AmeriCorps State and National Updates

<RULE> CORPORATION FOR NATIONAL AND COMMUNITY SERVICE <CFR>45 CFR Parts 2520, 2521, and 2522</CFR> <RIN>RIN 3045-AA84</RIN> <SUBJECT>AmeriCorps State and National Updates</SUBJECT> <HD SOURCE="HED">AGENCY:</HD> Corporation for National and Community Service. <HD SOURCE="HED">ACTION:</HD> Final rule. <SUM> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUMMARY:</HD> The Corporation for National and Community Service (operating as AmeriCorps) is revising its regulations governing the AmeriCorps State and National program to provide programmatic and grantmaking flexibilities while protecting program integrity and safeguarding taxpayer funds. This rule limits AmeriCorps State and National grantees' required share of program costs (known as “match” or “cost share”) to a scale that starts at 24 percent for the first three-year grant cycle and increases more incrementally with each successive three-year grant cycle, until it reaches 30 percent in the fourth three-year grant cycle (that is, the tenth year of the grant) and beyond; simplifies the criteria that allow AmeriCorps to waive match for AmeriCorps State and National grantees; allows AmeriCorps to grant waivers of education hour limitations under certain circumstances to permit members serving with AmeriCorps State and National grantees to spend an increased number of hours on education and training activities; and removes the four-term limit on service in AmeriCorps State and National programs, with a clarification of the number of terms for which AmeriCorps will fund member benefits. Non-substantive changes in this rule are updates to nomenclature to reflect that the Corporation for National and Community Service operates as AmeriCorps, deletion of provisions that were based on a statutory provision that has since been deleted, and updates to outdated citations. </SUM> <EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">DATES:</HD> This rule is effective on October 1, 2024. </EFFDATE> <FURINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT:</HD> Jennifer Bastress-Tahmasebi, Deputy Director, AmeriCorps State and National at <E T="03">JBastressTahmasebi@americorps.gov,</E> (202) 606-6667; or Elizabeth Appel, Associate General Counsel, at <E T="03">EAppel@americorps.gov,</E> (202) 967-5070. </FURINF> <SUPLINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION:</HD> <EXTRACT> <FP SOURCE="FP-2">I. Background</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-2">II. Overview of Rule</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">A. Waiver of the Current 20 Percent Limit on Education and Training Activities—§ 2520.50</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">B. Revising Match Requirements—§ 2521.60</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">C. Criteria for Waiving Match Requirements—§ 2521.70</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">D. Limit on Number of Terms an Individual May Serve in AmeriCorps State and National—§ 2522.235</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-2">III. Comments on Proposed Rule and Responses</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">A. Waiver of the Current 20 Percent Limit on Education and Training Activities—§ 2520.50</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">1. Support for the Waiver Opportunity</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">2. Opposition to the Waiver Opportunity</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">3. Request To Delete or Raise the Limit Overall, Instead of Issuing Individual Waivers</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">4. Request for Changes to the Waiver Criteria</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">5. Questions on How the Waiver Process Would Work</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">B. Revising Match Requirements—§ 2521.60</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">1. Support for Proposed Match Scale</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">2. Opposition to Proposed Match Scale</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">a. Need for More Match Relief</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">b. Inflation and Costs Already Increase Required Match</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">c. AmeriCorps' Match Is More Difficult Than Other Federal Agencies</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">d. The Proposed Match Scale Would Undermine Programs' Effectiveness</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">e. The Proposed Match Scale Increases Burden and Risk</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">f. Request for 25 Percent Match in Lieu of Proposed Match Scale</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">3. Opposition to Match, Generally</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">C. Criteria for Waiving Match Requirements—§ 2521.70</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">1. Support for the Proposed Match Waiver</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">2. Opposition to the Proposed Waiver-Based System</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">3. Requests To Change Waiver Criteria</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">4. Comments on Waiver Process</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">D. Limit on Number of Terms an Individual May Serve in AmeriCorps State and National—§ 2522.235</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">1. Support for Removing the Limit on Number of Terms</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">2. Request for Clarification That Service Not Limited to Number of Terms To Attain Two Education