 

studies focused on the community domain of the state of the evidence framework. Then AmeriCorps 

participants and AmeriCorps partners these domains had relatively the fewest number of studies where 

they were the main focus. Next slide.

In terms of the study designs, 43% of the studies that we reviewed used a randomized control trial or a

quasi experimental design, which are approaches that can help researchers draw causal conclusions 

about the study findings. Beyond that, we saw a variety of other research designs and approaches to the 

studies we reviewed, which generally aligns with how AmeriCorps seeks to work with grantees wherever 

they are in their evidence building journey. Next slide.

So to synthesize the evidence we reviewed, we look to identify emerging themes for each domain in the 

State of the Evidence framework. We placed greater weight on findings from impact studies where 

causal conclusions could be made. Then we discussed themes emerging from other study types where 

the findings hung together or they were in relation to findings discussed in other impact studies. For 

today's presentation, I'm only going to highlight a few key findings from each of the domains, but there's 

certainly a lot more in the report than what I'll discuss today.

Before diving into the findings themselves, I just want to emphasize that the purpose of this report is to 

capture the state of the evidence during a specific timeframe. We're taking a snapshot of the evidence 

at a particular moment of time and then taking a look at what we see in that picture. So this means that 

the report isn't cumulative and it doesn't include evidence that was built before the timeframe we're 

focusing on. At the same time, AmeriCorps continues to build evidence. So this means that our 

interpretation of the evidence as it exists today can certainly evolve as new evidence emerges. Next 

slide, please.

All right. With that, now I'm going to discuss the State of the Evidence on AmeriCorps participants. Next 

slide please. All right, so at its core, AmeriCorps is an agency that empowers individuals to help address 

local community challenges, but that national service experience can also impact AmeriCorps 

participants themselves. So in reviewing the evidence on AmeriCorps participants, we sought to address 

two main research questions. One, what are the characteristics of participants who serve with 

AmeriCorps, and then what outcomes or impacts, if any, do AmeriCorps participants experience? During 
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our review, we identified 16 studies that had a focus on AmeriCorps participants, and I'm going to 

highlight a few key findings from the report. Next slide.

So our review identified three studies that primarily focused on describing characteristics of AmeriCorps 

participants. One study was an analysis of the AmeriCorps member exit survey, which captures 

information about member service experiences and attitudes upon exiting their program. The study 

found that AmeriCorps members possessed the cultural competency to work with communities of 

people who are different from themselves. For example, the vast majority of AmeriCorps members 

reported that they enjoy exploring differences with and respect the values of people from different 

cultures and backgrounds.

Another study conducted by an AmeriCorps ORE research grantee sought to use data from the 

AmeriCorps longitudinal study to develop profiles based on AmeriCorps members backgrounds and 

motivations to serve. Using a cluster analysis, the study found four distinct member profiles, what they 

call the Young Idealists, Wanderers, Gappers, and Public Servants, and created these profiles based on 

members' age, education, and motivation to serve using measures of civic awareness and commitment 

to public interest. So as a group, these studies help provide a deeper understanding of who AmeriCorps 

members are as they enter and exit their service term. Next slide.

With regards to benefits to AmeriCorps participants, we identified four studies that used causal study 

designs to examine whether national service impact AmeriCorps members employment or education 

outcomes. Among these few studies though, the findings were relatively mixed. One study found that 

AmeriCorps alumni who served through a reading program were more likely to work in nonprofit, public, 

or government sectors. The study that I mentioned earlier that identified AmeriCorps member profiles, 

this study found that one of those profiles, the Gappers, reported a greater increase in their basic work 

skills than a similar comparison group used in the study. However, those impacts were not found for 

other member profile groups.

The evidence we reviewed also pointed to other similarities between AmeriCorps members and the 

comparison groups in the studies. So for example, one study found that although opportunity youth 

serving with AmeriCorps showed increases in several education and employment outcomes, the 

comparison group members also experienced similar improvements in those areas. Next slide.

So three of those studies that examined education and employment outcomes also assessed impacts on 

AmeriCorps members civic engagement. Again, this evidence paints a little bit of a mixed picture. The 

study that examined the different AmeriCorps member profiles found that three of the profiles were 

more likely to show increases on opinions about being active in the community and the feasibility of 

working with neighbors to help meet local needs.

Then the study on the alumni for an AmeriCorps reading program, that study found that AmeriCorps 

members were more likely to report that they express their political views and participate in volunteer 

activities than the comparison group used in the study. The studies we reviewed also found several 

similarities between AmeriCorps members and participants compared to the comparison group on 

various measures of civic engagement and civic mindedness. Next slide, please.

