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Dear Service Leader,
Today President Obama is sending his Fiscal Year 2013 budget request to Congress, including proposed funding for the Corporation for National and Community Service and its programs. You can read the complete budget request now on our budget page.
The President’s budget requests $1.063 billion for the Corporation for National and Community Service in FY 2013, an increase of $13.8 million over the current funding level.
The President’s budget proposes a strong investment in national service programs, supporting millions of Americans in building community solutions to our nation’s most pressing challenges. It bolsters funding for key national service infrastructure and delivery systems, which are critical to delivering results in communities. And by strengthening competition, aligning resources, and measuring performance, the budget will enable CNCS and the network it supports to meet community needs with higher levels of efficiency, accountability and impact.
For nearly two decades, national service programs have improved lives, strengthened communities, and fostered civic engagement through service and volunteering. Based on principles of local control, competition, accountability, and public-private partnership, CNCS supports more than 70,000 community and faith-based organizations engaging millions of Americans in results-driven service each year.
The need for national service has never been greater. The nation faces serious social needs and fiscal challenges, and American households, businesses, nonprofit organizations, and governments at every level are making tough choices with tight budgets.
Our national service programs are a cost-effective strategy to help meet these needs. They tap the energy of our nation’s greatest resource – the American people – and focus it on pressing social problems. In addition, the Social Innovation Fund leverages a modest investment of public funds to significantly expand promising nonprofit programs serving low-income communities.
The FY 2013 CNCS budget will bring vital leadership, resources, and coordination to some of the most pressing challenges that America has ahead: supporting individuals, organizations, and communities on the road to economic recovery; addressing the needs of a new wave of veterans returning from war; putting disadvantaged youth on the path to success through service; educating students for jobs of the 21st century; helping communities rebuild after natural disasters; and harnessing the skills and experience of an older generation projected to retire in record numbers.
The budget also strengthens the national service delivery system to achieve higher levels of efficiency, accountability, and impact. Guided by the vision of the Serve America Act and our comprehensive five-year Strategic Plan, CNCS will focus on a core set of social needs; drive and measure performance; expand cross-sector partnerships and interagency collaboration; leverage private sector resources; and embrace innovative models and modern technology to make the best use of limited resources.
National service provides a powerful return on investment: benefiting the people who serve, those who are served, and the larger community and nation by using service as a cost-effective solution to critical challenges.
America has always been at its best when citizens work together, joined in common purpose. A sense of shared responsibility is woven into the fabric of our nation. In this era of fiscal restraint and growing social needs, Americans remain eager to do their part.
Enactment of this budget will allow CNCS to harness the energy and ingenuity of citizens and bolster the capacity of the social sector to tackle tough problems in the most effective and quintessentially American way possible: from the ground up.
In Service,
Robert Velasco, II
Acting Chief Executive Officer
Corporation for National and Community Service
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