AmeriCorps volunteers in San Francisco, who commit to a year of service work in exchange for a modest stipend and education funding, say they are shaken by uncertainty after the White House cut $400 million from about 1,000 nonprofits that the volunteer program funds nationwide.
“This felt like a very cool network,” said Jaden De La Cruz, who served with AmeriCorps at Mission Graduates, a nonprofit in San Francisco focused on helping students transition to college.
AmeriCorps’ stipends reach volunteers through federal grants to states. In California, those are distributed to California Volunteers, a state agency. In fiscal year 2024-2025, AmeriCorps distributed $10 million to volunteers at Bay Area groups. Ninety percent of that was federal money.
At Mission Graduates, De La Cruz worked directly with students at John O’Connell High School in the Mission. She was counting on the possibility of staying on for a second year, “but the cuts completely terminated Plan B for me,” she said.
A series of court decisions this spring have restored AmeriCorps funding to San Francisco — about $1.9 million that was previously revoked. Several nonprofits that were slated to suffer cuts are preparing to bring volunteers back in the fall, and have reposted open positions.
But still, service organizations expect AmeriCorps to be significantly reduced in future years. Some nonprofits say they’re wary of welcoming a new class of volunteers after such a volatile year. The volunteers aren’t sure they want to return. And the future of AmeriCorps is still being decided in federal courts.
“A lot of people are probably not going to come back, because they had to move on and they had to figure out their next job, and they had to figure out where they’re going to go,” said Josh Fryday, director of California Volunteers’ GO-Serve program.
“The disappointing part of what DOGE and then the administration, the federal administration, did was infuse chaos and infuse ambiguity into the situation,” he added.
Nonprofits reeling from both federal and local cuts
In April, when the national AmeriCorps agency axed its funding to California Volunteers, the organization was paying stipends to 175 volunteers at 61 locations in San Francisco.
Many were working in education nonprofits or public schools, doing college preparation work or personalized tutoring, providing much-needed help at a time when the San Francisco Unified School District has been contending with a $114 million budget deficit.
After the cuts to the program from the federal government in April, a preliminary injunction in June reinstated some funding for programs in 24 states. A court decision on June 19 offered more optimistic news: A judge blocked the Trump administration from pulling funding from AmeriCorps programs for their promotion of DEI initiatives, in a lawsuit that was spearheaded by the SFUSD.
Several AmeriCorps volunteers reported feeling confused and hopeless after April’s round of cuts, which were delivered on a Monday with the instruction that they should not come to work the next day.
“It was awful. It felt like I was grieving a loss at the end of it,” said May Uriarte, another AmeriCorps volunteer working at Mission Graduates. “Not being able to say goodbye to our students as we found out from one day to the next was really hard.”
Nonprofits in the Bay Area have relied on AmeriCorps for cheap labor and workforce recruitment. In San Francisco, many of those same nonprofits are also contending with $200 million in proposed city budget cuts.
“For nonprofits, the AmeriCorps program is a lifesaver, in terms of providing needed staffing … and doing it in a way that is much less expensive than hiring a full-time staff person,” said Edward Kaufman, CEO of Mission Graduates.
Uncertain future for AmeriCorps
Mission Graduates had five AmeriCorps volunteers, including De La Cruz, working with its staff in schools and after-school programs before April’s round of cuts. The organization secured some outside funding to extend a few positions beyond April, but ultimately cut short all of its fellows’ terms.
In De La Cruz’s case, after the injunction, Mission Graduates invited her to apply for another year with the program, but warned her that a court decision could still rule in favor of the federal government’s cuts, effectively ending AmeriCorps, or the federal government could intervene again in some chaotic and unpredictable way.
Since the court injunction restored funding last month, Fryday said he’d heard mixed reactions from organizations on whether they hope to have AmeriCorps members back in their workforce in the fall.
Some are “full steam ahead” on continuing. Others are deciding not to “because of the ambiguity and the volatility,” he said.
De La Cruz, for her part, said she hoped to return to Mission Graduates in the fall. But she was warned that the size of her AmeriCorps cohort would be a fraction of what it was this year.
“They’re an incredible source of new talent. They’re an incredible source of future employees,” Kaufman said of the AmeriCorps volunteers. “And now, we don’t know what we’re gonna do.”
Jessica,
Welcome to the staff of the best little paper in town.
You’re focusing on the negatives.
On the upside, the Rich got a lot richer.
And, freed of the massive debt and focused indoctrination by mediocre college teachers, Mission students can learn from the World’s best academics from a hill in Dolores Park.
Let’s just focus making this year’s Hill Bomb safe and fun and convincing Mayor Lurie to let us pick the next Police Chief cause he has to be figuring out about now that the cops surrounding him who have worked their way to the top, most of em, not just don’t love SF but hate it.
Today’s San Francisco, that is.
They prefer one with no women carrying guns and badges.
It’s a tough problem, Daniel and you should let us help you by giving 500,000 registered voters the favor of letting us choose a Top Cop who will resist Trumpism with us.
Let the People’s Choice empowered to do all hiring and firing and suspending w/out pay (cuts lawsuits short) and let them deal with Commander McCray’s SFPOA who are a real ‘enemy of the people’.
We can do this all on our own cause we have before.
More than a thousand people were killed in Draft Riots in New York City during the Civil War because some poor White people (the rich were allowed to send a hireling) didn’t want to fight to free Black people from slavery.
My great-great grandfather, George Francis Gamble died on the battlefield at Iuka, Mississippi in 1862 fighting against slavery and my family has been in the military since the Revolutionary War and I did my 6 years in the Navy and fought fires wearing an American flag on my left shoulder for 5 years.
In short, my family represents the real America more than the Trumps ever will and we should get ready for the Donald to send an occupying force of active duty U.S. Marines here soon as he has gotten a toehold in LA.
Whatever you do, don’t forget to have some fun every day !!
After all, you live in San Francisco and that pisses them off.
go Niners !!
h.