public policy

Young People First: Preparing for America's Future

by Kristin Ivie on 5 Oct 2009 1
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Guest blogger Zach Kolodin is Co-Founder and Executive Director of Young People First, establish a powerful constituency of young people to advocate for long-term priorities in America.

Although social media buzz revolves around the 24-hour news cycle, some Millennials are trying to move the horizon of the political debate a bit further into the future. Young People First (YPF) is single-mindedly committed to giving Millennials the tools to discuss, strategize, and hold political leaders responsible to a vision of a prosperous, sustainable future.
 
YPF is building a Future Preparedness Index, with the help of young people (ages 17-35), to represent the Millennial Generation’s shared long-term interests. Future preparedness represents a vision of what a responsible government ought to provide: sustainable prosperity and security that benefits all Americans over the long term. So we are working with social citizens and youth-led organizations to produce specific future preparedness goals to which young people can hold their leaders accountable.
 
The YPF team began thinking about strategies to improve the quality of youth participation in politics in the months before Barack Obama’s election in 2008. We noticed that while young people were making monumental efforts on behalf of both presidential candidates, most of the media content devoted to young people failed to describe their substantive and distinctive political interests, and instead focused on their collective “Obama crush”.
 
The idea of Millennials latching on to Barack Obama purely because of a crush is consistent with the dominant narrative of young people as a fickle constituency without clear political interests. However, that narrative is simply false. Young people have not only the energy to enact policy change, but also the wherewithal and capability to hold political leaders accountable to our vision of a prosperous future.
 
To that end, YPF is beginning to train young people to analyze legislation for how well it improves America’s future preparedness. The key here is not just helping more people develop their own assessments of legislation, but also helping them spread that analysis to their peers. Ultimately, our Legislation Analysis Corps members need to become social citizens in order to be successful.
 
When the Future Preparedness Index is launched, we'll consistently connect current legislation to long-term, real world outcomes. All significant legislation will be accompanied by a citizen-generated 'future preparedness assessment’. With any success, we’ll see young people taking responsibility for preserving and maintaining what makes America great.
 
We cannot create a system of accountability like this alone. We need your ideas and energy. Help us take the first step by filling out this questionnaire.
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Will Millennials Accelerate the Volunteer Mileage Deduction?

by Rich D Amato on 25 Jul 2008 7

Please give a warm welcome to a new Social Citizens blogger — Rich D’Amato, the Case Foundation’s very own VP of Communications. He likes cooking, playing golf, and building cross-generational partnerships between social citizens. Enjoy! — Kari

On Monday morning my inbox held a bit of a surprise. The Maryland Association of Nonprofits, as usual, had sent me a call to action, this time asking me to Urge Congress to Raise the Volunteer Mileage Deduction.

The what? I didn’t know that I could deduct taxable income for miles I traveled volunteering. Cool. But here’s the surprise: “While the IRS has recently increased the deduction for business travel from 50.5 to 58.5 cents per mile, and for medical or moving expense from 19 to 27 cents per mile, the volunteer deduction amount is set in law at 14 cents per mile and requires congressional action for any change.”

Outrage!!! Fourteen cents per mile to volunteer and a whopping 27 cents to rent a U-haul! What’s wrong with this picture? Read more »

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The Privatization of Public Service

by Allison Fine on 27 Jun 2008 8

In researching the Social Citizens paper, I was struck by a potential problem in public life. We have been witness to an explosion in interest in volunteerism and nonprofit careers, while interest in government careers has waned. Elected officials and other community leaders regularly laud the importance of the nonprofit sector … but is it time for nonprofit leaders to extol the virtue of government service? Read more »

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