Finally, we identified two studies conducted by contractors to AmeriCorps ORE that highlighted how 

AmeriCorps Seniors volunteers experience greater improvements in their physical and psychological 

wellbeing than a comparison group. One was a study of the AmeriCorps Seniors Foster Grandparent and 

Senior Companion Programs. This longitudinal study found that AmeriCorps Seniors volunteers who 

remained for their entire service reported greater improvements in their self-perceived health 

compared to a group of adult non-volunteers in the general population.
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The other study we reviewed was a metasynthesis that summarized 27 other studies on AmeriCorps 

senior programs. So this review identified 12 positive outcomes based on impact study designs, which 

found that AmeriCorps Seniors volunteers had better physical health, overall functioning, life 

satisfaction, mental health, and social connectedness. So with that, I'm now going to turn it over to 

Sonali Nijhawan, who's going to offer her reflections on AmeriCorps participants, both as a former 

AmeriCorps member and now the director of AmeriCorps State National. Sonali.

Sonali Nijhawan:

Thank you so much, Scott. Thank you for your kind introduction. Thank you for walking us through this 

really meaningful research. It's been so enlightening and I feel like I find myself in one of those four 

quadrants and look forward to sharing that in a little bit. Also, want to just express my gratitude to my 

colleagues in the AmeriCorps Office of Research and Evaluation for bringing us all together today and for 

their commitment to building a meaningful research platform for national service.

As a proud AmeriCorps alum and the first AmeriCorps state national alum to serve as the director of 

AmeriCorps State National, as I shared, I truly do see myself in this research. In fact, I remember 

completing my own member exit survey. Not only do I see myself, but I see my colleagues and I see my 

friends, and I see the many people that I served alongside with and the many members who I built a 

program for so that they had the opportunity to serve as well.

While I do see myself in here in this research and the many members who contributed to these efforts, I 

also see so much potential, the potential for leveraging this robust evidence base to help service and 

volunteering programs learn from one another and adopt best practices. I see the space to inspire our 

elected leaders to make service a priority in their cities and states, and to encourage hiring managers 

across the country to bet on AmeriCorps alumni because they can be strong team players who know 

how to work across lines of difference. So really, really excited to be here and really feel so appreciative 

of the opportunity to just share my own personal story and connection to this work.

So as I shared, I am an AmeriCorps alum and I have been fortunate to build a career grounded in 

national service. It all began when I first put on my red jacket as an AmeriCorps member serving with 

City Year in my hometown of Chicago. I learned a lot in my service year. I learned a lot more than I 

actually expected to learn. I thought that it would be an opportunity to serve in my community, to do 

some good work, to work with kids, and that that would be it. I would do this year, I'd have this 

meaningful experience, and then I would go on to graduate school and maybe become a school 

counselor.

What happened is my life changed. This experience taught me about myself as a leader. It taught me 

about the community that I was working with, and it taught me about the importance of getting to 

know the people around you to learn about the community that you're serving in, to learn about the 

folks who are there doing the work with you. It taught me the importance of listening to understand, to 

build connections. It truly, truly changed my life. I don't know, and I've said this many a time, I don't 

know that I would've been here in this position having the opportunity to inform national service for the 

country had it not been for the opportunity to do this work in my hometown.

I think it feels right in this moment as we are celebrating our 30th year to just share a story and an 

experience that really was life-changing for me when I was an AmeriCorps member, and I think has 

served as a framework for me in doing the work since. I served with City Year a little over a decade and a 

half ago. I'll never forget going in bright-eyed, eager, and just ready to change the world, to sit and work 

with a group of third-graders who were going to be so eager to do a tutoring session with me. I'll just tell 

you, they weren't always very eager to sit in a tutoring session with me. We found our way and we had 

our fun.
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The most meaningful moment for me was during my training when I was in a room with 80 other 

individuals who had decided to serve, and we were a diverse group of people. I grew up right outside of 

Chicago in a suburb. I had Corps members who had similar backgrounds to me. There were Corps 

members who grew up in the neighborhoods where we would be serving, and there were Corps 

members who would come from other parts of the country who wanted to make a difference in Chicago 

and wanted to serve students. I'll never forget, I was sitting in a room and we were talking about why 

we wanted to serve, and I was really eager to share my why. It was because I wanted to bring to the 

community all the things that I had in my life.

This young woman stood up, her name was Ebony, and she shared with me, she shared with all of us. 

She said, "Well, I keep hearing people say that they want to come and they want to make things better 

for us. I just want you to know, I grew up in the neighborhoods that you're coming to and we are doing 

great. We're trying really hard, and we really care about each other. We're excited that you're going to 

come and you're going to be part of our community, but we really want you to be part of our 

community. So please, when you come to the West Side or South Side of Chicago, when you come to 

our schools, when you engage with our students, ask them about themselves. Ask them what they want, 

ask their parents what they're looking for, and then take that information and help get them what they 

need and make sure that they're part of the process."

So from that moment on, I thought about, yes, I wanted to make things better, but I didn't want to just 

do it for someone. I wanted to bring everyone that I was serving with alongside me in this journey. That 

meant understanding the AmeriCorps member who came from rural Kentucky and had a different 

perspective of the world than I did. Understanding his perspective and him understanding my 

perspective, and us being able to have a conversation, find a pathway forward, and serve the students 

that we both cared so deeply about.