Awards</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">3. Whether Other Benefits Can Be Earned After Attaining the Value of Two Full-Time Education Awards</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-2">IV. Changes From Proposed to Final</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">A. Final Match Schedule at § 2521.60</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">B. Clarification on Unlimited Number of Terms</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">C. Updates to Outdated Provision/Citations</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-2">V. Regulatory Analyses</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">A. Executive Orders 12866 and 13563</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">B. Regulatory Flexibility Act</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">C. Unfunded Mandates Reform Act of 1995</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">D. Paperwork Reduction Act</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">E. Executive Order 13132, Federalism</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">F. Takings (Executive Order 12630)</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">G. Civil Justice Reform (Executive Order 12988)</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">H. Consultation With Indian Tribes (Executive Order 13175)</FP> </EXTRACT> <HD SOURCE="HD1">I. Background</HD> AmeriCorps is revising its AmeriCorps State and National program regulations to address stakeholder feedback on match requirements, be more consistent with other grant programs within the agency, and reduce barriers to grantee organizations that are specifically designed to provide education and training to members as part of their national service program. AmeriCorps State and National provides grants to States, territories, Indian Tribes, public and private nonprofit organizations, local governments, and institutions of higher education to carry out national service programs, offering a wide range of service opportunities. AmeriCorps State and National also provides general operating funding for State service commissions. AmeriCorps is issuing these revisions under the authority of the National and Community Service Act, as amended, at 42 U.S.C. 12651c(c). <HD SOURCE="HD1">II. Overview of the Final Rule</HD> This rule makes four substantive changes to the AmeriCorps State and National regulations, as described below. In addition, this rule makes nomenclature changes to add a definition for “AmeriCorps” and change “the Corporation” to “AmeriCorps” throughout these regulations to reflect that the Corporation for National and Community Service now operates as AmeriCorps, deletes provisions that were based on a statutory provision that has since been deleted, and updates outdated citations. This final rule includes a delayed effective date in order to allow time to prepare for implementation. <HD SOURCE="HD2">A. Waiver of the Current 20 Percent Limit on Education and Training Activities—§ 2520.50</HD> The current regulation sets a 20 percent limit to the aggregate total of all service hours in a program that AmeriCorps members may spend in education and training activities. As a result, each program must have at least 80 percent of the aggregate of all AmeriCorps member hours in service. This final rule allows AmeriCorps to waive this limit under certain circumstances, to permit up to 50 percent of the aggregate AmeriCorps member hours in a program to be spent in education and training activities. When deciding whether a waiver is appropriate, AmeriCorps will consider whether the AmeriCorps program: • Is a Registered Apprenticeship program, or • Is a job training or job readiness program, or • Includes activities to support member attainment of a GED or high school diploma or occupational, technical, or safety credentials, or • Primarily enrolls economically disadvantaged AmeriCorps members and is designed to provide soft skills or life skills development for those members. The final rule allows members in these types of programs who might benefit from additional education and training—for example, people reentering society after incarceration—to participate in national service while acquiring skills and knowledge to ease their transition. Under the current rule, many workforce development and Registered Apprenticeship programs with full-time participants are only able to offer “less than full-time” AmeriCorps member slots because members' service hours spent in training, in excess of the 20% limit, are not creditable. In turn, this limits the amount of the education award available to their participants and could limit their participants' access to health care, childcare, and other benefits afforded to members enrolled in full-time slots and results in their participants being unable to get credit for a large portion of their hours. The waiver will better allow AmeriCorps to advance equity for underserved communities by helping to address this significant barrier to entry. AmeriCorps expects to grant waivers to new and existing Registered Apprenticeship programs, job training or job readiness programs, programs that include activities to support member attainment of a GED or high school diploma or other credentials, or programs that primarily enroll economically disadvantaged AmeriCorps members and are designed to provide soft skills or life skills development for those members. Grantees may request waivers in writing as part of their grant application and receive a decision on the waiver prior to grant award. As mos ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Preview showing 10k of 80k characters. Full document text is stored and available for version comparison. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━