Paul Schmitz, CEO of Public Allies

Public Allies is a nationwide nonprofit helping to promote leadership. It identifies talented young adults from diverse and underrepresented backgrounds who have a passion to make a difference and helps turn that passion into a career path.

Born out of the AmeriCorps program, started by President Bill Clinton in 1993, Public Allies was among the first recipients of AmeriCorps grants, and the organization has received more than $25 million since its inception.

On average, Allies are 67 percent people of color, 60 percent women, 50 percent college graduates, and 15 percent LGBT, and most live in the community they serve. Its mission is to advance new leadership and to strengthen communities, nonprofits and civic participation.

In 2009, President Barack Obama signed the Serve America Act, which deals with funding and how grants can be provided to nonprofit organizations through AmeriCorps, which includes Public Allies. The Serve America Act marked a huge increase in funding to service organizations.

But how have the recent economic times affected the organization? I asked Paul Schmitz, founder of Public Allies Milwaukee, and the organization’s national CEO since 2000. Schmitz writes and speaks often on topics of national service and civic engagement, and has recently published a book called Everyone Leads.
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ThirdCoast Digest: What is the goal of Public Allies? Are there any milestones to reach?

Paul Schmitz: What we do is we try to find young people who want to make a difference and connect them to organizations where they can make a difference. The goal is to identify and develop the next generation of diverse leaders that our community needs. At this point, we’ve developed 3,800 graduates of our program and next year, when we reach our 20th anniversary, we’ll have developed 4,400 leaders. Right now, we’re engaging over 600 new leaders a year. So when our 20th class begins, we’ll have reached over 5,000 leaders across the country.

TCD: How has the current economic situation affected your organization?

Schmitz: It’s affected us in a few different ways. First, the demand of young people who want to do our program has grown significantly. We’re turning away six people for every one person we hire. The second is that the need in our communities has grown, but the resources to pay the people haven’t. So what we find is that a lot of organizations we work with would love to have allies but can’t afford them right now. We’ve definitely seen tightened budgets in every sector of nonprofits. It concerns us that at a time when the needs have grown, the resources to meet those needs have gone down and are continuing to go down.

TCD: Has the current economic situation affected your funding, be it Federal or donations?

Paul Schmitz, CEO of Public Allies.

Schmitz: For us, the biggest impact has been our federal funding. The funding last year went down 6 percent, which was a very dramatic turn of events for our field. As far as donations, it’s a tighter time to raise money, and for any group that is out there, it’s more difficult and competitive. We’ve been fortunate that our major donors have hung tight, which for our national office made a difference, but certainly we’ve seen across the country it’s been much harder to raise money.

TCD: African Americans and Latinos currently have the highest rates of unemployment. How has your organization faced this challenge?

Schmitz: Our participants are about two-thirds people of color, so the majority of people we hire are African American and Latino. We certainly have seen how the unemployment level definitely impacts the demand of people for opportunities like ours. That’s why we’d like to be growing and giving opportunities.

TCD: Are you creating jobs out of the need for them or is it more about social change than job creation?

Schmitz: It’s about both. I think those are the twin engines of the work. On one level, we’re hiring people and giving them the valuable work experience and training to help them connect to better education and careers. Then on the other hand, they’re getting that experience by serving their communities and working to create better social justice. So for us, both are important. We’re trying to impact the individual and the communities.

Schmitz: I hope to do a couple things. The first is to inspire more people to believe in their ability to step up and make a difference. I find that so many people we’ve worked with over the years haven’t thought of themselves as people who can lead efforts to create change on the issues they care about, and my hope is to inspire a lot more people to believe in their ability to lead and step up and do so. The second is that I hope to influence the organizations and institutions and policymakers to see communities as a source of partnership, leadership and assets for what they’re trying to do.

If you want to donate, help or join please visit publicallies.org for more information.