Federal funding cuts have left the futures of thousands of volunteering opportunities for California college students uncertain since April 2025.

The Trump administration withheld more than $184 million in grants from AmeriCorps, which provides funding to a variety of community service programs – mainly focusing on education, public health and environmental stewardship – last spring. More than $11 million of those grants went toward AmeriCorps programs in California.

Twenty-five states, including California, sued the federal government to restore the funding in April, and the White House Office of Management and Budget agreed to restore the funds in August.

AmeriCorps, which former President Bill Clinton established as a federal agency in 1993, funds more than 200,000 members nationwide each year. While federal AmeriCorps money is currently flowing, the Trump administration has said it hopes to dismantle the agency and end its programming altogether.

“Because of the uncertainty and the chaos, it’s led several (AmeriCorps) programs not to apply for things,” said Josh Fryday, the director of the California Governor’s Office of Service and Community Engagement. “It’s caused a lot of anxiety among both our programs and our members.”

For some nonprofits, like the Community Clinic Association of Los Angeles County, AmeriCorps’ lack of funding certainty has meant losing out on their typical volunteers, at least temporarily.

For about two decades, 20 to 25 AmeriCorps members have volunteered for CCALAC annually, working on community health initiatives, health education, case management and Medicaid enrollment across the LA area, said the nonprofit’s CEO, Louise McCarthy, in an emailed statement. Many of these volunteers were UC students or recent graduates, including five UCLA volunteers during the 2023-24 school year, she added.

However, CCALAC did not receive funding for the 2025-26 year because of the competition for securing AmeriCorps grants – coupled with funding cuts, including to staffing – at the federal level, McCarthy said in an interview. She added that CCALAC plans to apply for the next AmeriCorps funding cycle, with the hope of bringing in volunteers once again.

“The program was amazing, and it was remarkable when there were attempts to defund it last year to see who stood up,” McCarthy said.

Several CCALAC AmeriCorps members have gone on to work full-time jobs at the community health centers that they volunteered at, McCarthy added.

“AmeriCorps has got tendrils throughout the state of folks in leadership positions in all a wide array of professions, and it’s a phenomenal program,” McCarthy said.

Reading Partners, a nonprofit that provides individualized tutoring to public school students, works with about 25 LA-area AmeriCorps members each year, said Virginia Lee, the executive director for the organization’s LA region. The nonprofit was able to weather last April’s federal cuts by temporarily hiring its AmeriCorps members as members of the Reading Partners staff, Lee added.

Once the federal funding was reinstated, Reading Partners resumed its AmeriCorps partnership, including during the current 2025-26 cycle, Lee added.

“There was a little bit of disruption, but not too much,” Lee said. “AmeriCorps members have been a critical partner, and they’re really important for that support system to schools. I hope this doesn’t happen again, but the organization is really thinking about what is that contingency plan in case something like this happens again.”

The federal budget cuts also impacted JusticeCorps, an AmeriCorps-funded program that trains volunteers to provide civil legal aid for people who cannot afford attorneys. UCLA students who applied to JusticeCorps’ 2025-26 LA program were informed May 28 that its contracts with AmeriCorps had been terminated and that legal access intern interviews would be paused, said Alexa Ocio, the program coordinator, in an email to applicants.

Forty-five UCLA students volunteered with JusticeCorps during the 2024-25 academic year.

[Related: Federal budget cuts hurt JusticeCorps interns, low-income communities]

“For those programs that were able to continue and were able to receive funding again, their operations have been a little slow, because in addition to … cutting the funding for organizations, the Trump administration also significantly reduced the workforce at AmeriCorps to try to, as part of the DOGE (Department of Government Efficiency) efforts, dismantle the program,” Fryday said.

#CaliforniansForAll College Corps, which is one of California’s largest AmeriCorps programs, received $66.3 million from the state and $5.7 million from the federal government for the 2025-26 academic year. The program provides stipends to students at California colleges and universities who complete 450 service hours through approved nonprofit and governmental organizations.

Nearly 200 UCLA students are involved in the College Corps, a UCLA spokesperson said in an emailed statement. Michael Atkins, a fourth-year psychology and sociology student, has spent two years supporting local K-12 students with post-secondary preparation and college applications through the program.

Atkins said his experience in College Corps has been stable, because the state overwhelmingly funds the program.

As a volunteer with the California College Corps, Atkins said his most impactful experience was helping a student from a low-income, foster care background finish his college applications – and later finding out the student was accepted into his dream university.

“That’s definitely what I look forward to on a day-to-day basis – just giving back that support that I didn’t really have when I was in high school,” Atkins said.

Fryday said he believes AmeriCorps helps prepare young people to serve their communities.

“Part of it is engaging our young people,” Fryday said. “They have a lot to offer. They’re incredibly passionate and energetic and want to create change. We need that enthusiasm and energy to help solve issues like climate change and education and food insecurity.”