§12639a Civic Health Assessment and Volunteering Research and Evaluation

Summary

The Corporation, working with the National Conference on Citizenship under an agreement, must set up a Civic Health Assessment. They must pick a group of civic health indicators, find public and private data sources, get the needed data, study the results, and report what they find. They should consider working with similar efforts and may hire expert panels. The head of the Census Bureau and the head of the Bureau of Labor Statistics must give technical advice if asked. The assessment can cover topics like volunteering, voting and civic engagement, charitable giving, ties to civic and faith groups, interest in public-service careers, knowledge of U.S. history and government, and social enterprise. The partnership may fund new surveys and should use data from the Census, the Current Population Survey, the Bureau of Labor Statistics, and other sources. They must try to get data broken down by age, race and ethnicity, education, and other groups, and may study things like the internet’s role, program effects, and the civic activities of new citizens. The partnership must prepare a report at least once a year with the data and analysis. The report should show results by community, by State, and for the whole country so places can compare themselves to others. The partnership must give the report to the authorizing committees and post it on the Corporation’s website. They must also seek public input and hold conferences or forums to discuss the findings. They must do baseline and tracking research on domestic and international volunteering and fund an independent evaluation of volunteering’s impact and best practices, including ways to improve volunteering through cooperation among volunteer groups, colleges, and research institutions. Nothing in this part allows creating a federal database of personally identifiable information on people who take part in the data collection.