The two presidential candidates -- Sens. John McCain and Barack Obama -- plan to go to New York City this week to commemorate the anniversary of the September 11, 2001, attacks with a call to public service.
Unless the candidates get specific about removing the barriers to public service, however, they will be wasting their time. Grand campaigns for service rarely produce more than a brief bump in involvement by Americans, often followed by a slump as one-time-only volunteers drop out and government and nonprofit employees find little reason to stay motivated by their jobs.
At the same time, the demand for more people to get involved in public service is growing.
Charitable organizations cannot fill the gaps created by the economic slowdown and the nation's growing elderly population without fresh recruits and motivated volunteers. Governments cannot faithfully execute the laws without replacing the millions of teachers, police officers, health-care professionals, and civil servants who are about to retire. Nor can they act as faithful partners with charities. Even corporations need public servants of a kind as they come under intense market pressure to be more socially responsible.
Nevertheless, the gap is growing between demand for people to perform public service and the contributions of time and effort that Americans make. People may say they want to serve, but volunteering has declined 6 percent over the past three years, and the list of hard-to-fill government jobs is growing daily. The spirit of public service may be strong, but the actual involvement of Americans is lagging as people struggle to stretch their paychecks by cutting donations and scaling back volunteer time.
The economy is not the only culprit, however. It is not enough merely to invite more Americans to serve; people must be asked to perform tasks that are inviting.
Unfortunately, too many charitable organizations do not know how to manage volunteers effectively or recruit new employees. Young Americans want the chance to make a difference and learn new skills, not work in the back office stuffing envelopes.
At the same time, many government agencies are shackled with a creaky civil service designed for 30-year careers in dense hierarchies that few Americans want. Although this disconnect would seem to deepen the labor supply for charities, government's reputation often discourages public service in general. As for corporations, many substitute product sales for philanthropy, while using the language of social responsibility to disguise their otherwise dismal performance on the problems that charities and government are trying to solve.
In the meantime, government programs designed to promote service have fallen into disrepair.
Much as Mr. McCain and Mr. Obama promise to expand AmeriCorps, they have yet to embrace a long overdue increase in the living-expense stipends and tuition benefits that participants receive. Congress easily mustered the votes last spring to give veterans an increase in tuition benefits and stipends, but it has shown no interest in creating modest parity for AmeriCorps members. Some experts have suggested elevating the Corporation for National and Community Service to status as a member of the president's cabinet as the solution, but while that may give the agency a better class of limousines, it will do nothing to help its programs keep pace with inflation.
Renewing AmeriCorps is just the start of making public service more inviting.
First, Mr. McCain and Mr. Obama should promise to make charities whole by restoring the budget cuts that have eviscerated federal grant programs to help the needy. They should also promise that every grant the federal government provides to nonprofit groups will include enough money to cover the heat, light, technology, and training that charities need to do their jobs well. They could even promise a federal loan program to give charities the resources to support the entrepreneurship needed to solve the intractable problems the world faces today.
Second, Mr. McCain and Mr. Obama should promise to help corporations contribute more to society by creating tax incentives to support paid leaves for people who want to engage full- and part-time volunteering, while continuing and expanding tax breaks that encourage businesses to give money and products. They should also keep corporations honest by asking them to prove they are making a difference to society.
At a minimum, they should support B Lab, a Pennsylvania charity that has built a vetting process for certifying corporate social responsibility. They could even give the Securities and Exchange Commission the power to audit the "double bottom lines" that publicly traded corporations use to showcase their social profits as well as their financial profits.
Third, anticipating his possible role as the nation's public servant in chief, Mr. McCain and Mr. Obama should each promise to reverse the federal government's well-deserved reputation as a destination of last resort for young Americans. The government's antiquated personnel system must be modernized to reward performance, not time on the job, and give new recruits the career paths to make a difference faster. Mr. McCain and Mr. Obama should also promise to hire enough federal employees to faithfully execute the laws, while holding the growing legion of contractors to the highest standards of ethical conduct and disclosure.
Absent this kind of agenda for action, this week's call to public service can only disappoint. When Americans hear the call to public service, they should be able to say "yes." Mr. McCain and Mr. Obama should provide the details to help them do so.