photo by: Austin Hornbostel/Journal-World

The Ballard Center's home at 708 Elm St. in North Lawrence is pictured Thursday, Sept. 1, 2022. The nonprofit was the recipient of $400,000 in American Rescue Plan Act aid dollars that will help fund a building expansion.

On its website, Lawrence’s Ballard Center says its mission is to help local families in need “achieve stability.” But in April, the nonprofit got a painful lesson about instability when the Trump administration cut the grants for its AmeriCorps volunteers.

The Ballard Center, as the Journal-World reported, was one of four entities in Douglas County to be affected by the Department of Government Efficiency’s cuts to AmeriCorps grants. It and the other three groups — Boys and Girls Club of Lawrence, Center for Supportive Communities and United Way of Kaw Valley — said at the time that they had seen 80 AmeriCorps positions eliminated and a financial impact of over $400,000 from the cuts.

About two weeks ago, the government reversed course, restoring funding for the Kansas programs and allowing some of them to recoup some lost funds.

But Kyle Roggenkamp, the CEO of the Ballard Center, said the lesson was clear: The federal government’s support isn’t stable anymore, and the Ballard Center can’t rely on it.

“We will not be pursuing the AmeriCorps program funding again this year,” Roggenkamp said in an email to the Journal-World. “We simply do not trust any commitment from the federal level with the current administration.”

AmeriCorps, which was founded as a federal agency in 1993 to promote national service and volunteerism, assigns volunteers across the country to assist communities. Some of the group’s work includes responding to disasters, promoting environmental stewardship, assisting veterans and military families and supporting education.

For the Ballard Center, its five AmeriCorps volunteers had been helping to address food insecurity in the community. Will Averill, chief operating officer at the Ballard Center, said they were supporting the facility’s food pantry operations by organizing them more effectively and streamlining the donation process. They were also helping with check-in and check-out for people using the center’s services, and they helped manage the front desk and communications side of the organization.

The Ballard Center was more fortunate than some organizations targeted for federal cuts, Roggenkamp said. It was able to keep four of the volunteers on, using donations from supporters to hire them as actual employees. One of the members chose to opt out of working long-term at the center.

“Luckily, we live in a community that rallied behind us and we kept our AmeriCorps members on staff, to this day, as long term employees,” Roggenkamp said via email.

What’s also stayed to this day is the doubt that the government will be there to help.

“What they did to our members this year was not only unjust, it was cruel,” Roggenkamp said.

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The Ballard Center is not the only organization rethinking whether it should rely on AmeriCorps.

Jessica Dorsey, the executive director of the Kansas Volunteer Commission, said there are other organizations in Kansas that have decided against working with AmeriCorps for the time being. They include the Educator Academcy based out of Kansas City, Kansas, and the Teachers College Literacy Center at Emporia State University.

“Some programs aren’t continuing because there is no guarantee that the funding might not be rescinded again in the future,” Dorsey said. “So it is sort of a leap of faith for some programs.”

However, Dorsey said the Kansas Volunteer Commission has received “enough funding to fund all of the programs that wanted to continue for the 25-26 year.” There are eight programs in Kansas that want volunteers for 2025-2026, and the funding for those totals just over $2 million.

And some of the programs that lost their funding may have the opportunity to recover some money, she said, but that will vary based on each program’s specific details and when their volunteer assignments ended.

“They’ll be able to go back and recover some of their costs, their close-out costs from 2024-2025, and they will be able to use some of those funds that they have to repay member stipends, although not every program will be in that position,” Dorsey said.

• • •

In addition to the cuts to Kansas’ AmeriCorps programs, the Kansas Volunteer Commission also took direct hits to its operations, because some of its own funding actually comes from AmeriCorps. The commission lost a grant that funded work on volunteer management practices to increase recruitment and retention.

“We have a competitive grant called the volunteer generation fund, and we have to reapply year after year,” Dorsey said. “That one was also rescinded on that April 25 date. And on the same day that the AmeriCorps (funds) were reinstated, that volunteer generation fund grant was also reinstated.”

That money may be back, but Dorsey said that there are still unknowns. She said the commission hasn’t received money from investment fund grants given out by AmeriCorps. According to a news release from America’s Service Commissions, nearly $10 million in grants for fiscal year 2025 should have been awarded to state service commissions but have not been.

“Those funds were allocated by Congress to AmeriCorps, and they are part of that larger package of funding that the (Federal Office of Management and Budget) is holding at the federal level,” Dorsey said. “… We have already downsized by one position, and we will need to downsize by another if we don’t receive those funds.”

Dorsey said the commission hopes to continue being a resource for training, technical assistance and funding for nonprofits and other organizations that work in education, youth development, volunteerism and civic engagement.

“We hope that our funding continues to stay steady as it has been for decades before so that we can continue to advance that work within our state,” Dorsey said.

As for the Ballard Center, Roggenkamp said it won’t be counting on the federal government’s help unless the government demonstrates that it shares the Ballard Center’s values.

“And for the current time being, they do not,” Roggenkamp said. “Those values start with a focus on safety and connection. We feel neither safe or connected with any federal funding.

“Our entire community deserves better.”