AmeriCorps 2023 State of the Evidence Report
AmeriCorps Learning from Evidence and Research on National Service (AmeriCorps LEARNS)
Prepared for:
AmeriCorps, The Office of Research and Evaluation (ORE)
Across the four domains that represent where AmeriCorps seeks to make an impact through its investments, the report found that for:
- Participants: Sixteen studies (14 percent of 116 studies) examined AmeriCorps participants’ characteristics and the benefits participants experience through serving or volunteering with AmeriCorps.
- Partners: Ten studies (9 percent of 116 studies) examined whether AmeriCorps helped build the capacity of partners—grantees and sponsor organizations—to achieve their missions and better serve their communities.
- Communities: Seventy-one studies (61 percent of 116 studies) examined how communities and the individuals within them benefit from AmeriCorps-funded interventions, the value generated from investing in AmeriCorps-funded interventions, or how to scale interventions to increase the scope of their impact.
- Society: Twenty-five studies (22 percent of 116 studies) furthered evidence on national service, volunteering, and civic engagement in the United States.
The AmeriCorps Office of Research and Evaluation (ORE) builds a portfolio of evidence around the agency’s mission and its programs. As a follow-up from the first State of the Evidence report published in 2017, this 2023 State of the Evidence report synthesizes key themes from studies produced by or for AmeriCorps from 2017 to 2022 with the goal of describing the state of the evidence where the agency seeks to make an impact. A discussion of AmeriCorps' earlier evidence and findings are not included in this 2023 report. The synthesis includes publicly published findings from AmeriCorps ORE research grantee studies, third-party evaluations, systematic reviews, meta-synthesis evaluations, and AmeriCorps ORE’s own research and evidence-building activities.
The report is informed by a framework with four domains that represent where AmeriCorps seeks to make an impact through its investments in national service and volunteerism: participants, partners, communities, and society. AmeriCorps seeks to build evidence related to each of these domains in pursuit of the agency’s mission.
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