Corporation for National and Community Service

As the federal agency for national service and volunteering, AmeriCorps brings leadership, resources, coordination, focus, and scale to America’s voluntary and service sector. In addition to meeting our mission and serving Americans nationwide, the agency is committed to effective stewardship of federal resources.

In FY 2025, in accordance with OMB guidance, AmeriCorps performed a full qualitative risk assessment for eight programs that expend over $10M annually. The assessment is required at least once every 3 years to determine if programs are susceptible to improper payments. No new programs were found susceptible to improper payments.

In FY 2025, AmeriCorps reported improper payment rates for two programs in Phase 2 including AmeriCorps State and National (ASN) and the Foster Grandparent Program (FGP). The scope of testing for ASN and FGP includes grantee payments made in Q3 and Q4 of FY 2024 and Q1 and Q2 of FY 2025. None of the ASN or FGP improper payments made are within the agency’s control and most improper payments are due to inadequate record keeping and calculation errors. AmeriCorps has reinstituted a corrective action plan committee to address these root causes in FY 2026.

The ASN program had a slight increase in improper payment rates from FY 2024 which is attributable to variations in testing results from random sampling. AmeriCorps observed a significant increase in its FGP program rate. This increase was a result of noncompliance identified with National Service Criminal History Checks (NSCHC). Additional corrective actions will be implemented in FY 2026 to help reduce improper payment rates, including a new NSCHC agency vendor requirement for grantees who have NSCHC improper payments and written confirmation from grantees confirming at least one staff member responsible for the area of noncompliance has taken the trainings and reviewed the resources provided to them.

AmeriCorps was non-compliant with two of the annual Office of Inspector General (OIG) audit criteria, publishing accurate and reliable rates for each of its susceptible programs and reporting improper payment and unknown payment estimates of less than ten percent for FGP. The agency is committed to improving its payment integrity process. AmeriCorps holds grantees accountable for found improper payments by disallowing costs, requiring training for National Service Criminal History Checks (NSCHC) and Funds Management, using information about improper payments to inform the agency’s grant portfolio risk assessment, and providing tools for grantees to improve. AmeriCorps has dramatically reduced its improper payment rates in recent years via grantee accountability mechanisms and compliance tools. The agency will continue to recover applicable improper payments.

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Agency level Payment Integrity results

  • Payment accuracy rate

    (Based on federal funding spent by programs determined by agencies as susceptible to improper payments)

  • Improper payments rate

    (Based on federal funding spent by programs determined by agencies as susceptible to improper payments)

  • Unknown payments rate

    (Based on federal funding spent by programs determined by agencies as susceptible to improper payments)

  • Corporation for National and Community Service improper payment estimates over time
    View as:

    Chart toggle amounts:
    Proper payments
    Overpayment
    Underpayment
    Technically improper
    Unknown

Recovery information

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Chart toggle amounts:
Overpayment amount identified for recapture
Overpayment amount recovered

Recovery of overpayments

Please note: Overpayment amounts recovered are reported in the year they were recovered, not the year they were identified. Therefore it is possible in some years to have a recovery rate greater than 100%.

Overpayment amount identified through recovery activities $0.9 M
Overpayment amount recovered through recovery activities $0.8 M
Recovery activities recovery rate 88.89 %

Why recovery audits are not cost effective in certain programs

AmeriCorps’ analysis determined payment recapture audits are not cost effective in any program or activity that expends over $1M annually. Therefore, no recoveries or distributions related to audit recoveries are applicable. AmeriCorps’ processes include a significant amount of manual work required to identify and recapture overpayments. The agency does not recover the amount of money necessary to establish a self-funded recovery audit program.

Intentional monetary loss improper payments are more commonly referred to as financial fraud and are overpayments that occur on purpose. This agency reported $0.31M of confirmed fraud in this reporting cycle.

Supplemental Information

AmeriCorps does not use the Do Not Pay Initiative in its payment integrity assessment for ASN and FGP, as all tested payments are made outside the agency by grantees. None of the datasets in the Do Not Pay Initiative allow AmeriCorps to validate payments made externally to the agency by grantees. In FY 2025, AmeriCorps did not experience a reduction in improper payments due to the Do Not Pay initiative.

The Working System has not reduced/prevented improper payments:

CNCS has not identitied incorrect information in the Working System.

CNCS was found non-compliant during the most recent PIIA compliance review.

