Established in 1993, the Corporation for National and Community Service (CNCS) is a federal agency that engages more than 5 million Americans in service through its core programs -- Senior Corps, AmeriCorps, and the Social Innovation Fund -- and leads President Obama’s national call to service initiative, United We Serve.

As the nation’s largest grantmaker for service and volunteering, CNCS plays a critical role in strengthening America’s nonprofit sector and addressing our nation’s challenges through service.

CNCS harnesses America’s most powerful resource – the energy and talents of our citizens – to solve problems. We believe that everyone can make a difference and that all of us should try. From grade school through retirement, CNCS empowers Americans and fosters a lifetime of service.

Our Mission and Guiding Principles

The mission of CNCS is to improve lives, strengthen communities, and foster civic engagement through service and volunteering.

As we pursue our goals, we are guided by the following principles:

• Put the needs of local communities first.
• Strengthen the public-private partnerships that underpin all of our programs.
• Use our programs to build stronger, more efficient, and more sustainable community networks capable of mobilizing volunteers to address local needs, including disaster preparedness and response.
• Measure and continually improve our programs' benefits to service beneficiaries, participants, community organizations, and our national culture of service.
• Build collaborations wherever possible across our programs and with other federal programs.
• Help rural and economically distressed communities obtain access to public and private resources.
• Support diverse organizations, including faith-based and other community organizations, minority colleges, and disability organizations.
• Use service-learning principles to put volunteer and service activities into an appropriate context that stimulates life-long civic engagement.
• Support continued civic engagement, leadership, and public service careers for our programs' participants and community volunteers.
• Exhibit excellence in management and customer service.

We envision an organization that is:

• A catalytic, coordinating, and creative force in realizing this vision for service in America.
• A valuable resource to—and a partner with—national, state, and local organizations that encourage community service and address community needs.
• Entrepreneurial, innovative, effective, and efficient in utilizing its resources, influence, and activities.
• A good steward of taxpayer dollars that operates programs in a cost-effective manner.
• An agency with a demonstrated history of nonpartisanship.