Congress Calls for Increase in Funding for Youth Mentoring
Abbie Evans, Senior Director of Government Relations and Adriane Alicea, Director of Government Relations, MENTOR: The National Mentoring Partnership
September 30th, 2019
Posted In: Uncategorized
Last week, the U.S. Senate’s appropriations committee approved their bill that funds the Youth Mentoring Grant at the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention (OJJDP) for the new Fiscal Year 2020. This grant is still the only remaining mentoring-specific funding source for quality youth mentoring in the federal budget and also funds the National Mentoring Resource Center (NMRC). In their bill, the Senate appropriations committee approved a $2 million increase for the grant for a total of $97 million. This follows the House’s recommended total funding of $100 million for FY20. Now Congress must negotiate the differences in their two bills.
Fiscal Year | President’s request | House | Senate | Final passage |
FY2019 | $58 million | $100 million | $94 million | $95 million |
FY2020 | $58 million | $100 million | $97 million | $TBD |
As Congress continues to work out these differences, they passed a stopgap funding measure to keep the government open from October 1 (new federal Fiscal Year 2020) through November 21. During this time, MENTOR and our coalition of mentoring advocates will lobby Congress to approve the House-passed number of $100M for the Youth Mentoring Grant in FY20. Join us in calling on Congress to support this critical increase in youth mentoring! Act now!
