Volunteer Sacramento
Service has been an integral component of Mayor Kevin Johnson’s Administration since being elected to office in November 2008. At his inauguration in January 2009, Mayor Johnson challenged Sacramentans to be active participants in bringing about the change the City and its citizens rightfully deserve, “The theme for this evening is ‘Together We Can’…my hope is that today we can spark a new day of activism and service to our City amongst every citizen. I am ready, and I know you are too. And that’s what it’s going to take – people working together not just for their own benefit, but also for the good of the whole community.”
Shortly thereafter, Mayor Johnson launched “Volunteer Sacramento”, his first policy initiative, to encourage service and volunteerism across the City. With the intent of making Sacramento the number one city in California for volunteering, he challenged all residents to give ten hours of service by the end of the year or a total of 500,000 service hours. Citizens responded and logged more than 1.7 million hours of service. For 2010, Mayor Johnson has challenged citizens to give 3 million hours of service, making Sacramento one of the most caring cities in the nation.
Serve America Act
In April 2009, President Obama signed the Edward M. Kennedy Serve America Act (“The Serve America Act”), historic legislation dramatically expanding federal support for service. The Serve America Act provides tens of thousands of additional Americans the opportunity to spend a year serving their communities through national service programs. International service opportunities are being improved and expanded. Around the nation, all volunteers are encouraged to roll up their sleeves and address their community’s most pressing challenges. The goal is substantial: to engage more than 100 million people in service by the year 2020.
Cities of Service
Founded in New York City on September 10, 2009 by 17 mayors from cities around the nation, including Mayor Johnson, Cities of Service is a bipartisan coalition of mayors who have committed to work together to lead a multi-year effort to expand impact volunteerism. The coalition has rapidly grown since its inception and now includes more than 100 mayors, representing more than 47 million Americans across the nation.
American cities face serious challenges and many mayors want to take advantage of every resource available to them – including the time and energy of public-spirited residents — to address those challenges. But in cities across America today, citizen service is often an underutilized or inefficiently utilized strategy by municipal governments. Cities of Service supports mayors to leverage citizen service strategies, addressing local needs and making government more effective.
In January 2010, Cities of Service Leadership Grants were awarded to ten cities: Chicago, Detroit, Los Angeles, Nashville, Newark, Omaha, Philadelphia, Sacramento, Savannah, and Seattle. Funded by the Rockefeller Foundation, the grants are used to hire Chief Service Officers. A second round of grants, this time funded by the Rockefeller Foundation and Bloomberg Philanthropies, were announced in June 2010. The recipients are: Atlanta, Austin, Baltimore, Baton Rouge, Chula Vista, Houston, Little Rock, Orlando, Pittsburgh, and Richmond.
This plan is the product of an extensive assessment and consultation process that engaged hundreds of local service experts, nonprofit organizations, schools, colleges, private-sector partners, and public agencies. It examines the current service landscape and its challenges and offers a multi-pronged strategy to strengthen service in Sacramento.