So I would just say, my service experience was one that has informed my career. I had the opportunity 

after serving to go on to launch a City Year site in Sacramento, California, and then went on to work with 

the former mayor of Stockton, Michael Tubbs to launch a place-based initiative in Stockton, California to 

bring AmeriCorps to a community that didn't have a framework for what AmeriCorps was or what it 

could be. In each moment, it has always been about taking a minute, listening to where people are, and 

ensuring that I can be a supportive hand to move that work forward. I think those lessons, that 

understanding, all came from my year of service and it continues to come from the many years of 

service that I've had the privilege of doing.

So I'm just really grateful that we have the opportunity to really understand the impact of our work. I'm 

really proud of all the work that this agency is doing today to help to invest in programs and to help to 

invest in people who are going to continue to open those doors for opportunity and lift up local leaders. 

AmeriCorps opened up a door for me and it continued to open up doors for me, and I'm really excited to 

be able to do that for so many more going forward. So thank you so much.

Last week was our kickoff for the 30th anniversary, so I'm also excited that we'll continue to be lifting up 

the impact of our service in communities, and we'll continue to tell those stories of service and the 

evidence-based work that we're doing. I'm really excited to be doing that with all of you. So thank you 

so much to the team, and I think I am going to now hand it back to Scott.

Scott Richman:

Thanks, Sonali, and thank you so much for sharing your wonderful story. So now I'm going to move now 

to the next part of the framework, which is to discuss the state of the evidence at the partner level. Next 

slide. AmeriCorps aims to support and empower nonprofit, faith-based, and community organizations to 

address the critical issues in their local areas.
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Through its partnerships with these grantees and sponsor organizations, AmeriCorps provides them with 

AmeriCorps members and AmeriCorps seniors volunteers to help partners increase their reach, build 

their capacity, and foster community partnerships. So in reviewing the evidence on AmeriCorps 

partners, we aim to answer the research question of in what ways has AmeriCorps helped build the 

capacity of partners to achieve their missions and better serve their communities? So in our review, we 

identified 10 studies that had a focus on AmeriCorps partners. Next slide.

So our review identified two QED studies of specific AmeriCorps funded intervention models that 

provided evidence that partnering with AmeriCorps helped organizations meet their project goals. This 

included helping AmeriCorps partners build 13% more homes per year and completing a greater 

proportion of environmental management activities when compared to other sites that did not host any 

AmeriCorps members.

Two other descriptive studies we identified also just suggested a similar theme. One of which was an 

analysis of survey data from the AmeriCorps NCCC sponsoring organization survey that completed 

service projects between 2016 and 2019. This study found that nearly all NCCC sponsoring organizations 

reported that their AmeriCorps NCCC team supported the organization's mission and helped the 

organization enhance services in the community. Next slide.

We also identified some emerging themes with regards to how partnering with AmeriCorps can help 

organizations build their capacity. A QED study conducted by an AmeriCorps ORE research grantee 

found that AmeriCorps VISTA sponsoring organizations had a significantly greater proportion of 

volunteers two years later than did organizations that did not host VISTA members. Two other studies 

also point to a similar theme, but these studies didn't include a comparison group that allows for a more 

causal conclusion.

One was an outcome study, which found that an AmeriCorps state and national volunteer infrastructure 

program helped community-based organizations to increase their volunteer management practices with 

regards to developing a volunteer plan and then implementing and sustaining that volunteer plan. We 

also reviewed a descriptive study that analyzed data from the AmeriCorps NCCC service project 

database. That study found that over one third of NCCC projects implemented capacity building 

activities such as supporting local organizations in their partnership and coalition building efforts.

So those were several arising themes from the evidence on AmeriCorps partners. Now for the 

AmeriCorps partner perspective, I'm going to hand things off to Mike Sullivan, who's the national 

Director of AmeriCorps programming for SBP.

Mike Sullivan:

Thanks, Scott. Hi, y'all. Grateful to be on this call this afternoon. As Scott said, my name is Mike Sullivan, 

and beyond serving as SBPs director of AmeriCorps programming, I also have the privilege of identifying 

as a proud AmeriCorps alum two times. SBP, we are a social impact organization focused on disaster 

resilience and recovery. We solve the challenges facing at risk communities and scale impact with a 

proven model that brings the rigor of business and innovation to reduce risk, create resilient 

communities, and streamline recovery. By taking this holistic approach, we're able to shrink the time 

between disaster and recovery.

Beyond disaster response our AmeriCorps programming largely focuses on long-term recovery, and I 

want to be super clear. Response and recovery operate on two very different timelines. It's hard to 

imagine how long the recovery process can take until you've experienced or witnessed disaster 

firsthand. So to give you a sense of what long-term actually means, I'd submit to you this. We are still 

rebuilding in New Orleans to return families displaced by Hurricane Katrina back to safe, sanitary, and 

secure living conditions. That's over 18 years. We've been in Puerto Rico and in Houston since 
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hurricanes Maria and Harvey in 2017, and in Florida since Hurricane Michael in 2018. It would appear 

that hurricanes Ian and Idalia will keep our team busy for the foreseeable future.

