AmeriCorps service members (L-R) Kelcie Kysar, Greg Sachs, and Jaise Wilson, who worked with the Land in 2023-2024, are just a few of the AmeriCorps members we’ve engaged over the years. Following his AmeriCorps term, we hired Greg as our full-time Field Assistant.
Back in May, we shared an important update about the uncertain future of the AmeriCorps service program. In April, President Trump signed an executive order terminating active AmeriCorps grants and reducing the independent agency’s workforce by 85 percent. The order would effectively end this 30-year-old program, which annually provides opportunities for tens of thousands of Americans to meaningfully serve their communities across a range of critical sectors and services while gaining valuable employment experience.
AmeriCorps service member (right) during a work party at a Land Trust preserve by Charles Espy.
Here at Jefferson Land Trust, our mission has long benefited from the service of AmeriCorps members; four out of 16 (25%) of our current staff started their careers with AmeriCorps. (Read more about the importance of AmeriCorps to the Land Trust, our staff members, and our community in our previous story.)
The executive order immediately terminated our AmeriCorps service with Kelly Stocker, our wonderful habitat enhancement crew member, who joined us in fall 2024. We were committed to keeping him on throughout the remainder of his term, and were able to pay him using our annual fund while AmeriCorps funding was on hold.
In the week following the executive order, the state of Washington joined 23 other states and the District of Columbia in a multistate lawsuit challenging the directive.
Marlowe Moser, our Stewardship Assistant, served with the WCC on a riparian restoration crew based in Port Hadlock in 2020-21, prior to joining the Land Trust.
On June 5, a federal judge in a US District Court in Maryland ruled that the Corporation for National and Community Service (CNCS) violated the Administrative Procedures Act when it failed to engage in notice-and-comment rulemaking, and that CNCS was obligated to restore grant funding and rehire the AmeriCorps members who were laid off in the states that filed the lawsuit.
Subsequently, the White House Office of Management and Budget released $184 million in previously withheld AmeriCorps funding, allowing state service programs to continue placing volunteers in organizations that address critical community needs.
Unfortunately, the future of this essential program remains in jeopardy. President Trump’s Fiscal Year 2026 budget proposes the complete elimination of AmeriCorps. Meanwhile, the House Appropriations Committee advanced a FY26 Labor-HHS-Education bill that proposes to slash AmeriCorps funding by nearly 50 percent — eliminating tens of thousands of service positions that support education, public health, disaster response, conservation, and more across the United States.
Preserve Manager Carrie (who first joined the Land Trust as an AmeriCorps service member nearly a decade ago) with our current AmeriCorps habitat enhancement crew member Kelly, just after Carrie informed him that AmeriCorps funding had been temporarily restored.
For now, the temporary restoration of the AmeriCorps funding is welcome news for the tens of thousands of AmeriCorps service members whose livelihoods were put on hold by the executive order, as well as for the countless communities, causes, and organizations like Jefferson Land Trust that benefit in deep and far-reaching ways from AmeriCorps service.
Thankfully, the temporary restoration of funding allowed the Land Trust to rehire Kelly for a second AmeriCorps term for fall 2025 through summer 2026.
The funding’s restoration has also allowed us to engage new Community Forest Enhancement Steward Slater Sorensen for a service term from fall 2025 into summer 2026 through the Washington Service Corps (WSC) program. WSC is an AmeriCorps program run through the Washington State Employment Services Department. Since joining us as an intern in late summer 2025, Slater has been an enormous help in preparing Chimacum Ridge Community Forest for its public opening and will continue to support its ongoing operations.
Slater Sorensen.
Prior to coming to the community forest team, Slater gained hands-on experience in land management and ecological practices through two terms with the Washington Conservation Corps (WCC): another important AmeriCorps program, which is administered through the Washington State Department of Ecology.
WCC crews do an enormous amount of essential work to maintain trails, keep recreation accessible, undertake important ecological and conservation projects, and do other meaningful work on our public lands — and on Jefferson Land Trust preserves.
We’ve regularly contracted with WCC crews to help us build trails and restore habitat on our nature preserves. These crews have the skills, tools, strength, and numbers to accomplish important tasks at a pace far beyond our capacity as a small nonprofit.
A Washington Conservation Corps (WCC) crew helping complete the first .2 miles of the multiuse trail at Chimacum Ridge in April 2025.
We’re hoping to soon bring on another AmeriCorps crew member to assist with caring for our nature preserves.
Visit the Voices for National Service website to learn more about AmeriCorps and the steps you can take to help protect it.
The April lawsuit was filed by the attorneys general of Arizona, California, Connecticut, Colorado, Delaware, the District of Columbia, Hawaii, Illinois Maryland, Maine, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Nevada, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, North Carolina, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont, Washington, and Wisconsin, and the governors of Kentucky and Pennsylvania.
