Mr. Chairman and Members of the Subcommittee:

I appreciate this opportunity to submit testimony supporting the Citizen Service Act, reauthorizing the Corporation for National and Community Service. For today’s hearing my remarks will focus on some specific innovations that we have worked on in Minnesota that I would suggest be considered by the Committee as you develop the Citizen Service Act.

The three Senior Corps Programs, Foster Grandparent Program, Senior Companion Program and the Retired and Senior Volunteer Program began during the late 1960’s and early 1970’s.

The Foster Grandparent Program was started in 1965 by President Johnson as one of the war on poverty programs. The poverty rate among seniors at that time was around 33%. One out of three retired people met the income eligibility requirements and were eligible to receive a stipend and volunteer as a Foster Grandparent. The program has developed a great reputation by providing volunteer opportunities for low income retired people to serve children.

Soon after, RSVP was developed under President Nixon in 1971 and Senior Companions followed in 1974. These programs with Congress’ ongoing support expanded over the next 30 years to where we are today with approximately 34,000 Foster Grandparents, 17,000 Senior Companions and 489,000 RSVP Volunteers.

The impact on society is almost immeasurable as over a half million retired volunteers give back to their communities by serving children, at risk frail elderly and community agencies across the country. Now as we look at reauthorizing these time tested programs it is an opportunity to make some minor adjustments to keep them relevant as we approach this new phenomenon in our society of the aging of the baby boomers.

My involvement in service began early in my life as I served in the Catholic Priesthood for 4 years from 1970 – 74. After much thought and prayer I made a difficult decision to take another career path which ended up in my developing and implementing the original Senior Companion Program grant in Minnesota.

I serve as a Director of both a Senior Companion Program (28 years) and a Foster Grandparent Program (8 years) in Minnesota operated under the sponsorship of Lutheran Social Service. In this position I have seen first hand the development and growth of these programs as they provide the simple structure to give older adults the opportunity to give back to their community.

In Minnesota we have had the opportunity to participate in some demonstration initiatives to find out what the barriers are in the current legislation that limit volunteer participation. Based on these experiences, the following are some changes that I feel could benefit these programs nationwide.

Currently the eligibility age for RSVP is 55 and we support lowering the age to 55 for FGP and SCP, as is called for in the proposals under consideration in the Citizen Service Act.

There are many challenges today in encouraging more retired people to volunteer, especially in the two stipended programs (SCP and FGP). When these programs started, the poverty rate among seniors was 33%. The stipend the volunteers received was 71% of minimum wage. As a result many participants became Foster Grandparent volunteers because it was a "job" to earn money. Today we have a much different scenario where the stipend is only 50% of the minimum wage and the poverty rate among seniors is around 11%. Potential volunteers who really need income will get a job that pays at least minimum wage (ie, a greeter at fast food chains or discount store). The stipend today is an incentive to encourage regular commitments of time but will not help someone out of poverty as was one of the intentions 30 years ago. As a result, programs are facing major recruiting problems, yet the demand for the service they provide continues to increase.

During the last fiscal year approximately two-thirds of the Senior Companion Programs and two-thirds of the Foster Grandparent Programs nationwide could not meet their goals as far as the number of volunteers that they planned on enrolling in their respective programs.

The major barrier hindering this proposed enrollment was the current income guideline criteria. There have been several ideas proposed to fix this problem, from raising the guidelines, using guidelines from other government programs or allowing a certain percentage of the volunteers enrolled to be over the guidelines. Our suggestion is to support what the Administration recommended last year, that is, to remove the income criteria as a nationwide barrier and put the responsibility on the individual projects to continue to focus on recruiting low income older adults and make that determination depending on the cost of living in a particular area. The President goes on to say that the stipend should be based, not one someone’s income, but on the intensity of their commitment of service.

Since 1997 the Minnesota Senior Companion Program and the four Foster Grandparent Programs in Minnesota have had the opportunity to test this idea by conducting a Demonstration Grant with non- federal dollars. With this demonstration we set up an option for volunteers of any income to serve and their stipend would be based on their commitment of time. Volunteers who wanted to receive some financial reimbursement for service had to commit to at least 40 hours a month (10 hours a week). After conducting this demonstration and testing this idea for 5 years, out of the 900+ volunteers enrolled, 75% are considered low income and meet the current income requirements. So my point is that without any income guidelines we were still able to focus our recruiting on the lower income retirees and took away any stigma that was formerly associated with FGP and SCP because previously everyone had to be low income to even apply. Furthermore, if we hadn’t had this flexibility, we would have had great difficulty in finding seniors to provide services to children and older adults with special needs.

The Citizen Service Act is proposing to add flexibility to the type of service and the hours that Senior Corps volunteers can provide; such as allowing a Foster Grandparent to serve with more than one child and providing a financial incentive for an RSVP volunteer who contributes a significant amount of time. We support this initiative, which will reflect what the actual practice is in most programs today. One example of this flexibility is the Volunteer Leader role that is in the current SCP language. Arlene is one of our volunteer leaders in Minnesota. She not only serves her assigned homebound clients, but also provides leadership and support to new volunteers and helps them in the introductory process to their clients. She has a way about her to make everyone feel at ease. Hopefully this leadership opportunity will apply to both RSVP and FGP in the future.

We support the Administration’s call for more accountability. Through the Corporation for National and Community Service, all Senior Corps projects have been trained on "Programming for Impact" which is a results oriented process which demonstrates that these programs do make a difference in their communities. This process gives us the tools to document these successes.

We now have the opportunity, through the Citizen Service Act, to make some significant changes that strengthen and expand opportunities in the Senior Corps and build upon the important foundation we have developed over the last several decades to permit more seniors to serve in our communities. I thank you for accepting this testimony and ask for your support to get this legislation passed this year.