The notice came late at night to TJ Mendez, who oversees some 35 AmeriCorps members in the south-central Colorado region. The last day of funding for the national civilian community corps program that has been active for 30 years was April 25, and the program was effectively ending for 33,000 of the young volunteers nationwide.
“All 35 of my members were part of that 33,000,” Mendez said in recalling the late-night news.
He’s also director of full-time volunteers for La Puente and knows full well what the loss of Alamosa’s 18 Americorps volunteers will mean to the organization.
“We cannot sustain our current programming without these AmeriCorps members. So,” Mendez said, “our services are going to be drastically affected.”
“I’ve been their coach. I’ve been their mentor. I’m their reference when they apply for a job. We’re not just gonna hang them out to dry.”
TJ Mendez
Other organizations like Alpine Achievers, which lent its young AmeriCorps volunteers to support other nonprofits around the Valley, will be impacted as well.
“We already have a low turnout from people in our community to volunteer for organizations as it is,” Alamosa Mayor Ty Coleman said. “So it just compounds the issue and makes it more difficult for nonprofit organizations and other community-minded organizations to provide services in communities like ours.”
The 2025 budget for AmeriCorps was $1.3 billion. A 2022 study found that for every federal dollar spent, AmeriCorps volunteers generate as much as $34 in value.
Colorado Attorney General Phil Weiser, as part of the coalition of 24 states, filed a lawsuit on April 29 challenging the Trump administration’s dismantling of AmeriCorps through the elimination of 90 percent of its workforce.
Weiser said the coalition is arguing that the administration has acted unlawfully in gutting AmeriCorps, violating the Administrative Procedure Act and the separation of powers under the U.S. Constitution. AmeriCorps and its programs were created by an act of Congress in 1993.
Weiser said Trump “cannot incapacitate the agency’s ability to administer appropriated grants or carry out statutorily assigned duties.”
In the Valley, AmeriCorps volunteers are “the elbow grease, the manpower” said Mendez.
Most members are between the ages of 22 and 26. Across Colorado more than 1,000 Americorps members were in service.
Mendez said La Puente has made supporting AmeriCorps members a top priority during the transition. “I’ve been their coach. I’ve been their mentor. I’m their reference when they apply for a job. We’re not just gonna hang them out to dry.”
La Puente is using emergency reserves to “extend people as long as we can,” La Puente Executive Director Cheslock said, but noted that some members are leaving.
For the past three years, the San Luis Valley has hosted more than 120 AmeriCorps members who have provided more than 250,000 hours of service.
At La Puente, their service has meant more than 1,000,000 meals distributed, more than 12,000 distinct families served, and a long list of young people who have become part of the fabric of rural communities, Cheslock said.
In Colorado’s south-central region which includes the Valley, the AmeriCorps volunteers are under a program called Rural Alliance for Dignity, or RAD, said Mendez. Those AmeriCorps members operate in “frontier” Colorado communities that are often in the poorest counties in the state. They primarily serve underserved and vulnerable populations in those communities and bring young professionals from across the country into the communities.
“A feather in our cap” as far as programs go, Mendez said, is that the retention rate among Americorps members who served in south-central Colorado is one of the highest in the state. Meaning AmeriCorps volunteers, like Erin Minks, who is getting ready to retire from public service with Sen. Michael Bennet’s office in Alamosa, have stayed in the communities they served long after their AmeriCorps service ended.
“I was devastated when I heard the news because the impact from that is not only going to be devastating for Alamosa and the San Luis Valley, but it’s going to be devastating for rural communities across the United States of America,” Alamosa Mayor Ty Coleman said.
