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Home > News >

Mentoring Funding: A Mixed Outcome, and Our Thanks

August 5, 2009: We cannot thank you enough for the calls that you placed to Senate offices and appropriators and earlier communications to the House of Representatives in an effort to save the U.S. Department of Education's (ED) Mentoring Programs grants.

Unfortunately, despite vigorous effort, the Senate Appropriations Committee followed the House and President's Budget recommendation in terminating funding for the program in its FY 2010 Labor/Health & Human Services/Education bill.

We are continuing to work with ED on their plans for the nearly $50 million in FY 2009 that had been appropriated, at the very least to ensure that FY 2008 grantees would be able to finish their three-year grants. We will also continue to push the Mentoring America's Children Act (H.R. 913 and soon to be reintroduced in the Senate) – which has bipartisan support and is seeking to make significant improvements in Mentoring Programs grants – toward jump-starting the program in a future year.

Even so, there is considerable good news for mentoring emerging from the Senate bill:

• Corporation for National & Community Service funding for the Serve America Act increased to $1.157 billion, or $98 million more than the House-approved level – including $197 million for the National Service Trust (compared to $171 million from FY 2009), $8 million for the Volunteer Generation Fund, and $2 million for the Nonprofit Capacity Building program; mentoring programs and Mentoring Partnerships will be eligible to apply for portions of these funding streams.
• Funding for the Mentoring Children of Prisoners program in HHS is continued at nearly $50 million as in previous years.
• Department of Labor Youth Training funding is recommended at $924 million, toward assisting eligible youth in achieving academic and employment success through various activities, including mentoring.

These amounts are not yet final – they must still be passed by the Senate and reconciled with the House version of the bill in conference committee.

MENTOR is very disappointed in the Committee's decision to de-fund Mentoring Programs grants in FY 2010. But, we will continue working to bolster other federal resources for the mentoring field. Thanks once again for joining us in this effort!