How AmeriCorps cuts are hitting Colorado
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DENVER — Abi Loihl kept a close eye on the news during her time as an AmeriCorps National Civilian Community Corps (NCCC) member.
As the Trump administration’s Department of Government Efficiency slashed funding for environmental and social service programs, she feared AmeriCorps, a 32-year-old federal program that sends workers from 18 to 26 years old around the country to do service work, would be next.
Loihl, 23, had recently finished a project at Colorado Firecamp in Salida and was waiting for her next assignment. AmeriCorps terms include three projects, each lasting three to 13 weeks
Then came the text.
Her team lead told her to report immediately to the campus gym in Aurora for an emergency meeting. At the campus, where corps members train before traveling to projects around the state, she learned the programs had been cut and their service terms were over.
Just six hours after the noon meeting, Loihl was on a flight back home to Oregon, her national service unexpectedly cut three months early.
“This program does such good work in the community and at such a low cost to taxpayers,” Loihl said.
“I’m concerned about what this represents for the state of our political climate that young people doing community service isn’t worth $15 a day and $7,000 in scholarships.”
AmeriCorps members in the Southwest region — which includes Colorado, Wyoming, Arizona, New Mexico, Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas, Missouri and Arkansas — train and live at the Aurora campus before they’re sent out on assignments.
Loihl was among 6,600 AmeriCorps members across 700 sites in Colorado sent home after the federal government cut about $400 million in grants, 41% of the program’s budget, effectively shutting it down.
DOGE also cut about 85% of AmeriCorps full-time staff members.
In Colorado, the AmeriCorps had 37 projects across 700 sites that involved forest restoration, natural disaster cleanup, as well as work in schools and hospitals.
The Aurora campus is one of four national training centers. The others are in Sacramento, California, Vinton, Iowa and Vicksburg, Mississippi.
Though President Donald Trump and Elon Musk’s DOGE successfully shuttered AmeriCorps, the program’s closure has been a priority for conservative groups such as the Heritage Foundation, which published a paper 30 years ago calling AmeriCorps a “boondoggle,” for decades.
The Heritage Foundation, which also published Project 2025, argued that AmeriCorps “costs the taxpayers too much” and “does little to help American families pay for college” in its assessment.
AmeriCorps has failed eight audits since its inception in 1993. In 2024, the Department of Defense failed its seventh consecutive audit.
DOGE has also cut funding from USAID, the Environmental Protection Agency and various grants in all 50 states, with more than 40 cuts to grants and programs in Colorado.
Trump’s 2017 budget proposal during his first term as president in 2017 attempted to gut the program.
Colorado Lt. Gov Dianne Primavera urged Congress to protect the program.
“Since its founding in 1993, AmeriCorps has empowered Coloradans across the state to serve their neighbors, solve real problems, and strengthen communities,” Primavera said in a news release.
“To dismantle these programs now, when so many Coloradans rely on them, would be devastating.”
Sydney Kahn loved seeing a smile cross a senior citizen’s face when she told them they qualified for a property tax exemption and would receive a larger tax return than anticipated.
“Being able to tell them that they would be getting even just a couple hundred back really meant a lot to them,” said Kahn, who served as an AmeriCorps volunteer at United Way of Pueblo County (UWPC) from Jan. 24 to April 17.
Kahn started her AmeriCorps tenure clearing invasive species from a state park in Arizona. She had just finished her time in Pueblo when federal funds were pulled. She was scheduled to rebuild homes destroyed by Hurricane Harvey in Houston as her final project with AmeriCorps.
“Those houses that needed our assistance never got anything from us due to the dissolution,” Kahn said.
Having six AmeriCorps volunteers this year helped 4,165 Coloradans from 17 counties file their 2024 tax returns through UWPC, nearly double the number of people the organization helped in 2023 without AmeriCorps, said Luanne Maze, economic mobility and opportunity manager for United Way of Pueblo County.
“We could never have done this without AmeriCorps,” said Maze.
In total, the tax effort resulted in returns totaling $3.8 million, with most of the beneficiaries living in Pueblo, Huerfano, Otero and Las Animas Counties, she said.
With the extra help during tax season, UWPC expanded its hours and opened new, temporary sites.
