Iowa AmeriCorps workers scramble to find stability after program cuts

When Candace Cropp hung up the phone after finding out her work with AmeriCorps ended prematurely, her 10-year-old son asked her what was wrong.

“Mommy doesn’t have a job anymore,” Cropp told him. He wrapped his arms around her and told her he loves her.

Cropp is one of hundreds of workers across Iowa — and thousands throughout the United States — who were terminated early or let go from AmeriCorps, a national program established by Congress in 1993 that’s among the targets of cuts from the Trump administration’s Department of Government Efficiency.

The program cuts, which started in mid-April, have left hundreds of AmeriCorps members — most of whom are between the ages of 18 to 26 — scrambling for an income, housing, health care and concerns about what comes next.

AmeriCorps, employing millions of Americans, works to fight poverty, respond to natural disasters, support the needs of veterans and help seniors age in place — among other efforts. AmeriCorps is broken down into branches, depending on the type of service — such as AmeriCorps VISTA, which works to fight poverty through working with nonprofits, or AmeriCorps National Civilian Community Corps program, which focuses on disaster relief. Then there state programs, like Volunteer Iowa and Green Iowa AmeriCorps. AmeriCorps members receive a stipend for their work in the programs.

Born and raised in the Wellington Heights neighborhood of Cedar Rapids, Cropp, 37, worked in different branches of the AmeriCorps program for three years.

She first started with AmeriCorps’ State and National branch of the program in 2021, fighting food insecurity in the area. She later moved on to work with the local homeless service agency Willis Dady, helping homeless Iowans find stability after COVID-19 struck. But when the cuts came, Cropp — who also has a 17-year-old son — was working as an AmeriCorps VISTA leader with Volunteer Iowa, mentoring and working with other AmeriCorps members in the area toward ending poverty by building the capacity of nonprofit organizations and public agencies.

“I really enjoyed it, so I just kind of kept on going,” Cropp said. “And also, with kids, it's a good example to set for them as well, to show them the other side of life where people don't have much and they have to use these resources. Showing that it's OK to jump in to volunteer and help out.”

But these past several weeks, since the dismantling of AmeriCorps started, she has felt uncertainty. Cropp said it began for her when the AmeriCorps NCCC program — which deploys program members to different regions to help with nonprofit support and disaster relief — was shut down.

With the NCCC cuts “we kind of had an idea that something was going to come down the pipeline, but we just weren't sure how much time we had and if we were going to be able to finish our service,” she said.

Cropp said per AmeriCorps policy, volunteers must get approval to work at a job outside the program. But for her, AmeriCorps was her main source of income for her family.

Since her dismissal, Cropp has been putting in applications for a variety of job opportunities in the area but feels uneasy about what comes next. She wants to remain working in the nonprofit space.

“Now I'm kind of scrambling to figure out what I'm going to do for work, and I've been like applying everywhere,” she said. “It's almost a double-edged sword, just because a lot of places are laying off (workers) at this time.”

The dismantling of AmeriCorps

When whispers about changes to the AmeriCorps programs flooded online circles before the cuts were finalized and put into motion nationwide, Cropp said members like her had “all the questions and zero answers.”

“We didn't know if we were still going to get paid or what the case was,” she said. “I know a lot of people were freaking out because we all have bills to pay. We're all adults. We have people to take care of. Just trying to figure that stuff out has been a big challenge.”

AmeriCorps’ NCCC program was shut down April 16. As officials were shutting down the program nationwide, DOGE staff members visited the NCCC North-Central region office in Vinton, effectively sending Iowa’s “first line of defense” home early.

Then on May 2, the federal program took another blow when DOGE officials announced that grants for projects already allocated were being rescinded, leaving some branches of AmeriCorps operational but without financial avenues to pay workers or achieve their goals. Nationwide, $400 million in grants were rescinded.

Between the dismantling of the NCCC program in April and the grant recall, 15 programs and 568 AmeriCorps and AmeriCorps VISTA members in Iowa — half its current members — were affected.

To date, there are about 10 AmeriCorps state grant programs still operating, Rachel Bruns, chief engagement officer with the nonprofit America's Service Commissions, told The Gazette on Wednesday. The Commission works closely with the AmeriCorps program.

Some of the programs still running include the AmeriCorps RIVA program, which focuses on helping refugee and immigrant communities; the Green Iowa AmeriCorps, which is funded through the state and not federally; and Disaster Prepwise AmeriCorps, which is based at the University of Iowa.

But the grant recalls alone affected about 300 AmeriCorps members in Iowa, according to Bruns.

Bethany Snyder, director of the Iowa Nonprofit Alliance, said when she and her colleagues heard that DOGE was looking at scaling back the AmeriCorps program, they initially had heard the cuts would be “pretty narrow in scope.”

