GrizzlyCorps Isn't GoinG AnyWhere
A Message of Gratitude and Resolve
On April 27th, our team received news that sent ripples throughout the national service landscape: the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) ordered AmeriCorps to terminate funding for over 1,000 programs nationwide just eight months into an 11-month service year. This decision eliminated nearly $400 million in grants and left tens of thousands of AmeriCorps members and the communities they serve in limbo.
GrizzlyCorps was one of the programs impacted by these cuts. But this is not our final chapter.
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While our AmeriCorps funding was cut unexpectedly, we have been working hard to secure the resources needed to ensure our current Fellows can finish out their service year. It’s important to us that we not only honor the commitments we’ve made, but that the crucial work our 2024-2025 GrizzlyCorps cohort continues.
At the same time, we’re entering a period of transition and transformation. We are taking a deliberate pause from recruitment and new placements through early 2026. During this time, we’ll be regrouping, planning, and putting in the leg work to continue our program once we figure out the right funding mechanisms for GrizzlyCorps to flourish in the future.
Regrouping to Regrow
Since our humble beginnings in 2020, GrizzlyCorps has placed over 150 Fellows in rural California communities, supporting local capacity in wildfire resilience, regenerative agriculture, sustainable land stewardship, and climate action.
As UC Berkeley’s only full-time AmeriCorps program, we’ve piloted a new way of connecting higher education with national service. We’ve worked with Cooperative Extensions, the UC Natural Reserve System, tribal governments, nonprofit organizations, and public agencies. We take great pride in how our program has acted as a bridge between institutions that don’t always get to collaborate with one another. GrizzlyCorps has helped make those collaborations real and rooted.
We are talking with potential partners, mapping what’s next, and reflecting deeply on what GrizzlyCorps has taught us. These past 5 years have been a proof of concept, that uplifting rural climate solutions by connecting early-career environmentalists with farm and forest communities can be an antidote climate despair, systemic disinvestment in rural communities, and the myth that we must face these crises alone. We know this work cannot come to an abrupt end.
But it’s going to take advocacy. It’s going to take support. And it’s going to take solidarity building.
How you can help
We’re gathering stories, building coalitions, and preparing to relaunch stronger. We know how much this program has meant to every Fellow and alumni that has gone through our program and each community that we have served in the past 5 years. We would love to share your stories to support our next chapter. Every voice helps us not just show why programs like this are worth saving, but how this next version of GrizzlyCorps can be even more powerful.
Our program is also hoping to aggregate enough independent funding to support Fellows through the end of the service year, but next year is in jeopardy. Without federal funding, GrizzlyCorps must raise $2 million by mid-June. We are currently 20% of the way there — and every contribution brings us closer to preserving the program.
The pawprints of GrizzlyCorps have left a mark across California — from forested watersheds to regenerative farms, from tribal lands to town halls. They tell a story of service, solidarity, and systems change. We’re proud of what we’ve built through this program, and even more proud of the people who have built it with us. This is a big challenge and we won’t diminish the hurdle that’s ahead of us. But we’re still here, still committed, and still building resilience.