Projections and Policies for Volunteer Programs: The Implications of the Serve America Act for Volunteer Diversity and Management

• Published date: 01 September 2013
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1002/nml.21080
• Date: 01 September 2013

RESEARCH ARTICLES

Projections and Policies for

Volunteer Programs

The Implications of the Serve

America Act for Volunteer Diversity

and Management

Rebecca Nesbit,

1

Jeffrey L. Brudney

2

1University of Georgia, 2University of North Carolina Wilmington

This article explores the limits of public policy as it affects volun-

teerism in the United States. Our analysis focuses on the poten-

tial of the Edward M. Kennedy Serve America Act (2009), the

most sweeping volunteer legislation in U.S. history, to raise

the level of volunteering and national service in the United

States, particularly among young people, older people, and

minorities—the primary target populations of the act. The

Serve America Act aims to increase service-learning opportuni-

ties and national service placements substantially. However, the

long-term impact of these changes on the rate of volunteering

and the composition and character of the volunteering popula-

tion remains unclear. Using data from the Current Population

Survey’s annual Supplement on Volunteering, we examine a

variety of reasonable policy scenarios to see how the Serve

America Act might affect future volunteering through the year

2050. The findings suggest that even if the Serve America Act

is fully funded and implemented, it is unlikely to have a long-

term impact on the overall volunteering rate and, consequently,

that altering the national volunteering rate might be an unreal-

istic public policy goal. Nevertheless, the analysis shows that

because of naturally occurring changes in the population, the

composition of the volunteer pool is likely to change as we

Correspondence to: Rebecca Nesbit, University of Georgia, Department of Public

Administration and Policy, 103C Baldwin Hall, Athens, GA 30602-1615. E-mail:

nesbit7@uga.edu

NONPROFIT MANAGEMENT & LEADERSHIP, vol. 24, no. 1, Fall 2013 © 2013 Wiley Periodicals, Inc 3

Published online in Wiley Online Library (wileyonlinelibrary.com) DOI: 10.1002/nml.21080

4 NESBIT, BRUDNEY

Nonprofit Management & Leadership DOI: 10.1002/nml

move toward 2050—a demographic shift that will present

increased challenges for volunteer managers. We discuss these

challenges and how managers might deal with them effectively.

Keywords: volunteering, volunteering policy, Serve America

Act, volunteer management, national service

THE ENCOURAGEMENT OF VOLUNTEERING has long been public

policy in the United States, and the Serve America Act of

2009 presented the most dramatic expansion of the size and

scope of policies and institutions supporting national service

and volunteering. The goals and results of volunteering policy are

normally expressed quantitatively, with respect to increasing the

number of volunteers (Brudney 1999; Brudney and Gazley 2006).

For example, ServiceNation (2009), a strong supporter of the Serve

America Act, hoped and expected that the act would raise the

number of volunteers in the United States to 100 million by 2020,

up substantially from about 63 million in 2012. In this article we

evaluate the potential of this legislation, as claimed by its support-

ers, to change the landscape of volunteering and service in the

United States. To do so, we propose several realistic scenarios re-

garding the likely effects of the Serve America Act on volunteering

and, based on annual survey data provided by the Bureau of Labor

Statistics (BLS 2008), project these scenarios through the year

2050. Using these projections, we seek to inform nonprofit organi-

zations and their volunteer resource managers about ways that the

Serve America Act may affect them as they move into the future.

The Edward M. Kennedy Serve America Act

The Serve America Act has three main purposes: (1) to expand op-

portunities for Americans to provide volunteer service, (2) to

strengthen the nonprofit sector and support innovation in the sec-

tor, and (3) to increase the accountability and cost-effectiveness of

programs. Although the Serve America Act is intended to jump-

start volunteering for people in all stages of life, the special em-

phasis of the act is on volunteering and service among young

people, minority populations, and older Americans. Serve America

Act programs targeted toward youth include the Summer of Ser-

vice program, where sixth through twelfth graders receive a $500

education award ($750 for disadvantaged students) for participat-

ing in 100 hours of approved service; the Semester of Service pro-

gram, which is geared toward involving high school students in

seventy hours of service learning; and Youth Empowerment Zones,

which provide grants to eligible partnerships to engage secondary

students or out-of-school students in service learning. The act also

The Serve

America Act of

2009 presented

the most dramatic

expansion of the

size and scope of

policies and

institutions

supporting

national service

and volunteering.