ACTION for National Service Act

Summary

Rewrites how national service is organized, funded, and paid. It renames and reclassifies the current Corporation for National and Community Service as an AmeriCorps Administration (an executive department), raises living‑allowance and grant caps, changes the educational award formula, and creates tax exclusions for service awards and living allowances. The bill also sets an explicit 10‑year expansion goal (target: 1,000,000 participants by 2036), requires planning and reporting to Congress, restructures governance into a smaller advisory board, creates an outreach program for 17–30 year‑olds, and adds several deadlines for agency reports and interagency studies. Many benefit increases (stipends, grants, awards) are conditional: they cannot be implemented unless appropriations for a fiscal year are sufficient to maintain at least the prior year’s number of approved national service positions, otherwise increases must be limited to what funding allows. The measure also adds several administrative, statutory, and tax changes that affect participants, nonprofit operators, colleges, and federal administration of national service programs.

• Renames the Corporation as the AmeriCorps Administration and reclassifies it as an executive department with a Director.
• Raises statutory caps on living allowances, stipend/grant amounts, and educational award formula, but implementation is conditioned on sufficient appropriations to maintain prior participant levels.
• Sets a 10‑year expansion target to fund not fewer than 1,000,000 national service participants per year by 2036, with specific planning and reporting deadlines.
• Creates tax exclusions for national service educational awards and living allowances (new/edited Internal Revenue Code provisions).
• Replaces the 15‑member Board with a 7‑member Advisory Board and requires annual recommendations to the Director and Congress.
• Requires outreach to individuals at age 17 (and every 2 years unless opted out) to inform them about national service opportunities and to create an application pathway for ages 17–30.
• Increases per‑FTE grant caps ($8,000 → $30,000) and waiver ceilings ($9,500 → $39,000), subject to appropriations limits.
• Removes or trims existing statutory donation/solicitation language and adds a new National Service Foundation subtitle (text not provided).
• Adds an interagency working group to study award eligibility for non‑title I programs and potential federal hiring preference for completed service.