Google just announced a new national technology service corps, in partnership with the HandsOn Network and AmeriCorps*VISTA---not unlike the Digital Arts Service Corps I have managed for the past 4.5 years and will be shutting down this August as our funding expires. Google describes their program thusly:

These AmeriCorps*VISTA members will work full-time for one year developing introductory seminars and involved in-person trainings for smaller nonprofits that are working to lift people out of poverty. The Tech Corps will start in September with a one-week training at our campus in Mountain View, learning about both our nonprofit tools and cloud-based offerings from other technology companies like Salesforce.com and LinkedIn. Once they are armed with tech know-how, they’ll spend the rest of the year in three-person teams serving nonprofits in the Bay Area, Atlanta, Chicago, Detroit, New York City, Pittsburgh and Seattle.

Our response:

Google’s commitment is certainly a step in the right direction. However, we wish Google and HandsOn would place the particular needs of organizations at the forefront of their new initiative. Google mentions that its Tech Corps members will be trained in its own nonprofit tools. Although familiarity with these tools may prove helpful to some, the solutions its Corps will be able to offer organizations after this kind of training are still highly prescriptive and techno-centric. Nonprofits need and deserve to have a voice in determining the nature of the project that will presumably transform their organizations. For Corps members, much more important than technology skills are the skills to collaborate with organization staff and work toward a solution. For organizations, a technology solution that is well planned-for and has the support of staff is more valuable than a predetermined set of technology practices. Rather than prescribing specific practices, the Transmission Project serves as adviser during the project design process, so that organizations are prepared to maximize the impact that the addition of a Digital Arts Service Corps member makes.

The above was written by Howie Fisher and the top collage created by Billy Brown---both Digital Arts Service Corps members serving with the Transmission Project whose value far exceeds any training seminars they can deliver.

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I can’t speak to any teleological path leading me to where I am today. I can though give the short and contextualized version:

In 2001, as I was preparing to graduate from high school I really wanted to do AmeriCorps (or the military, but my parents were strongly against that). I also hedged my bets and applied to some state colleges—being in California I had some decent options. Unfortunately my AmeriCorps dreams were cut short when my entire application packet (motivational essays, letters of reference, etc.) was lost by the USPS… or so I assumed since no one from AmeriCorps was ever able to consistently return my phone calls. So I went to college.

Three years later, as I was preparing to graduate from college I was looking for things to do. My parents were strongly against me enlisting the previous year (when I really wanted to go) and my friends now in the officer’s program weren’t singing many praises either. I was accepted into Teach for America; but after taking their welcome packet’s advice and calling some alumni, I was told that the benefits I really wanted—structured personal and professional development—weren’t there. The post-graduation internship I really wanted at a local defense contractor didn’t come through either. So I (re)applied to AmeriCorps. To my glee, the new application packet now came with a FedEx envelope. So I moved to Boston to serve in AmeriCorps.

Five years later, I haven’t moved far from that. Working within and with nonprofit organizations has afforded me a lot of flexibility in the work I do and the people I do it with. I find myself driven more by excellence than by mission. Mostly I enjoy the direct problem solving and latitude I have: I haven’t worked myself out of a job yet, so there is obviously room for innovation.

If that’s not a millenial memoir, I don’t know what is.

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The problem with the title “community organizer” is that most Americans are not familiar with it because it is an inner city position/term.

HOWEVER,people are familiar with the title of someone who does exactly the same job in the rural areas of America: the Community Outreach Minister.

This person is employed by a church to find and then help people who need it. Example: the poor elderly lady who needs a new roof; the family who has holes in their floor; the population pocket (community) that has no street lights or a recreation area with a hoop and with a baseball diamond; the extremely rural area that needs a paved road so that the school bus can pick up the children that live along the road.

I hope that this clarifies the job “community organizer.”

I tried googling: +"Community Organizer" +"Community Outreach Minister" and only got one hit, which makes it a North/South split, rather than an Urban/Rural one (though it could be the same commenter since its essentially the same set of examples---or I'm just adding to the echo chamber):

You all don't know your lingo. A community organizer is the same thing as an community outreach minister in a church. The former is yankee and the latter is southern. The last church I belonged to did exactly what a community organizer does: got the (church) community to put a roof on an elderly (poor) lady's house, put a floor in a poor man's trailer, clothed a family whose home had burned down, and organized a group of families who lived on a dirt road to petition their senator for C-funds to pave the road so that the school bus could come up it and get their children. So what is your problem? Ignorance?

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Last April, the Corporation reported in its Volunteering in America study that while America’s overall volunteer rate remains at historically high levels, nearly 21 million of the over 61.2 million Americans who volunteered for nonprofit organizations in 2005 didn’t volunteer the following year. This represents an estimated annual loss to nonprofits of approximately $30 billion dollars worth of volunteer labor.

From a Press Release by Sandy Scott at the Corporation for National and Community Service entitled “National Service Agency Awards Funds for Innovation In Volunteer Management” .

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