The people affected by disaster don't just lose their homes, they're at risk of reaching their breaking 

point, the point at which all hope is lost. If I may, before sharing some of my reflections, I'd like to start 

with a quote from one of our homeowners that our evaluation partners recently collected during a focus 

group. "We felt like we were stuck. We were in a position we didn't have control over. Then when SBP 

and their team came in and helped, it really gave us hope. We're thrilled with the agency's work and 

more specifically with the work of the Office of Research and Evaluation to pull together this excellent 

compendium of evidence."

I may be a bit biased as I often think that no AmeriCorps program can do what they do without 

AmeriCorps members, but it's just not all the way true. We would absolutely still be doing this work. The 

need exists. Our people are passionate about finding solutions. The support is there, but would we grow 

or scale impact as quickly? Would we accomplish the same volume of outcomes? Absolutely not.

It's hard to measure impact in the disaster response in the long-term recovery space. In fact, there's not 

a ton of validated research, which side note, has been a fun challenge to navigate in our own program's 

evaluation. I'm imagining that there may be a few program director chuckles out there. That aside this 

resource, this evidence, it helps us tell our organizational story to stakeholders as it provides context to 

the importance that AmeriCorps plays within our organization. Through our members, we've returned 

more than 4,268 families back into safe, sanitary and secure living conditions, preserving nearly $50 

million in home equity.

It's beyond the numbers. AmeriCorps is responsible for partnering like-minded individuals with our

organization who have gone on to help innovate and shape the future of SBP, and in some instances 

influence the disaster recovery landscape at the state, at the local, and even the federal level. More than 

half of our current C-suite or national service alumni, largely having served with SBP in our earliest days, 

and currently more than 32% of our current staff at large are alums of national service.

So if you asked me to answer, does it matter that we have evidence in this space? Absolutely. It's nearly 

ineffable the extent to which these resources advance our mission. This is such an important topic, and 

I'd love to see the research dive deeper than the numbers.

Personally, I am a sucker for a good story. I believe that pairing impact with qualitative insights and 

interviews from partners that describe the intangible influence or impact that national service members 

have made on their organizations is a tool that is abundant with the ability to influence legislation, to 

turn a potential new funder's ear, to advance connections, and to network with employers who in turn 

may prioritize hiring more members post-grad. At the very least, it would certainly encourage more 

groups to consider ways in which they can leverage national service for their organizations.

I appreciate y'all's time in entertaining my personal reflection. I know that I can be a bit long-winded, ask 

anyone on my team and they'll give you that answer. So with all that, I'd love to turn it back to the good 

doctor, Dr. Scott. Thank you.

Scott Richman:

Appreciate that, Mike. So now I'm going to discuss the state of the evidence at the community level. 

Next slide, please. As part of its mission, AmeriCorps aims to strengthen communities by addressing 

local challenges. AmeriCorps partners with their members and volunteers go into local areas and 

provide services and interventions to communities and the individuals within them.

So in reviewing the evidence on AmeriCorps-served communities, we aim to answer the following 

research questions. What outcomes or impacts do communities serve by AmeriCorps-funded partners 
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experience? What does the research say about investments in and scaling of effective interventions? 

Our review identified 71 studies that focus on communities served by AmeriCorps. Next slide.

So to provide a deeper sense of this research, we identified 51 studies that examined impacts or 

outcomes associated with AmeriCorps-funded interventions. These studies spanned across the six focus 

areas of interest to AmeriCorps, but the education area by far had the largest number of studies. I won't 

go into all of these focus areas today, but we'll instead focus on just a few key themes. Next slide.

Within education, there were several areas that showed how AmeriCorps-funded interventions impact 

education outcomes for community individuals. One was in the area of students' literacy outcomes, 

which had eight studies that provided evidence of impact. These studies showed how reading and 

tutoring programs can improve literacy outcomes, particularly for younger students, and when the 

studies examined specific aspects of literacy development.

The evidence also showed how AmeriCorps programs also make a difference for high school students. 

For example, four studies that examined peer coaching models focused on college preparation, found 

positive impacts on students' academic performance in high school, while also fostering college 

preparation activities and enrolling in college. Next slide.

Within the environmental stewardship focus area, excuse me, we reviewed five impact studies that 

demonstrated how AmeriCorps-funded approaches protect vital ecosystems. These approaches 

included using restoration methods, suppressing invasive species, and conducting fuel reduction 

treatment activities. Overall, the evidence showed how these methods had a positive environmental 

impact by increasing plant survival rates and beneficial plant coverage, while also reducing plant 

damage, harmful plant species coverage, and the risk of wildfires. Next slide.

So our review also synthesized 12 return on investment studies commissioned by AmeriCorps ORE. 

These studies aim to further the knowledge base on the value that AmeriCorps funded programs can 

bring to communities. So in addition to the positive impacts that these programs have on communities, 

the studies show how funds devoted to all 12 of these programs can generate an even greater positive 

return on invested dollars over time.

These 12 studies span across the agency's focus areas of interest, which also helps to show the value of 

national service in tackling a variety of community issues. So now I'm going to turn things over to 

Antonio Mendez, who's the Deputy Director of Regional Programming for AmeriCorps NCCC for his 

perspective on how AmeriCorps makes a community impact.

