AmeriCorps Missouri Operational Grant

The AmeriCorps Missouri Operational Grant aims to enhance community service through national service and volunteerism. Focused on underserved populations, it supports evidence-based interventions, especially in rural and urban areas facing poverty and social inequities. The grant prioritizes programs that bolster civic engagement, environmental stewardship, and workforce development for AmeriCorps members, ensuring a lasting impact in communities while promoting inclusivity and resilience.

Background
AmeriCorps improves lives, strengthens communities, and fosters civic engagement through service and volunteering. AmeriCorps brings people together to tackle some of the country’s most pressing challenges through national service and volunteerism. AmeriCorps members and AmeriCorps Seniors volunteers serve with organizations dedicated to the improvement of communities and those serving.
AmeriCorps grants are awarded to eligible organizations proposing to engage AmeriCorps members in evidence-based or evidence-informed interventions practices to strengthen communities. An AmeriCorps member is an individual who engages in community service through an approved national service position.
Funding Priorities
AmeriCorps’ priorities for this funding opportunity are:
Organizations leading service in communities with concentrated poverty, rural communities, tribal communities, and those organizations serving historically underrepresented and underserved individuals, including but not limited to communities of color, immigrants and refugees, people with disabilities, people who identify as part of the LGBTQIA+ community, people with arrest and/or conviction records, and religious minorities;Evidence-based interventions on the AmeriCorps Evidence Exchange that are assessed as having Moderate or Strong evidence. Please note that many of these interventions have demonstrated effectiveness in improving outcomes for individuals living in underserved communities and that the agency has committed resources to supporting grantees seeking to replicate and evaluate these interventions in similar communities;Veterans and Military Families, Caregivers, and Survivors – a program model that improves the quality of life of veterans and improves the well-being of military and veteran families, caregivers, and survivors;Faith-based organizations;Programs that provide additional benefits to AmeriCorps members aimed at enhancing member experience and bolstering member recruitment and retention such as paying more than the minimum living allowance, transportation, housing, food, etc.;Programs that create workforce pathways for AmeriCorps members, including deliberate training, certifications, and hiring preferences or support;Environmental Stewardship, including supporting communities to become more resilient through measures that reduce greenhouse gas emissions, conserve land and water, increase renewable energy use and improve at-risk ecosystems, especially in underserved households and communities;Community-based programs that enhance and expand services to second chance youth and or engage those youth as AmeriCorps members;Programs that support civic bridgebuilding programs and projects to reduce polarization and community divisions; and providing training in civic bridgebuilding skills and techniques to AmeriCorps members;Programs focused on implementing or expanding access to high-quality early learning and those that prepare AmeriCorps members to enter early learning careers.
In addition to these federal priorities, MCSC will prioritize the investment of national service resources in the following areas:
Geographic areas of the state that are currently underservedPrograms focusing on academic improvement in mathematicsUrban environmental stewardship programmingRacial justice programmingServing people/recruiting people with disabilitiesReturning citizens/incarcerated individuals programming