The Corporation is part of the USA Freedom Corps, a White House initiative to foster a culture of citizenship, service, and responsibility, and help all Americans answer the President’s Call to Service. The Corporation maintains administrative field offices in almost every state. AmeriCorps was created in 1993 and is one of three national service programs the Corporation oversees: the Senior Corps, AmeriCorps, and Learn and Serve America. AmeriCorps consists of three programs: AmeriCorps State and National (state and national), AmeriCorps VISTA (Volunteers in Service to America), and AmeriCorps NCCC (National Civilian Community Corps). AmeriCorps programs for tribes and territories are included in state and national programs. The Corporation makes grants from its program appropriations to help grant recipients carry out national service programs. These include programs that tutor and mentor youth, build affordable housing, teach computer skills, clean parks and streams, run after-school activities, help communities respond to disasters, and those that are related to homeland security. About 60 percent of the Corporation’s fiscal year 2003 grant funds for AmeriCorps programs went to state service commissions, tribes, and national direct grantees for AmeriCorps State and National programs, which award subgrants to nonprofit groups, which then enroll the AmeriCorps participants. The remaining grant and administrative funding paid for VISTA and NCCC participants—about 32 percent and 8 percent respectively, in 2003. AmeriCorps is open to U.S. citizens and nationals or lawful permanent resident aliens age 17 and older. Participants in the AmeriCorps program can receive stipends as well as health benefits and child care coverage. For example, about one-half of AmeriCorps participants received a $9,300 living allowance and health benefits in program year 2002. Those participants who successfully complete a required term of service earn a national service education award that can be used to pay tuition, fees, and expenses for undergraduate school, graduate school, or an approved school-to-work program, or to pay back qualified student loans. In exchange for a term of service, full-time AmeriCorps participants earned an education award of $4,725 in program year 2002. VISTA participants can elect to receive a cash stipend instead of an education award. About one-third of VISTA participants chose to take the stipend rather than the education award in 2002. Figure 1 illustrates the flow of the funds and information for the AmeriCorps program. According to the Corporation’s Trust database, AmeriCorps enrollments more than doubled between 1994 and 2000. Overall AmeriCorps enrollments increased from about 25,000 in 1994 to about 42,000 in 1999, to over 59,000 in 2001. Enrollments fell in 2002 because of the suspension of enrollments and were legislatively limited to 50,000 in 2003. The Corporation requested Trust funding to support 75,000 new enrollments for 2004. AmeriCorps enrolls participants on a full-time and a part-time basis. Part- time participants who serve 900 hours or less annually earn education awards proportional to the hours served. During the first three years when AmeriCorps programs enrolled participants, 60 percent or more of the participants served in full-time positions. By 2000 less than 50 percent of the participants were full-time, and Corporation officials stated that they are planning for about a 50/50 full-time/part-time mix in 2004. Trends in total enrollment from 1994 to 2002, and projected enrollment for 2003, and the full-time and part-time mix of participants for each year are shown in figure 2. Additionally, AmeriCorps enrolls “education award only” participants. AmeriCorps does not pay these participants a living allowance or other benefits, but it provides funding to grantees for administrative purposes only, about $400 annually per participant. However, each education award participant receives an education award equivalent to that earned by a paid AmeriCorps member. More than half of the AmeriCorps enrollment growth has come from grants that provide participants no benefits other than the education award. The Corporation reports there has been high interest in these grants in recent years. Enrollments for these positions increased from fewer than 6,500 in 1999 to almost 16,000 in 2001. All participants—full-time, part-time, and education award—have up to 7 years after they successfully complete their service to use their education awards. AmeriCorps also distributes funds to high school students through Presidential Freedom Scholarships. These scholarships are valued at $500 for each participant. For 2003 and 2004, the Corporation planned to award about 7,000 Presidential Freedom Scholarships. The Government Corporation Control Act requires the Corporation to have an annual audit of its financial statements. The Corporation prepares its financial statements using generally accepted accounting principles that are used by private sector corporations and federal corporations. The Corporation plans to include a statement of net cost and a statement of budgetary resources as supplemental information in its annual Performance and Accountability Report by fiscal year 2005. The Corporation’s financial statement auditor reported that