Environmental Stewardship Programs Provide a Powerful Return on Investment. Environmental stewardship is critical to how AmeriCorps ‘gets things done for America.’ AmeriCorps offers transformative resources, including funding and AmeriCorps members, to address pressing environmental challenges through national service. AmeriCorps and its partners focused on environmental stewardship help communities become more resilient by supporting measures that preserve habitats, reduce greenhouse gas emissions, conserve land and water, increase renewable energy use, mitigate against wildfires and flooding, educate the public on sustainability and stewardship, and more. AmeriCorps members engage communities and share valuable resources to support environmental stewardship across the country. Return on investment (ROI) analyses help quantify a program’s benefits to its costs, assessing program performance and demonstrating value to stakeholders, while building the larger evidence base. Calculating ROI for AmeriCorps programs can entail looking at benefits (relative to costs) experienced by:
• AmeriCorps members, such as increases in their wages and educational attainment.
• Government, such as increases in tax revenue and programmatic savings.
• Society, such as improvements in environmental health and reductions in wildfire-related costs.