Antonio Mendez:

Thank you, Dr. Scott. Good afternoon, everyone. My name is Antonio Mendez and I'm the Deputy 

Region Director for the AmeriCorps NCCC Southwest Region. It's a mouthful of a title, I know. Somali 

mentioned her service and Mike mentioned his. I'll mention mine. I participated in the Teach for 

AmeriCorps program in Newark, New Jersey. I won't say the date, but a long, long time ago. Most 

recently, I had the privilege of working as the executive director of Serve Colorado, the Governor's 

Commission on Community Service.

So I joined AmeriCorps back in April of 2020 at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, and one of my 

first big assignments was to help support the creation and implementation of the COVID-19 

Containment Response Corps. The COVID-19 Containment Response Corps, the CCRC, was a group of 

AmeriCorps members and AmeriCorps Senior volunteers who served as investigators for the state of 

Colorado during the COVID-19 pandemic supporting mainly with contact tracing and contact 

investigation.
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AmeriCorps supported the CCRC effort by redeploying NCCC members and providing nearly $2 million in 

federal funding for new AmeriCorps Vista Summer Associates and senior corps volunteers. The project 

initially included 300 AmeriCorps NCCC members from my campus, the Southwest Region campus, and 

about 350 Vista Summer Associates hosted by the Community Resource Center and Conservation 

Legacy, and 200 AmeriCorps Senior volunteers managed by Cultivate and Volunteers of America 

Colorado.

Aside from AmeriCorps, the project was a partnership between Serve Colorado, the state of Colorado, 

specifically the governor's office, the Department of Public Health and Environment, and Gary 

Community Investments. The success of the CCRC was the result of collaboration between partners, the 

innovation to see AmeriCorps members responding in novel ways in a time of need, and the 

community's willingness to trust our members.

Speaking on the success, the data's clear about the impact that our members had. Through their 

contribution to the CCRC AmeriCorps members, the AmeriCorps Senior volunteers served an estimated 

58,067 instances of health intervention. 17,629 were served through case investigations. 7,635 through 

contact tracing, and approximate 32,803 through the test results delivered. So out of approximately 

67,500 calls attempted. While our AmeriCorps members were willing and able to support, many of them 

lack experience in this specific type of public service. Members reported the emotional toll of reaching 

out to the people who were COVID positive and emotionally distraught as one of the leading causes of 

stress on the project in an area where they felt under-prepared.

Thankfully, NCCC was able to partner with AmeriCorps Seniors. The AmeriCorps Seniors volunteers were 

more successful with their ability to connect with potential positive members and to provide resources 

during this difficult moment. The coaching empowered the NCCC members who were between the ages 

of 18 and 26 year olds to have more successful calls. Simultaneously, NCCC members were able to 

provide mentorship to the AmeriCorps Senior volunteers who had trouble with the newly implemented 

REDCap software for contact investigation and contact tracing. It was a mutually beneficial relationship.

The CCRC prepared our corps NCCC members to be on the front lines in the response to COVID. Shortly 

after serving in the project, many members were deployed all over the country to support FEMA with 

their massive vaccination clinics. Just add a personal touch, I still remember the day I got a FaceTime 

phone call from my parents who were so happy that they were getting the vaccine and were standing 

next to an NCCC member from my campus who was providing logistics support for FEMA in Yonkers, 

New York. Two weeks later, I was able to hug my parents for the first time since the pandemic started, 

and that feeling was priceless. Mine wasn't the only story like this. We heard stories of families being 

reunited after several months, confident that their senior loved ones were safe from the virus after 

receiving their shot.

One of the biggest outcomes of serving the CCRC was that after their NCCC service, our members 

reported an interest in going to school to learn about public health. They got jobs working in county 

public health departments across the country or continued on in Colorado to address the issue. The 

impact of CCRC was felt throughout the state, and national service advocates took note of the success. 

Articles were written in Newsweek and in Time Magazine discussing the need to do something similar in 

other states. Our region was able to partner with the city of Topeka, Kansas, and other regions like the 

Southern region were able to work in a number of hospitals in their states coordinating logistics.

The partnership was created during the COVID-19 Containment Response Corps has only solidified. In 

2022, AmeriCorps and the governor's office entered into a multi-year MOU to partner on economic 

mobility in the state of Colorado, helping by creating houses, providing tax returns to low-income 

Coloradans, supporting food banks, et cetera. Since that time, we've returned over $15 million to 

Colorado residents, and we've heard folks say that their tax returns are helping them with education 
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needs for children, providing food security, and for some avoiding homelessness. We at NCCC are 

looking forward to continuing that impact in 2023. Thank you for the opportunity to present, and I'll 

send it back to you, Scott.

Scott Richman:

Great, appreciate it. All right, so now I'm going to discuss the last domain of the State of the Evidence 

framework, which is at the society level. Next slide. So AmeriCorps strives to make a lasting impact on 

the civic health of society and to be a thought leader in the field of volunteering and civic engagement. 

To this end, the agency has the overarching goal of generating evidence and new knowledge that 

advances our understanding of civic life in the United States.

