This article was originally published in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel on April 17.
By Mary Spicuzza, Tamia Fowlkes, and Madeline Heim
KEY POINTS
- AmeriCorps’ National Civilian Community Corps members were discharged on Tuesday.
- Volunteers were expected to build houses, work as camp counselors and build trails.
- The program appears to have come under cuts from the Elon Musk-led Department of Government Efficiency.
One crew of young volunteers was going to build a home in northwestern Wisconsin this summer.
A second group was set to be camp counselors for a “sibling camp” in Plymouth that brings together children separated by the foster care system.
And a third crew was heading to Wausau to build and restore houses and clear trails.
But none of them are coming anymore, Wisconsin nonprofits learned Wednesday.
The volunteers, who were part of the AmeriCorps National Civilian Community Corps, were discharged this week as President Donald Trump and his billionaire ally Elon Musk slash the size of the federal government through the efforts of the Musk-led Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE.
“That’s off,” Jeanne Duffy, executive director of Serve Wisconsin, said Wednesday of plans for AmeriCorps NCCC volunteers to work in the state in the coming months.
The AmeriCorps NCCC members were discharged on Tuesday. The following day, AmeriCorps staff began to receive notices placing them on paid administrative leave effective immediately, The Washington Post and other news outlets reported. It wasn’t immediately clear Thursday how the latest round of cuts would affect other people and organizations in Wisconsin who work with AmeriCorps.
A Trump administration official said about 75% of full-time AmeriCorps employees were placed on administrative leave, citing recent audits and concerns about waste, fraud and abuse in the agency.
The cuts come after dozens of groups in Wisconsin have relied on AmeriCorps NCCC over the years. AmeriCorps NCCC is a full-time, residential service program for 18- to 26-year-olds that involves working in teams of 8 to 12 members on service projects, according to its website. They also help following disasters, such as forest fires, hurricanes or tornadoes.
The program provides members who complete their service with money for education expenses or to apply to certain student loans.
AmeriCorps, the federal agency for national service and volunteerism, was created by President Bill Clinton more than 30 years ago. By 2023, more than 1.25 million Americans had served in the program, according to the group.
“That was the joy of NCCC,” Duffy said. “They could come in just for four to six weeks, eight weeks — whatever the project that our state needed — and provide the people power to get the work done.”
Wild Rivers Habitat for Humanity was expecting a crew of 8 to 10 AmeriCorps NCCC volunteers to arrive in July to help build a house in Webster, a village west of Spooner in Burnett County.
“We are at this point in time, just not even 24 hours into the announcement, pivoting and regrouping and trying to come up with Plan B,” said Jennifer Johnson, the group’s executive director. “And I don’t know what that will be yet.”
The volunteers were going to help build veterans or workforce housing, which is “a significant need in all nine counties that we service,” Johnson said.
They are still planning to build the home but need to find new volunteers.
“I have no doubt, knowing our communities and the people that we serve, that we will be able to figure that out,” Johnson said. “But it was quite an unexpected surprise, and it will likely delay that project.”
Belong Wisconsin also learned Wednesday that the group of 8 to 10 AmeriCorps NCCC volunteers expected to help run its August “sibling camp” for children separated by the foster care system would not be coming.
“It’s very devastating,” said Eshalon Mayer, the executive director of Belong WIsconsin.
The weeklong program, which is held at Camp Anokijig in Plymouth, serves families throughout Wisconsin. She said the NCCC volunteers served as role models in the past, and have helped Belong Wisconsin accept more campers.
This year they’re still hoping to serve as many as 50 children and are now recruiting volunteers.
“We will try and make up those numbers that the NCCC team would have been,” Mayer said.
Some programs that use AmeriCorps are still waiting for word
Other programs that rely on AmeriCorps were still waiting to learn the status of their volunteers.
Mark Guzman, director of the Milwaukee Justice Center’s program, received an email from the Wisconsin State Coalition for AmeriCorps on Tuesday evening disclosing the impending cuts to AmeriCorps NCCC programs.
Though the email contained no information on how the cuts might impact other Wisconsin programs, he said, Guzman and his colleagues are anxious that more positions could be at risk.
For the Milwaukee Justice Center, AmeriCorps members are vital to the organization’s community assistance programs. AmeriCorps participants staff the organization’s civil legal helpline Monday through Friday and operate two legal assistance booths in the courthouse, helping clients navigate paperwork and move throughout the courthouse.
“If we didn’t have members, we would probably lose that service, and then people would lose the assistance they would need in finding legal information to know what their rights are,” Guzman said.
Twenty-three AmeriCorps members work for the Milwaukee Justice Center. All receive job training and living allowances in addition to preparation for entering the workforce full time. Guzman said any program cuts are a major loss for the young professionals the organization serves.
Andrew Struck, director of planning and parks for Ozaukee County, said his department has hosted an AmeriCorps NCCC team for at least the past six years to help with invasive species removal, tree planting and general maintenance at county parks.
With the help of a U.S. Forest Service grant, the department is working toward what Struck called an ambitious goal of planting thousands of trees at Cedar Gorge Clay Bluffs preserve, a newly acquired county property on the shore of Lake Michigan, and other parks. He planned to apply for an NCCC team this fall to assist with those plantings but received word April 16 that the program had been halted.
Because tree planting can only occur at certain times of year, the department is already up against a deadline to get the work done before its grant money runs out — and not having access to AmeriCorps partners won’t help with that, Struck said. County staff may have to pick up more work, he said, or they’ll look for other volunteers, but still, it “certainly is a possibility that projects won’t get done.”
The AmeriCorps partnership is a mutually beneficial one, Struck said, because the county gets a few more helping hands and the team receives targeted education and training.
“We enjoyed, beyond just the actual project, that aspect of training our next leaders,” Struck said. “(The program) has been really valuable to us. Hopefully this is a temporary pause.”