What is the Franklin Project?
The Franklin Project is a new venture by the Aspen Institute to marshal the best case for a voluntary civilian counterpart to military service in the United States. At the 2012 Aspen Ideas Festival, General Stanley McChrystal called for large-scale civilian national service to engage more Americans in serving community and country. We believe national service can and should become a common expectation and common opportunity for all Americans to strengthen our social fabric and solve our most pressing national challenges. To realize this vision, the Franklin Project engages outstanding Americans from the private sector, higher education, government, the military, the faith community, the philanthropy, and nonprofit organizations, to develop innovative policy ideas and to build momentum around advancing a new vision of civilian service for the 21st century.  Our goal is to create one million new opportunities for large-scale civilan national service.

What is national service? Why now?
National service has always been in the DNA of Americans. By committing to spend a year or more serving our nation full-time, we have the opportunity to strengthen our social fabric, improve on individual skillsets, and solve some of the nation’s most pressing challenges. Today, application numbers for national service programs such as AmeriCorps, City Year, and Teach for America, are higher than ever before. The Corporation for National and Community Service, which supports AmeriCorps programs, reported that there were 582,000 applications for just 83,000 national service positions last year. This means that nearly 500,000 people who were ready and willing to commit themselves to full-time national service were turned away. The current capacity for national service opportunities is thus outpaced the incredible demand. 

In 2008 and 2009, bi-partisan support for large-scale expansion of service reached a promising high point when President Obama signed the Edward M. Kennedy Serve America Act into law in his first hundred days in office. The law authorized the Corporation for National and Community Service (CNCS) to marshal full-time and part-time talents of Americans of all ages, in increasing numbers year by year, to help solve key challenges in education, food security, environmental conservation, veterans’ reintegration, and economic opportunity. Yet, since the Serve America Act was passed, CNCS and most of its programs have been under attack in Congress in a budget constrained environment. At a time when our nation’s needs are so great and funding so dear, we need a broader system to engage America’s greatest resource – our people – in solving our biggest problems, gaining valuable skills, and building strong connections with fellow Americans from all backgrounds and walks of life.

As the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are drawn down, and as our nation faces new challenges and divisions within our own borders, we have a unique opportunity to rebuild a sense of common purpose and revitalize the service movement to meet the unique needs and opportunities of the 21st century. Prominent members of the military community, led by General Stanley McChrystal, believe that now is the time to rethink and significantly scale-up national service in an effort to harness the desire of so many Americans to serve when so few currently have the opportunity to serve through our Armed Forces or otherwise. This active military support creates an especially unique time and opportunity for meaningful efforts at scaling up civilian national service to succeed.

How will the Franklin Project go about helping to create a culture in which national service is a common expectation and common opportunity?
The Franklin Project has convened outstanding Americans from the private sector, higher education, government, the military, faith community, philanthropic, and nonprofit organizations, gathering diverse perspectives to inform our policy plan and establishing key advocates and stakeholders throughout the nation. We have formed a number of working groups to develop specific policy objectives and recommendations. All of these policy proposals will be included in our Franklin Project Action Plan, to be released at a major Summit taking place in June.

Who benefits from a large scale national service system?
The beauty of national service is that everyone benefits. Individuals who take part in national service develop specific skillsets they can continue to leverage for life. Communities are improved while national challenges are eroded and in many cases, solved. People from different racial, religious, socio-economic, ethnic, and geographical backgrounds cross paths and work together to solve problems and in doing so, strengthen our bonds to one another as Americans first.