So in reviewing the evidence on volunteering and civic engagement in society, we aimed to answer the 

following research questions. One, what are the societal rates of volunteerism and civic engagement in 

the US and what new insights has AmeriCorps funded research generated to advance the fields 

understanding of national service, volunteerism and civic engagement? Our review identified 25 studies 

in this area, and I'll share just a few of the themes we discussed in the report. Next slide.

So to help our understanding of volunteerism in the United States, AmeriCorps ORE has funded and 

analyzed data from the Current Population Survey, Civic Engagement and Volunteering Supplement 

since 2002. Our review covered the analysis of the 2019 CEV data, but I do want to note that the 2021 

data is publicly available now, and ORE has published some analysis of this data this year.

The AmeriCorps ORE analysis of the 2019 data, the analysis showed how the volunteering rate in the 

United States is approximately 30% of all Americans, and that this rate remains stable for 20 years 

through 2019. The study also showed how volunteering rates varied by a number of individual and 

family characteristics. For example, women volunteer at a higher rate than men, and we also see 

differences in volunteering rates by education levels and household family income. Next slide.

The AmeriCorps ORE Research grant program has also expanded our knowledge base on fostering civic 

engagement. For example, in its 2018 grant cycle ORE prioritized funding for projects that use 

participatory research approaches, which engaged community individuals to identify local challenges 

and develop actionable solutions on how to address those issues. Our review identified eight studies 

that used a participatory research approach.

For example, one study was a project that engaged youth to identify local environmental injustices in 

their communities such as littering and dumping trash. They also identified the vulnerable populations 

affected by these environmental issues. Together, this team developed strategies and an action plan for 

how community members themselves could address these environmental injustices.

In another project, researchers worked with refugees in a major city to understand how to foster civic 

engagement and support community members to become drivers of change in their community. The 

project used collected survey and focus group data to identify actionable strategies that could increase 

civic engagement among refugees. This included offering workshops, creating guides, and holding 

events to bring the community together. Next slide.

We also identified five studies that highlight practices that could help organizations maximize the impact 

of volunteers, while also providing benefits to the volunteers themselves. So for example, assigning 

tasks that align to volunteers' goals, being supportive in your messaging to volunteers, providing 

professional development opportunities and building positive lasting relationships.

The evidence showed how these are associated with how long individuals continue to volunteer with 

their organization and the levels of satisfaction they have with their volunteer experience. Studies such 
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as these can provide AmeriCorps and its partners with important insights on how best to attract and 

retain AmeriCorps participants while also offering them meaningful national service experiences.

So now I'll close out and pass things off to Dave Medina, who is the COO and co-founder for Results for 

America. He'll share his perspectives on how AmeriCorps aims to advance the evidence and scholarship 

on volunteering and civic engagement. David.

David Medina:

Thanks a lot, Scott. Hello, everybody. I want to begin my brief remarks by thanking the entire 

AmeriCorps team for inviting me here today and to congratulate all of you on 30 years of evidencebased, results driven service. I also want to particularly thank Michael Smith for his strong leadership 

and his many years of friendship, and as well as Mary Hyde for her relentless focus on evidence and 

data.

Our results for America team has been partnering with AmeriCorps since 2014. During that time, 

AmeriCorps has built the capacity necessary to be able to build and use evidence and data in their 

budget, policy, and management decisions. They've invested more than 1% of their program funds in 

evaluation related activities each year. Very importantly, they've also defined and prioritized evidence of 

effectiveness in the allocation of AmeriCorps state and national grant program funds.

By setting aside 20 points out of a hundred, for applicants to the AmeriCorps State National Grant 

program with evidence of effectiveness, AmeriCorps has been able to increase the amount of 

AmeriCorps state national grant funds being invested in interventions with moderate or strong evidence 

to 50% this year. That is a major, major achievement. This groundbreaking work, which began in FY14, 

has helped lead the way for other federal departments to increasingly invest their own funds in what 

works through their own grant programs. Next slide, please.

For all of these reasons and more, we at Results for America, were very honored to have been able to 

present our Federal Standard of Excellence Silver Certification Award to AmeriCorps in 2022. They've 

been receiving similar awards since FY15. Next slide.

The federal AmeriCorps team, however, has also helped create positive momentum at the state level 

too. According to our analysis, 30 state service commissions, including many of yours, are currently 

using the same AmeriCorps state and national grant program application used at the federal level when 

allocating AmeriCorps state, national funds through their own state agencies. So I'll let you take a look at 

this slide for a few seconds to see if you are in one of the states that is defining and prioritizing evidence 

through the allocation of AmeriCorps state and national grants through your state.

This means that AmeriCorps headquarters and 30 state service commissions are very intentionally 

defining and prioritizing evidence of effectiveness when allocating these taxpayer dollars. From our 

perspective, this isn't just an amazing example of state and local coordination. It is unprecedented as far 

as we know across the federal government. So next slide.