in fiscal year 2002 the Corporation approved AmeriCorps national service positions in excess of the number of positions that the Trust could support. In November 2002 the Corporation suspended enrollments in AmeriCorps. Several factors contributed to the need to suspend enrollments, including a lack of communication among staff responsible for program and Trust operations. The Office of the Inspector General (OIG) reported in April 2003 that the AmeriCorps program approved grants for thousands of positions more than were used in the Corporation’s model to estimate the funding needs of the National Service Trust. On July 24, 2003, the OIG reported the Corporation had enrolled more AmeriCorps participants than the Corporation’s National Service Trust could support, and as a result, beginning in 2000, the Trust’s liabilities exceeded the funds it had available from appropriations and interest earnings. In that report, the OIG concluded that the Corporation had violated the Antideficiency Act. The Antideficiency Act prohibits an employee or officer of the United States government from making or authorizing an expenditure or obligation exceeding an amount available in an appropriation. The Corporation submitted an Antideficiency Act report to OMB, but as of December 2003, the report, including the amount of the deficiency, had not been submitted to the President and the Congress. For more information see appendix II. Discrepancies between the information in the Trust database and participant documentation indicate that not all AmeriCorps enrollment and exit information has been accurately recorded in the Trust database. Some of these discrepancies could affect the estimated probable expenditures of the Trust because these data are used to estimate the amount of education awards the Corporation will ultimately pay. Furthermore, the Corporation does not have complete or current user documentation for the Trust database. Without clear documentation explaining the components of the database, the Corporation may be at risk of not being able to properly interpret and analyze its participant data. Out of about 172,000 enrollments in program years 2000 to 2002, we obtained sufficient documentation to estimate the extent of discrepancies for about 158,000 enrollments. We estimate that about 5 percent (8,300 enrollments) have a discrepancy between the Trust database and participant documentation. Of these, about 3 percent (4,400 enrollments) could affect estimates of future probable expenditures of the Trust. Figure 3 illustrates these results. Several of the discrepancies that could affect what is owed by the Trust were similar in nature. One of the most frequently occurring discrepancies pertained to cases in which the Trust database showed participants were still serving while their documentation showed they had exited the program without earning an award. For several other cases, the Trust data showed VISTA participants were still serving while the documentation showed they had elected to receive a cash stipend instead of an education award. According to an AmeriCorps official, cash stipends are not paid from funds in the Trust. In several other cases, the Trust data showed participants were still serving while their documentation showed they had signed up for a shorter term of service and should have exited the program. The Corporation acknowledged it would need to take further action to determine the actual status of these cases. The specific discrepancies we found that could affect the amount owed by the Trust are described in appendix III. Nearly all the discrepancies that will not affect the amount owed by the Trust were for cases without an enrollment date on the form, although an enrollment date was in the database. These cases do not affect the estimate of what the Trust owes because other information in the documentation was consistent with the database, such as whether or not the participant earned an award. Corporation officials told us an enrollment date should be recorded on the forms and that they would issue clarifying instructions to grantees. According to Corporation officials, there are numerous processes designed to help ensure the accuracy and validity of its data. However, the results of our analysis raise questions about the effectiveness of some of these processes. The Corporation has controls over who may enter or change participant information in the Web-Based Reporting System (WBRS), and several edit and data checks are in place to ensure data is entered properly and completely. For example, only a grantee’s program director can certify that participants have completed their service and qualified for an award, and WBRS will not allow grantees to enroll more participants than the number of slots they were awarded. Corporation officials also stated that a number of data checks are performed when WBRS data are transferred to the Trust database. For example, after each weekly upload, an error report is generated showing such things as participants who had not been officially enrolled in the Trust and duplicate enrollments. Furthermore, the Corporation’s fiscal year 2001 Performance and Accountability Report noted that the Corporation had instituted a procedure to randomly sample and verify enrollment and exit data on an annual basis.