American Connection Corps Member

Come join the nation’s premier AmeriCorps program! Spend a year serving rural and emerging communities - you’ll launch your career in a place you're invested in, and you'll start changing this country for the better.

Introduction

The American Connection Corps (ACC) is the flagship program of Lead For America (LFA), a national nonprofit that is building a new generation of public service leaders nationwide. ACC is LFA’s boots-on-the-ground service corps, aimed at building local leaders in rural and emerging communities. Through a year of service, ACC’ers become leaders who can tackle critical bipartisan challenges, advance economic prosperity, and spark needed change in the places they’re most connected to. Every corner of America deserves the leadership of great public servants, and ACC brings that vision to life.

ACC is among the fastest-growing AmeriCorps programs in the country – we’ll have over 100 corps members serving communities across 30+ states this year.

Responsibilities and Activities During the ACC Service Year

Here's how it works: ACC corps members will be placed with a local nonprofit, government agency, or other community organization in the area they’re serving. After placement, you'll get to work in late summer / early fall. Day in and day out, you’ll work for your host organization, building critical knowledge and skills while advancing progress on a critical challenge in your community. You might serve a rural town with a triple digit population, a small city of over 100,000 people, or you might be based in a larger metropolitan area while serving multiple smaller communities statewide. You’ll have a dynamic local supervisor at your host organization - someone who can be there for you and support both your personal and professional growth. You’ll also be supported by your ACC Program Officer on the LFA side - Program Officers are our public service experts who will connect you socially with your peer ACC’ers, facilitate a range of professional development opportunities, and support you with any questions/challenges that arise during your service year.

To give you a sense of the contributions you could be making in your community, here are some examples of ACC’ers past placements, projects, and impact:

• Allowing citizens of an industrial, upstate New York town to play an active role in how their local school district allocates their tax dollars.
• Developing a greenhouse gas emissions strategy for a Montana tribal government’s operations, allowing the nation to track its environmental footprint.
• Helping a rural Nebraska county secure $10M in public-private funding to bring high-speed internet access to 1K underserved households statewide.
• Supporting a rural Minnesota community with digital skills training for thousands of high schoolers and senior citizens.

Lastly, you’ll have even further opportunity to develop knowledge, sharpen skills, and build connections at ACC’s three in-person retreats throughout the year. Retreats are week-long experiences that will take you to Wichita (KS), Minneapolis (MN), and Washington DC; you’ll put your host site responsibilities on pause while you get to know your ACC cohort and discuss the challenges you’re each addressing in your communities. During each retreat, you’ll get to learn from nationally renowned community leaders, corporate executives, policymakers, and more. And we promise there will be plenty of time for fun too:)

Next Steps

Contact us at [email protected] with any questions you may have - we’re here to support you, and we would love to see your application.

Join us on a journey to bring needed change to every corner of this country!