AmeriCorps Seniors Regulation Updates

CORPORATION FOR NATIONAL AND COMMUNITY SERVICE <CFR>45 CFR Parts 2551, 2552, and 2553</CFR> <RIN>RIN 3045-AA81</RIN> <SUBJECT>AmeriCorps Seniors Regulation Updates</SUBJECT> <HD SOURCE="HED">AGENCY:</HD> Corporation for National and Community Service. <HD SOURCE="HED">ACTION:</HD> Proposed rule with request for comments. <SUM> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUMMARY:</HD> The Corporation for National and Community Service (operating as AmeriCorps) proposes to revise its regulations governing AmeriCorps Seniors programs. This proposed rule would remove barriers to service for individuals and increase flexibility for sponsors to determine the best mix of staffing and resources to accomplish project goals. Specifically, this proposed rule would remove barriers for individuals to serve as AmeriCorps Seniors volunteers in three ways: first, by limiting what is considered income in the calculation that determines eligibility to receive a stipend; second, by allowing volunteers to continue to receive a stipend when their sponsor places them on administrative leave due to extenuating circumstances that prevent service; and third, by allowing sponsors to supplement stipends. This proposed rule would increase flexibility for AmeriCorps Seniors sponsors in three ways: first, by removing the prescriptive requirement for them to employ a full-time project director; second, by establishing a single 10 percent match value regardless of grant year; and third, by allowing sponsors to choose to pay more than (but not less than) the AmeriCorps-established stipend rates using non-AmeriCorps funds for the amount exceeding the AmeriCorps-established rate. These proposed changes would allow sponsors to determine the best staffing and volunteer mix to support projects and how to devote resources that would otherwise be devoted to meet increasingly high match requirements. This proposed rule would also update nomenclature to reflect that the Corporation for National and Community Service operates as AmeriCorps and that “Senior Corps” is now known as “AmeriCorps Seniors.” </SUM> <EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">DATES:</HD> Written comments must be submitted by April 15, 2024. </EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">ADDRESSES:</HD> You may send your comments electronically through the Federal Government's one-stop rulemaking website at <E T="03">www.regulations.gov.</E> You may also send your comments to Elizabeth Appel, Associate General Counsel, at <E T="03">eappel@americorps.gov</E> or by mail to AmeriCorps (ATTN: Elizabeth Appel), 250 E Street SW, Washington, DC 20525. <FURINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT:</HD> Robin Corindo, Deputy Director, AmeriCorps Seniors, at <E T="03">rcorindo@americorps.gov,</E> (202) 489-5578. </FURINF> <SUPLINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION:</HD> <HD SOURCE="HD1">I. Background</HD> AmeriCorps Seniors operates four programs: the Senior Companion Program (SCP), Foster Grandparent Program (FGP), Retired and Senior Volunteer Program (RSVP), and a Senior Demonstration Program. This proposed rule would affect regulations implementing the first three programs. These programs are authorized by the Domestic Volunteer Service Act of 1973, as amended, 42 U.S.C. 4950 <E T="03">et seq.,</E> and this rulemaking is authorized by the National and Community Service Act of 1990, as amended, 42 U.S.C. 12501 <E T="03">et seq.</E> AmeriCorps Seniors SCP and FGP each provide grants to qualified agencies and organizations (known as grantees or sponsors) for the dual purpose of engaging persons 55 and older, particularly those with limited incomes, in volunteer service to meet critical community needs and to provide a high-quality experience that will enrich the lives of the volunteers. In SCP, program funds are used to support Senior Companions in providing supportive, individualized services to help older adults with special needs maintain their dignity and independence. They also serve caregivers with respite support. In FGP, program funds are used to support Foster Grandparents in providing supportive, person-to-person service to children with special and/or exceptional needs, or in circumstances that limit their academic, social, or emotional development. In SCP and FGP (but not RSVP), volunteers who are “low income” (meaning their income is at or below 200 percent of the poverty line) may receive stipends to allow them to serve without cost to themselves. <E T="03">See</E> 42 U.S.C. 5011(d)-(e), 5013(b). In SCP, FGP, and RSVP, the sponsor receiving the grant has several responsibilities. Among them is the responsibility to provide staff sufficient to support the project. Another is the responsibility to raise “match,” meaning non-AmeriCorps cash and in-kind contributions in support of the grant. The match amount is stated as a percentage of the total project cost. For both SCP and FGP, the match required of sponsors is 10 percent, meaning the AmeriCorps grant funds 90 percent of the total