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But with both the NCCC program being cut and the grant dollars being recalled — announced in an email at 10:15 p.m. on a Friday — she said it felt like it was “out of nowhere.”

Snyder said the Nonprofit Alliance has been getting calls with questions and concerns over where the programming stands now. But she said the alliance is “waiting to see how the dust settles” and help AmeriCorps members from there.

“Let's be honest: these AmeriCorps folks are making poverty wages as it is and they're young people who don't have a cushion,” Snyder said. “Imagine, as a 23-year-old, you just find out you're terminated from your job and you have no severance, no savings, as a young person who dedicated their time to our country.”

For VISTA AmeriCorps members, the biweekly living allowance for 14 full days of service is $957.46 for Linn County VISTA workers. For VISTA leaders, like Cropp in Cedar Rapids, the living allowance is $1,049.58 biweekly.

Skills, benefits lost

In addition to the living allowance, AmeriCorps members who successfully completed the program were eligible for an education award, which workers could use to repay student loans and pay for current educational expenses at some higher education institutions and training programs.

According to AmeriCorps’ website, the program so far has given out about $4.8 billion in educational awards total, with about $2.2 million of those paid annually to historically Black colleges and universities.

Emmaly Renshaw, senior program director for Iowa Valley Resource Conservation & Development based in Amana, has worked with AmeriCorps volunteers for various nonprofits. She said the program is vital because it not only helps nonprofits help fill worker voids to help serve their communities better, but that it also serves as a training program for young adults.

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“You have typically college-age students — not always, but usually — coming in and they're getting hands-on experience in very dynamic environments. When AmeriCorps workers leave our organization, my goal is for them to be able to problem solve and to think on their feet, and what we hear from the larger corporate world are these are skills that are really lacking for younger adults, since they're not taught in school,” Renshaw said. “I really see AmeriCorps bridging the gap between the academic experience and full-time.”

Jill Grime, 27, gained both hard and soft skills after joining the program in 2023.

Although she was a part of the cohort of AmeriCorps members who were affected by the grant recalls — causing her and her co-workers to lose their land stewardship jobs with Bur Oak Land Trust in Iowa City — Grime was able to stay on with the organization that works to advance biodiversity through habitat preservation and improvements in Eastern Iowa through local funding.

Grime said the feeling of dread was washing over her when she and other co-workers were called into a meeting with Bur Oak Land Trust’s senior staff, telling them funding had been terminated hours earlier.

Grime, who had worked in environmental education before coming to AmeriCorps, said by working with Bur Oak she was able to learn how to use conservation tools like chain saws, prescribed burns or properly applying herbicide, and also leadership and people skills.

“There's so many different skills that I learned through this program that it was just such a great opportunity to kind of you're able to learn so much in so little time, and then that opportunity, it's naturally temporary, so you're able to then use those skills and bring them to other organizations,” Grime said.

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Cutting the program is “taking away a really big opportunity for recent graduate or undergraduate students who were going to use this between getting that permanent job,” Grime said. “I'm not sure if there are any organizations who spend as much time and as much effort to build those soft and hard skills. … AmeriCorps build such a great foundation, and that foundation will just be lost.”

Renshaw said she “has not found anything that is remotely close to AmeriCorps” when it comes to skill building.

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A ripple effect

When Levi Wood, 23, found out that parts of AmeriCorps were being cut, he said it felt “dehumanizing.”

Wood, who lives in the Des Moines area but originally is from the Forest City area, started with AmeriCorps working with Habitat for Humanity but was overseeing a portfolio of other workers when the cuts came down.

He had to field questions and concerns from other AmeriCorps members while he was trying to figure out what the cuts would mean for him, too.

“I was trying to explain to others the gravity of what could possibly happen without trying to stir fear, where I was put in a position to be a perpetrator of the dehumanization of the people that I was overseeing because of the lack of transparency from the top down,” Wood said. “It is crazy that one small government organization, DOGE, would put everyone in that position, just to tear things apart.”

Because he was navigating the same concerns as the workers he was overseeing, he felt he needed to be honest and frank. “It was the only thing I could do to alleviate any of the pain, because nobody else was giving it to them,” Wood said.

Wood was caught in the middle because in his leading role. He was responsible for recruiting other corps members while the cuts were looming.

“It was awful,” he said. “Trying to recruit people while also having been very transparent with recruits, like, ‘hey, I actually don't know if we're going to hire you in like a month and a half.’”

Wood said AmeriCorps workers aren’t there only for the paycheck.

“Not a single person I met in the AmeriCorps world or in the service world period was not there without a heart. Nobody was there without a heart and a spirit for a better tomorrow or a better change,” he said. “And I don't know what more of the American spirit than that.”

Olivia Cohen covers energy and environment for The Gazette and is a corps member with Report for America, a national service program that places journalists in local newsrooms to report on under-covered issues.

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Comments: olivia.cohen@thegazette.como