Alvarado /For The Washington Post) By Sabrina Malhi May27th 2025
When Florenzo Cribbs walked into the Perry Family Free Clinic each week in Madison, Wisconsin, Parker Kuehni and his colleagues erupted in applause. It is a tradition there. Every patient who shows upis cheered for keeping their appointment.
Kuehni, a 25-year-old AmeriCorps member, scheduled Cribbs’s medical, dental and mental health visits, prepped his exam room, took his health history and handed him off to the clinic’s volunteer doctors. He also greeted Cribbs, asked about his week and talked with him in the waiting room, before seeing him out. He followed up later with resources for food, housing or insurance.
That kind of personal attention, often missing from health care, was abruptly eliminated last month whenKuehni was laid off from AmeriCorps. “It was a complete shock,” he said. “We are helping people stay alive.”
Kuehni, who plans to attend medical school, was one of more than 32,000 members and volunteers in the federal AmeriCorps program terminated in a sweeping budget cut last month that gutted the national service program.
The April 25 move was one of the biggestgovernment cutbackssince the Trump administration took office, but went largely unnoticed because most of the jobs were concentrated in nonprofit human services agencies that help underserved communities.
AmeriCorps workers across the United States were told their positions were eliminated “effective immediately,” according to an email reviewed by The Washington Post. The decision came fromElon Musk’s U.S. DOGE Service and canceled almost $400 million in grants without public notice or legal procedure, prompting lawsuits by almost two dozen states and D.C.
A national service program established in 1993 under President Bill Clinton, AmeriCorps builds on earlier efforts such as Volunteers in Service to America, which began in 1965 as part of President Lyndon B. Johnson’s War on Poverty.
It places recent college graduates and early-career professionals in thousands of nonprofit, community and public agencies across the country, providing living stipends that average about $18,000 per year and an education award of approximately $7,395 to pay for college or reduce student-loan debt.
Although they are not licensed professionals, service members often work in programs with staff and resource shortages, doing work as varied as tutoring students or responding to natural disasters.
Officials with AmeriCorps did not respond to requests for comment on the cuts, which extended far and wide, disrupting services that reached deep into communities across the country.
Montclair Community Farms in New Jersey lost four AmeriCorps team members during peak growing season. The reduction will hinder the organization’s ability to provide affordable food across the community through mobile farm stands and food pantries.
The farm stands serve more than 1,500 people each summer, many of whom receive food stamps and live in food deserts, said Lana Mustafa, executive director of Montclair Community Farms.
In addition to the AmeriCorps grants being revoked, a $250,000 grant from the U.S. Department of Agriculture that supported nutrition education and funded a high school internship program was also suspended, Mustafa said.
“We have no answers. Nobody really knows what’s happening, and instead of receiving additional support, we’re watching our support being withdrawn,” Mustafa said. Now is the time to increase aid, not reduce it, she said, “because the people who need food the most will be struggling. Instead, we’re seeing food being taken away.”
In Buffalo, Kate Sarata, executive director of the Service Collaborative of WNY, said the cuts will reverberatethroughout the community. AmeriCorps volunteers from the organization, which focuses on workforce development, were in charge of helping to keep local parks clean and assist with maintenance.
In Boston, Walker Therapeutic and Educational Programs lost 25 AmeriCorps positions after its $286,000 grant was canceled. The wellness coaches had been deployed across 12 public schools as part of the Wellness Coach Project, which focused on youth mental health. The members worked directly with more than 200 students on issues such as anxiety, bullying, menstrual hygiene, social media stress and building healthy routines.
“These aren’t just staff members. They’re a lifeline,” said Jake Murray, chief external affairs officer at Walker. “We work in schools where students are struggling with real, day-to-day barriers to health and stability. And now that support is gone.”
“We’re now down 25 staff and have no way to replace them,” Murray said. “Even with private donations and state grants, we can’t make up the gap.”
Mark Hager, an emeritus professor in the School of Community Resources and Development at Arizona State University, has received money from AmeriCorps to study how to use volunteers more effectively in nonprofit work.
“This is a big blow to the national psyche,” he said. “We didn’t just lose workers. We lost support for young people learning about civic engagement, how to help their neighbors and how to build stronger communities.”
Hager said the sudden loss of AmeriCorps positions has left many small nonprofits scrambling. “In a lot of places, AmeriCorps members are not just support, they are the backbone.”
With fewer hands on deck, many programs across the country are bracing for slower services and longer wait times. According to Voices for National Service, a coalition of state, local and national service programs and commissions, AmeriCorps members provide 1.6 billion hours of service annually. In 2023, they supported almost 3 million people through education, disaster recovery and public health programs.
Aaron Perry, a former University of Wisconsin police officer and founder of the Perry Family Free Clinic, said he saw firsthand how Black men were being left behind by the health-care system.
“I would always ask them … what could be different?” Perry said. “And that’s when they would tell me, ‘I’m homeless. I haven’t eaten. I have a heart condition. I don’t have medication.’”
The clinic survives on an annual budget of $350,000 to $400,000, patched together from grants and private donations. A local health-care partner recently contributed $40,000 in emergency funds — half of which Perry used to offer small stipends to replace the lost federal money for AmeriCorps volunteers still working.
Despite its low profile, AmeriCorps has had steady support among Democrats and Republicans. Leaders from both parties have historically viewed the program as an effective way to strengthen communities.
In a letter to DOGE, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vermont) and several colleagues condemned the grant cancellations and warned that the decision may have violated federal law. They urged DOGE to reverse the cuts.
Rep. Don Bacon (R-Nebraska) echoed the concerns in a Washington Post op-ed May 1, calling AmeriCorps “one of the most effective public service initiatives of the post-Vietnam era.”
Matthew Hudson-Flege, a former AmeriCorps member, who studied the organization in his doctoral research, said the psychological fallout from the cuts may be as lasting as the operational impact.
“People were dedicating a year of their lives to serve their country, and they were suddenly told their contracts meant nothing. The word of our government just isn’t to be trusted anymore.”
He said that AmeriCorps has long helped build faith in public institutions. “Now, that trust has been broken. Rebuilding it, especially for younger generations, is going to take a long time.”
Cribbs said people like him are told to “pull yourself up by your bootstraps. Some of us don’t even have boots and some of us don’t even have strings in those boots.”
He said “Parker always made the appointment I had better just by having a little sympathy and having empathy for what people were going through. Politicians are playing a real game of Monopoly with people’s lives and it makes me sad and angry.”
https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2025/05/27/americorps-doge-layoffs-budget-cuts/