If any of you work at a federal agency or a state service commission that is not currently doing this 

important work of defining and prioritizing evidence in your grant programs, please contact us at Results 

for America. Nichole Dunn, who's with us today, is the lead person to help with that. Just want to 

reiterate how important we see the work that has been done at AmeriCorps. It's not easy to ask grant 

applicants for this type of evidence, but it's so important to get to the outcomes that we all want.

So I'd like to just close my remarks today by once again, congratulating all of you, the entire AmeriCorps 

team, the AmeriCorps family for helping make our federal government more effective and efficient and 

also equally important for helping improve outcomes in communities all across the United States. So 

thanks to you all, and it is now my honor to introduce one of the nicest people in Washington DC, one of 
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the most passionate and most successful data and evidence champions here in our nation's capital, 

Mary Hyde.

Mary M. Hyde:

Thank you, David. That was very kind of you, kind introduction. Good afternoon or morning to all of you, 

depending on where you're sitting today. On behalf of AmeriCorps and the Office of Research and 

Evaluation, I want to thank you for taking time out of your day to help us celebrate our 30th anniversary 

and the evidence story we've been building together. Thank you to Scott and the Mathematica team for 

providing us with such a systematic, comprehensive, and independent review of what the body of 

evidence does and does not tell us about AmeriCorps impact on participants, partners, communities, 

and society.

The 2023 State of the Evidence report tells us where we've been and provides a clear roadmap for 

writing the next chapter of our evidence story. Thank you to Sonali, Mike, Antonio, and David for sharing 

your stories and your reflections on how AmeriCorps evidence resonates with your experiences as 

national service stewards and partners. Thank you to our CEO Michael Smith, who is such a critical 

champion of data and evidence. It is this type of commitment from the agency's top leader that helps 

foster a culture of learning and continuous improvement that is grounded in empirical evidence.

Last but certainly not least, I'm profoundly grateful to my team of researchers and evaluators and 

translators both past and present, who have believed so deeply in the transformative power of service, 

volunteering, and civic engagement, that they have dedicated their scholarly skills to building knowledge 

and service to improving lives.

Engaging in scholarship with societal relevance and impact crystallized as a professional goal for me 

after serving as a Jesuit volunteer in Baltimore, Maryland for Mark Shriver at the Choice Program. Like 

Antonio, I won't mention a name or age, but let's just say it was before AmeriCorps was born when I 

served with JVC. Prior to serving in the Jesuit Volunteer Corps, I was a student at Boston College, 

focused on a psychology major. I was engaged in research as an undergraduate and completed a 

research thesis that earned me the honor of being one of a handful of scholars of the college at 

graduation.

My goal was to earn a PhD and become a clinical psychologist that informed my practice with research. 

My Jesuit education also engaged me in service as an undergraduate, and the idea of contemplatives in 

action really resonated with me. I decided to serve in the Jesuit Volunteer Corps before applying to 

graduate school. That decision changed the course of my career. Just as Sonali mentioned her service 

changed her course.

I did go on to earn a master's and a PhD in a human services psychology program. I specialized in 

community and social psychology. I conducted my first program evaluation for my master's thesis. 

Community-based and community-driven research and the applied research practice of program 

evaluation became my professional home and identity. My personal and professional journey has 

informed my vision for the why and the how of building research and evaluation evidence. Building 

evidence in collaboration with those seeking to improve their individual and collective wellbeing is 

central to my approach to this work.

Building rigorous evidence with relevance to our most pressing social issues is my priority. If we are not 

building evidence that can be used to make the world a more just place for all of us, then what is the 

point? Because I believe so strongly that the end goal for researchers and evaluators ought to be about 

using evidence and not just building it, I find the recent guidance on evidence-based policymaking 

published by the United States Government Accountability Office in July of this year incredibly useful 
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and encouraging. If we can move to the next slide to show people what I'm talking about, that would be 

great.

The guidance identifies 13 key practices that can help federal leaders and employees develop and use 

evidence to effectively manage and assess the results of federal efforts. If you take a look at the visual 

on the screen, you'll see what I'm talking about. AmeriCorps can proudly say it has embraced many of 

these practices as we celebrate our 30th anniversary as an agency. For example, in terms of planning, 

planning for results, AmeriCorps published its first learning agenda before the Evidence Act was passed.

We updated this learning agenda, our strategic learning and evidence building plan in 2022 to ensure 

alignment with the agency's strategic plan, and you'll see a link on the screen that can get you to that 

learning agenda. We've also been very busy assessing and building evidence, as you can tell by today's 

content. AmeriCorps has published state of the evidence reports, as Scott mentioned, that summarize 

the body of evidence for national service, volunteering, and civic engagement.

Today we have shared the findings from our most recent report. As an agency, we have invested the 

resources needed to generate evidence that can be used for program design, program innovation, 

program improvement, and demonstrating program impacts. In addition to evidence-based 

policymaking, AmeriCorps has also invested in using evidence to foster an organizational culture of 

learning and continuous improvement.

Using evidence, also important according to these practices, is also something that we've been making 

significant progress on. To encourage the use of evidence AmeriCorps engages in the following activities. 

