About ServeNext.org

The mission of ServeNext.org is to advance national service, AmeriCorps, and social innovation as strategies to tackle our most pressing social challenges and strengthen our democracy. ServeNext fulfills this mission with two key strategies:

Building a Grassroots Infrastructure

Our primary strategy – and ServeNext’s distinct value-add – is organizing and mobilizing the immense grassroots support for service and social innovation in communities around the country to be an effective constituency. The goals of the constituency include:

  • Encouraging more people to serve – especially those who are less often encouraged to do so – in the locations of our grassroots efforts.
  • Ensuring more key leaders understand the impact of service and social innovation in their communities and throughout the country.
  • Helping more citizens realize the impact of their collective voices to advance an issue.

Our key organizing strategy is to cultivate and support a growing number of vibrant grassroots networks in communities around the country.

During 2010 we will take the next big step to build the grassroots infrastructure by training and supporting 10 Community Organizers to create grassroots networks in their communities.  Learn more about the program and sign-up for updates as we finalize details here.

We are in the early years of building what will become a permanent and proactive grassroots infrastructure working with citizens nationwide who are involved directly with service and social innovation, and engage them to be a part of a constituency that will generate a collective voice to grow and sustain these movements over the long-term. 

Social Media for Service

Our second strategy to advance service and social innovation is through a relatively new initiative, Social Media for Service. We work with small and mid size organizations in these fields to provide social media training and coaching to help them leverage online tools and strategy to meet organizational goals, improve impact, and deepen engagement with their constituents. Learn more about what we provide and with whom we work here.

Background

ServeNext was founded in 2007 to engage the grassroots to advance AmeriCorps and citizen service.  There are thousands of service organizations, hundreds of thousands of national service alumni, and millions of community volunteers.  However, there was not an infrastructure to engage those networks and individuals to be a grassroots constituency for the service movement. 

With significant overlap between national service and social innovation fields, our efforts aim to advance both. 

Since our founding, ServeNext and our sister organization, ServeNext Citizen Action, have organized a number of successful grassroots campaigns.  We promote national service we have led a 30-city, 60-day bus tour, organized on college campuses, and educated key leaders.   ServeNext helped advocate for federal legislation to expand service opportunities and played a critical role in the development and passage of the Edward M. Kennedy Serve America Act – the most comprehensive service legislation in over 75 years – by mobilizing the grassroots.

The work of ServeNext and ServeNext Citizen Action has been covered in TIME Magazine, The Boston Globe, CBSNews.com, The Chronicle of Philanthropy, and more.

ServeNext (formally known as ServeNext Public Education Campaign) is a non-partisan 501(c)(3) organization based in Washington, DC.