“They’re not just volunteering to sit down and press buttons on a computer. said Chris Segura, UWPC director of communications and engagement, of the AmeriCorps volunteers.
“They’re taking a class and becoming an expert on this topic.”
Corps members finished their tenure with UWPC prior to the DOGE cuts, but Segura said UWPC staff were hopeful they’d host another round of members in 2026.
“They had a huge impact on Pueblo County and across the state,” Segura said.
Without AmeriCorps’ help, Maze said UWPC will be limited in its ability to help residents file taxes in the future.
“We are very sad to see this program go,” Maze said.
Since President Bill Clinton’s administration created the AmeriCorps program in 1993, 1.25 million Americans have served in its ranks. Many of them, like Adam Auerbach, have used the program to propel a lifetime of service.
Auerbach, 32, turned to AmeriCorps after two years at Bates College when he realized he didn’t want to finish another two.
After working on a chainsaw crew for wildfire fuel mitigation and habitat restoration in Nevada, then on trail and river conservation in Maine during his year as an AmeriCorps member, Auerbach discovered he wanted to pursue a career in outdoor civil service.
“AmeriCorps is how we get eager young people into the federal civil service who want to be those professional, nonpartisan civil servants,” said Auerbach, who now does conservation work for Boulder County Parks & Open Space.
Auerbach said he would not have attained his current job without his time in the AmeriCorps NCCC.
“The young people who actually enroll have this opportunity to find their passion professionally, to find community, to work alongside people from all over the country who might be different from them,” he said.
“Which I think is one of the really beautiful benefits of AmeriCorps in this moment in which we're so fractured as a society is that it brings people together across differences to serve alongside each other.”
Auerbach is concerned about how Trump and DOGE’s slashing of AmeriCorps and the National Park Service will affect Colorado’s public lands for centuries to come, even if a future president chooses to prioritize funding for the outdoors.
“We’re losing all of the institutional knowledge and this critical work that keeps people safe,” Auerbach said. “It’s really hard to interpret this as anything other than a concerted assault on the idea of public lands for public benefit.”
After completing a round of removing invasive species from Arkansas state parks and clearing illegal dumping grounds in Arizona, 23-year-old Mackenzie Rich was set to be deployed to Texas on April 13.
She was training for her Texas service at the Aurora AmeriCorps campus when she received the “come to the gym” text. As a team leader, Rich tried to comfort other members by making jokes as they waited to hear more from AmeriCorps staff.
Rich and her team were all following national news around possible AmeriCorps cuts. But they felt their work was essential and hoped the Trump administration would spare such crucial, lowe-cost work.
NCCC members receive around $180 every two weeks, while team leaders make about $500 every two weeks. AmeriCorps members receive housing and food during their tenure in exchange for their service.
Before the recent budget cuts, AmeriCorps operated with an annual budget of approximately $1.3 billion and deployed about 200,000 members each year.
After the announcement, Rich was put in charge of driving members to Denver International Airport for their flights before taking her own flight home to Atlanta.
“It was very shocking, because it felt like it had come out of nowhere,” Rich said of the cut. “We did a training in the morning about [the next project].”
Benjamin Fowler flew back home to Tennessee a few hours after learning his service was cut short by two months. Fowler and a few friends are now in Eugene, Ore. volunteering on a farm in place of a third AmeriCorps project.
“It becomes an unreal bond because you’re all there for the right reasons, to commit your time and your life to service,” Fowler said of his cohort.
“It’s beyond heartbreaking.”
Fowler said he hasn’t received any communication from AmeriCorps beyond the text. Everyone he knew in the program was cut, so he’s not sure who he’d even reach out to.
His work doing fire mitigation, agricultural research and post-hurricane home repairs led to him pursuing a lifetime of outdoor public service, though he’s not sure where he’ll be able to find that work, since so many federal agencies have had their budgets cut.
“AmeriCorps really represents the best this country can be,” Fowler said.
“It works to serve the most vulnerable and underserved communities, and those are the communities that are going to feel this the most.”
Type of story: News
Based on facts, either observed and verified firsthand by the reporter, or reported and verified from knowledgeable sources.
Based on facts, either observed and verified firsthand by the reporter, or reported and verified from knowledgeable sources.
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