We communicate learning and results through workshops and webinars on evidence use. We've been 

disseminating reports and resources through AmeriCorps impact page and evidence exchange. We've 

been making data available to the public through our open data platform, and we have been integrating 

three important new roles into the AmeriCorps organization.

An Office of Research and Evaluation Learning officer, Katy, who you met at the top of the hour is 

responsible for facilitating agency-wide evidence-based learning. In addition, the agency has integrated 

a chief data officer who is focused on data, accountability, and transparency of AmeriCorps enterprise 

data. Last but not least, we have recently integrated a deputy chief of staff for strategic engagement

who has focused at least in part on using data and evidence to tell and sell the agency's story and 

communicate AmeriCorps value proposition to the public.

Our national service field is also using evidence in important ways. Just as David showed you with the 

commissions. I've had the privilege of joining the agency's director of AmeriCorps State and National on 

two site visits this year. Our first was to Poughkeepsie, New York to learn about how the city is using a 

planning grant to make service a core component of its cradle to career strategy. Central to this plan is 

the use of evidence-based national service solutions, which is giving the city a jumpstart in 

implementing its vision.

The second visit happened just this week. We joined Serve Virginia to celebrate the launch of the 

Virginia Community Engagement Index and the Virginia State Service Plan. Serve Virginia engaged 

community stakeholders in a data collection effort that has informed its strategic plan for strengthening 

Virginia's communities through service, volunteerism, and civic engagement. Our shared successes in 

building and using evidence are exciting and represent important progress, but our work is not done. 

Our next frontier for progress as an agency, our next moonshot, if you will, is deepening and sustaining 

our culture of learning and continuous improvement.

Continued success will require ongoing leadership commitment and involvement of all relevant 

stakeholders. A culture of organizational learning requires conversations, sometimes difficult, about 

accountability and resource decisions that affect the capacities needed to effectively build and use 
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evidence. A culture of organizational learning involves everyone, researchers, evaluators, nonresearchers, non-evaluators, everyone. This has real life implications for roles and responsibilities, for 

skills associated with translating and using evidence and day-to-day operations, and for the mindsets, 

perhaps most importantly, the mindsets needed to embrace learning and continuous improvement.

While not an easy road, I'm confident that AmeriCorps and its can-do spirit is up to the challenge.

Be sure to keep up with us on our evidence journey through our Research and Evaluation Digest, regular 

visits to ameriCorps.gov's impact page, which you will find a link to in the chat, and our future webinars. 

As a teaser for what is to come, just this year, we have built out exciting new evidence that wasn't 

captured in this year's State of the Evidence report.

For example, we have compelling information about civic life in America during COVID-19 that we 

collected through the current population survey, civic engagement, and volunteering supplement. This is 

a survey as Scott mentioned, that is sponsored by AmeriCorps and has been sponsored by us since 2002, 

and it's administered in partnership with the US Census Bureau. The 2023 data is being collected as we 

speak and will be analyzed and released in 2024.

As another example of what's to come, we have recently released reports and data about the 

AmeriCorps participant experience. This information is collected through our annual survey of national 

service participants. For those interested in how participating in a national service program can 

influence a range of experiences and help build civic leadership skills, including bridging differences, as 

we referenced earlier, visit our impact page to learn more about it.

We will be exploring ways to enhance this survey in 2024, including the integration of our AmeriCorps 

Seniors into this important data collection effort. As a final preview of evidence that will be hot off the 

press in the very near future, we have been conducting a series of multi-year studies on our NCCC 

program. The findings will shed light on the leadership development, retention, and community impacts 

of this program.

These are just a handful of examples that illustrate that the evidence building journey is not done, and 

we will continue to do so, but we will do so with the goal of using this evidence for improving lives. So 

stay tuned and thank you again for your interest in the AmeriCorps evidence story and for celebrating 

our 30th anniversary with us. With that, I will turn it back to Katy.

Katy Hussey-Stoniker:

We're now at the close of our webinar. We'd like to thank Mathematica for their independent 

assessment of our evidence base and this report and presentation. We'd also like to extend our 

appreciation to each of our panelists for their perspective on our work at the participant, partner, 

community, and societal levels. We hope we hit our mark for today's webinar objectives and that you 

walk away from the session excited about AmeriCorp's 30th anniversary and our evidence story. I hope 

you join the Office of Research and Evaluation all year long as we present celebratory evidence and 

discussions on the multiplier effect of AmeriCorps' work.

Our next webinar will be October 24th and we'll focus on equitable data use. Please join us as we host 

panelists from the White House Data Equity Working Group and our AmeriCorps chief data officer and

chief diversity, equity and inclusion officer. I'd like to extend a thank you to our Guardians of Honors 

colleagues for their technical support and coordination.

This webinar recording and support materials will be posted on the americorps.gov website under 

Impact Webinars within the coming weeks. Please feel free to share with your colleagues and networks. 

We will also be sending out a post webinar survey. So please let us know your thoughts on this webinar 
Transcript_FY24 AmeriCorps Impact Webinar _09.28.2023 Page 18 of 18

and any ideas for future webinars. We hope you'll have a wonderful rest of your day and thank you very 

much for being a part of our evidence story.