NYC Civic Corps
Illumination Grant
The Illumination Fund and the Jonathan and LizzieTisch Foundation provided the start-up funding for the NYC Civic Corps, a core component of NYC Service, which is Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s comprehensive initiative to promote a new era of volunteerism in New York City and direct volunteers toward the City’s areas of greatest need. Through the NYC Civic Corps, an AmeriCorps program, small teams of specially-trained members are assigned to help nonprofit organizations and City agencies to recruit, engage and direct volunteers to meet New York City’s pressing needs in Economic Opportunity, Environment & Clean Energy, Education and Health. The Civic Corps members go beyond hands-on service – they spend their 10-month terms developing and implementing capacity-building strategies designed to create sustainable volunteer management structures so the participating organizations can continue to effectively engage volunteers. In the program’s first three years, 448 Civic Corps members have been hosted by 97 unique organizations and have helped organizations utilize 1.7 million new volunteers.