Non-compliant programs:

Show full list of compliant programs Expand

Compliant programs:

  • AmeriCorps National Civilian Community Corps (NCCC)
  • AmeriCorps State Service Commission Grants
  • AmeriCorps Volunteers in Service to America (VISTA)
  • Commission Investment Fund (CIF)
  • Disaster Response Cooperative Agreement
  • Innovation and Demonstration
  • MLK Day of Service
  • National Service Trust
  • Office of Human Capital (Payroll)
  • Office of Procurement Services
  • Sept 11th National Day of Service
  • Service and Civic Engagement Research Competition
  • The Retired and Senior Volunteer Program (RSVP)
  • The Senior Companion Program (SCP)
  • Volunteer Generation Fund

Actions recommended and planned to achieve compliance

AmeriCorps was non-compliant with two of the audit criteria, publishing accurate and reliable rates for each of its susceptible programs and reporting improper payment and unknown payment estimates of less than ten percent for FGP. To help reduce rates, the agency has implemented the prior year Recommendation 1 in FY25 to include additional terms and conditions in AmeriCorps' General Grant and Cooperative Agreement Terms and Conditions policy documents aimed at addressing the root causes of improper payments in the FY 2025 General Grants Terms and Conditions and will continue to recover monies for collectable improper payments.

AmeriCorps had audit findings that it did not publish accurate or valid rates for ASN or FGP because it does not include differences between filed Federal Financial Reports and general ledgers as improper payments. The OIG recommends AmeriCorps reconcile the difference between grantees’ internal account records and Federal Financial Reports or to have the grantees perform the reconciliation during the payment integrity testing cycle and report unmatched errors as unknown payments. AmeriCorps does not agree that unmatched reporting errors represent improper payments as grantees have until the close of their award to reconcile its accounting records. AmeriCorps does not concur with the findings that resulted in the reported noncompliance.

The agency also had audit findings that it did not publish accurate or valid rates for National Service Trust (NST) because PIIA staff did not verify that sampled NST education award payments were used for only eligible education costs of members who earned the awards and because of errors with its published NST Sampling and Estimation Methodology Plan (S&EMP). The OIG recommends AmeriCorps publish improper payment and unknown payment estimates for NST in FY 2025, update its test plan to require verification of allowable cost of attendance (COA) expenses, and improve its quality control procedures for the NST S&EMP. AmeriCorps does not concur with this notice of finding and recommendation. While specific PIIA staff did not perform this assessment, AmeriCorps National Service Trust staff do assess payment eligibility and verify that education awards are used in accordance with the statutory requirements. The regulations state that it is the responsibility of the institution, not the agency, to verify eligible cost of attendance and is therefore outside of the agency’s responsibility. AmeriCorps acknowledges an administrative error in the population chart in its (S&EMP) posted on max.gov and has since informed OMB and updated its S&EMP on Max.gov.


Official(s) accountable for the progress of the agency coming into compliance

Alexander Delaney, Acting Chief Risk Officer – PIIA Compliance
Arminda Pappas, Acting Director of AmeriCorps State and National – ASN rates
Robin Corindo, Acting Director of AmeriCorps Seniors – FGP rates


Accountability mechanism tied to the success of the official designated in leading the efforts to come Into compliance

The agency has accountable officials that are responsible for different aspects of compliance with the payment integrity process. Payment integrity compliance may be tied to performance plans. Accountable officials will be invited to participate in the corrective action planning group that will focus on reducing improper payment rates.


Program name When was the last improper payment risk assessment conducted? Likely to be susceptible to significant improper payments? Substantial changes made to the assessment methodology used for the reporting cycle
AmeriCorps National Civilian Community Corps (NCCC) 2025 No No
AmeriCorps State and National 2025 No Yes
AmeriCorps State Service Commission Grants 2025 No No
AmeriCorps Volunteers in Service to America (VISTA) 2025 No No
Commission Investment Fund (CIF) *
Disaster Response Cooperative Agreement *
Innovation and Demonstration *
MLK Day of Service *
National Service Trust 2025 No No
Office of Human Capital (Payroll) 2025 No No
Office of Procurement Services 2025 No No
Sept 11th National Day of Service *
Service and Civic Engagement Research Competition *
The Foster Grandparent Program (FGP) 2025 No Yes
The Retired and Senior Volunteer Program (RSVP) 2025 No No
The Senior Companion Program (SCP) 2025 No No
Volunteer Generation Fund *

* Assessment year is not displayed because one or more of the following statements is true:

  1. Not required to conduct a risk assessment under the Payment Integrity Information Act of 2019,
  2. Already assessed for improper payment risk under a different name in a prior reporting period, and/or
  3. New and planning to perform a risk assessment in the future.