project cost. <E T="03">See</E> 42 U.S.C. 5011(a), 5013(a). For RSVP, the statute limits match to be no more than 10 percent in the first year, 20 percent in the second year, and 30 percent in subsequent years. <E T="03">See</E> 42 U.S.C. 5001(b). In other words, the statute provides upper limits (tiered by year) on what RSVP sponsors may be required to provide as match. The current RSVP regulations, however, state these upper limits as requirements for sponsors to provide match at 10 percent in the first year, 20 percent in the second year, and 30 percent in subsequent years by limiting AmeriCorps' contributions to 90 percent in the first year, 80 percent in the second year, and 70 percent in subsequent years. <E T="03">See</E> 45 CFR 2553.72. Additionally, in SCP and FGP, AmeriCorps Seniors volunteers are offered a stipend for their service. The statute sets a minimum hourly rate for the stipend. <E T="03">See</E> 42 U.S.C. 5011(d), 5013(b). AmeriCorps Seniors establishes the stipend rate annually through the Notice of Funding Opportunity; currently, the stipend rate is $4.00 per service hour. The current SCP and FGP regulations provide that a sponsor must pay the stipend rate that AmeriCorps establishes and offers no flexibility to sponsors who may have additional funding available to supplement the stipend. <HD SOURCE="HD1">II. Overview of Proposed Rule</HD> This proposed rule would update AmeriCorps Seniors regulations implementing the SCP, FGP, and RSVP. The proposed updates to the SCP and FGP regulations, at Code of Federal Regulations (CFR) parts 2551 and 2552, respectively, parallel each other and would include changes to simplify provisions on calculation of an AmeriCorps volunteer's income for the purposes of determining whether they are eligible for a stipend and would remove certain items from being considered as income. The proposed updates to SCP and FGP regulations would also specify that volunteers receiving a stipend may be paid the stipend when the sponsor places them on administrative leave due to extenuating circumstances preventing service. The updates would also allow sponsors to pay stipends at a higher rate than that established by AmeriCorps Seniors, if they choose to do so, and as long as they use funds other than AmeriCorps grant funds to pay for the amount above the established stipend rate. The proposed updates to all three SCP, FGP, and RSVP regulations (CFR parts 2551 through 2553) would replace the requirement for sponsors to employ a full-time project director with a requirement for sufficient staffing to support the size, scope, and quality of project operations. The updates to the RSVP regulations at part 2553 would also change the level of non-AmeriCorps support (“match”) that an RSVP sponsor must provide. Currently, the regulations allow AmeriCorps to grant up to 90 percent of the total RSVP project cost in the first year, but only 80 percent in the second year and 70 percent in the third and successive years. As a result, the matching funds a sponsor must provide are currently 10 percent of the total project cost in the first year and increase to 20 percent in the second year and 30 percent in successive years. The proposed rule would instead establish a single required match rate at 10 percent, regardless of the grant year. Lastly, this proposed rule would make nomenclature changes to add a definition for “AmeriCorps” and change references to the “Corporation” and “CNCS” to “AmeriCorps” throughout these regulations to reflect that the Corporation for National and Community Service now operates as AmeriCorps. This proposed rule would also change “National Service Senior Corps (NSSC)” to “AmeriCorps Seniors” to reflect current terminology and branding. Each of the substantive changes is described in more detail below. <HD SOURCE="HD2">A. Income Calculation—SCP (§§ 2551.12, 2551.43, and 2551.44); FGP (§§ 2552.12, 2552.43, and 2552.44)</HD> The current regulations address an SCP and FGP volunteer's income in three sections: the definition of “annual income” (at §§ 2551.12 and 2552.12, respectively); the income guidelines governing eligibility to serve as a stipended volunteer (at §§ 2551.43 and 2552.43, respectively); and the categories of “income” for determining eligibility (at §§ 2551.44 and 2552.44, respectively). Currently, the definition of “annual income” and the sections addressing eligibility guidelines and the determination of “income” each contain components for the calculation of income. The proposed rule would streamline these sections so that the definition sets out only that the time period for calculation of annual income is 12 months, and all the components for the calculation of income are contained in one section each for SCP and FGP. Substantively, these changes would remove several items from being included in the calculation of a volunteer's income, including: ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Preview showing 10k of 42k characters. Full document text is stored and available for version comparison. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━