Letter to Congress: Support the GIVE Act

March 16, 2009

Dear Members of Congress,

Responding to systemic problems and crises that face our country, young Americans are giving back in record numbers (nearly a quarter of those over age 16 have volunteered). The Millennial Generation, growing up in the wake of the September 11th attacks, is leading a movement of citizen-centered change and joining together across generational, cultural and socio-economic bounds in a shared sense of ownership and national responsibility. It is in this spirit of renewed civic engagement and service that we urge your support of The Generations Invigorating Volunteerism and Education (“GIVE”) Act.

As Millennials, social entrepreneurs and part of a group of 100 Young Leaders selected to attend the September 2008 Service Nation Summit, where we believe the service movement reached a modern coalescence, we have seen first-hand the impact that service can have on a young person, the community in which they serve and the country as a whole. The GIVE Act acknowledges and rewards the good work currently being done and provides additional opportunities for more young people to become involved.

Our organization, myImpact, responds to what we see as the growing needs of the service movement by comprehensively telling the stories of young people in service through both multimedia and metric tracking. Working closely with our partners in the national service field, our online platform will be the virtual roof under which a person can show how the far-real and far-reaching impact their service is having because, as CIRCLE found in its report Millennials Talk Politics, “Second only to the time they have available to get involved, students report that the most important factor in deciding whether or not to get involved in an activity is the impact they think it will yield.”

The GIVE Act will directly affect our work. It will strengthen AmeriCorps, increasing the number of slots from 75,000 to 250,000, create a new Summer of Service program with stipends that students can use to pay for college and, overall, will triple the number of Americans in service. The GIVE Act is a tremendous opportunity for the 111th Congress to reinvigorate a national call to service. As it is estimated that for every dollar spent towards service initiatives there are four dollars of direct measurable economic returns, this legislation is clearly a bill for the future of America.

Consistent with our organization’s mission to build a country where service is a civic rite of passage for every American, we join with the thousands of voices from advocates of national service in urging the passage of The GIVE Act.

Sincerely,



Chris Golden & Nick Troiano
Co-Founders, myImpact