Take Action TODAY to Save National Service Funding - MNA Action Alert
July 2012
This week the U.S. House Appropriations Committee released a draft of their funding bill that once again calls for damaging cuts to National Service and the elimination of the Corporation for National and Community Service (CNCS).
While it preserves funding for the three Senior Corps programs, the bill directs agency staff to shut down the CNCS and eliminates funding for vital programs such as AmeriCorps, the Volunteer Generation Fund, VISTA, the National Civilian Community Corps, and the Social Innovation Fund.
Many Michigan communities and nonprofits have been helped through these vital programs. These programs have provided critical and countless benefits including education, mentoring, nursing, infrastructure repair and disaster relief. We need them now more than ever, and we need your voice to help protect their work. CNCS has seen an 8% cut since fiscal year 2010 - that's $100 million dollars in the last two years. Our communities and families can’t let this slide continue nor allow the outright elimination of a national service movement.
The House Subcommittee will be meeting tomorrow to consider these recommendations. Here is what we all must do in the next 24-48 hours:
- Please tweet at your Member of Congress and tell them why #nationalservice is important in your community;
- Please tell them through Facebook what will be lost if the Corporation for National and Community Service is eliminated;
- Please make phone calls to their offices letting them know that national service has a strong voice and that our advocates will remember their support come November.
Don't know to contact your lawmaker? Go to MNA';s website and see the directory. While you can sign up for policy alerts. (http://www.mnaonline.org/actioncenter.aspx)
Not sure of your advocacy rights and responsibilities? Go to MNA's policy resources page. (http://www.mnaonline.org/actioncenter.aspx)
Need to know what national programs are in your Congress member's district? Go to MNA's Budget Resource page (https://sites.google.com/site/budgetadvocacygroup/home/corporation-for-national-community-service-funding).
Michiganders who serve need you to put steady and consistent pressure on our federal legislators, urging them to take a stand for national service at a time when service organizations are more relied upon than ever.
Michigan Nonprofit Association Action Alert