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Monthly Archives: September 2008
Setting the record straight on Public Allies
So lately I have noticed a lot of bizarre references to Public Allies in the blogosphere. Barack and Michelle Obama were involved with the Chicago program, so it’s pretty obvious the attacks have been politically motivated.
For example, one blogger referred to Public Allies participants as a “band of taxpayer-supported social misfits.” Another says of the program: “its real mission is to radicalize American youth and use them to bring about ‘social change’ through threats, pressure, tension and confrontation….” According to one, the national service program is connected to a “boot camp for radicals who hate the military.”
So after coming across so many offensive references to Public Allies (a group that has co-sponsored our Idealist.org graduate admissions fairs for several years), I am glad to see this note in the Chronicle of Philanthropy‘s web site shedding some light on the attacks. For more information, read the fact sheet Public Allies posted on its site about its relationship with the Obamas.
Participants in national service programs are prohibited from taking part in political activity during service hours or while wearing the AmeriCorps logo. Here is a good summary of other prohibited activities for AmeriCorps from the Serve Illinois web site. Further, people of all political backgrounds are inspired to become involved in their communities and take part in national service.
The conversation about the Service Nation Summit this week has been forcefully nonpartisan, people of all political ideologies will be involved with the event, and Summit volunteers have been encouraged to keep the conversation neutral. I get it that people who are in favor of smaller government resent the notion of government-funded volunteer programs, but I regret the tone these blogs are taking against citizen service.
John Bridgeland on renewing the Call to Serve
Co-organizer of the Service Nation Summit and CEO of Civic Enterprises John Bridgeland published an opinion piece in today’s Washington Times about the call to serve. After 9/11, Americans were encouraged and inspired to serve, but “after the war became divisive, the call to service grew quiet” he writes. Service Nation will help revive the call for citizen service.
Also check out today’s Social Capital blog post on turning 9/11 into a day of service, MyGoodDeed.org, and Service Nation.
Michael Brown and Robert Balfanz on National Service
Adding to the chorus of national service supporters this week, City Year CEO and co-founder Michael Brown, and Johns Hopkins research scientist Robert Balfanz have written an opinion piece “Volunteering to Get Tomorrow’s Dropouts on Track” published in today’s Boston Globe.
People who drop out of high school, they claim, not only give us warning signs that they are “off-track” but they can be put back on the right track if they get the support they need from trained, caring adult role models — the type of support that national service participants can offer.
Balfanz and Brown cite national service members’s desire to serve and the relatively low cost (in dollars) of supporting them.
Those pesky student loans
Amy is off to New York to see Obama, McCain, and maybe President Clinton at the Service Nation Summit, while I’m stuck in Portland contemplating the nuances of financial aid. At the least the weather is as close to perfect as can be.
I learned more about the Public Service Loan Forgiveness program. That’s the new law that allows people working at nonprofits to have their student loans forgiven after 10 years of steady payments, starting from October 2007. (One of the catches is that you need to have Direct Loans, but if you don’t, you can consolidate.)
For me the downside of the program is that if you don’t have huge loans, at the end of ten years of steady payments there won’t be much of a balance to be forgiven. Still, getting any student loan balance off the books is a wonderful thing and should be taken advantage of.
But then I learned about another program called Income-Based Repayment, with huge implications for AmeriCorps and VISTA members, as well as others earning low pay while working in the nonprofit sector.
It comes online in July 2009.
In a nutshell, the Income-Based Repayment program sets your loan repayment amount at a rate of 15 percent of your discretionary income. Without getting too much into the math, if you are below the poverty line, your payments could be $0 per month. Sure interest will accrue, but the idea is if you serve in AmeriCorps or VISTA for a year or two and hold a low-paying nonprofit job for the next nine or ten years, you could get your entire loan debt erased without making a single payment in that time. (You should check the list of qualifying loans. If you don’t have them, consider consolidating.)
The trick with either one of these programs is to start planning now if you think you might be taking advantage of these programs.
I will write more later about the pros and cons of the Income-Based Repayment program vs. the forbearance CNCS offers to AmeriCorps and VISTA members.
Update 11/07, from Put Barber, Senior Researcher at Idealist.org:
The Department of Education has published final regulations for the College Cost Reduction and Access Act of 2007 (CCRAA). This Act provides for loan forgiveness for full time employees of “public service organizations.” Nonprofit full-time employees (at least 30 hours a week) who are making monthly college loan repayments can count each month of nonprofit employment towards the 120 months of payments needed to qualify for forgiveness of the remaining loan balance, beginning with payments after October 1, 2007. Current nonprofit employees with outstanding student loans of more than nine years future duration can look forward to an end to the loan payments in after about nine more years of work for nonprofits.
The National Council of Nonprofit Organizations (NCNA), along with other national groups, worked throughout the rule-drafting process to extend this provision to employees of all 501(c)(3) organizations. For more information, see a Q & A on the NCNA website.
The New Service 