National Service Agency Names AmeriCorps Director
Washington, D.C. – The Corporation for National and Community Service (CNCS) named William C. Basl as Director of the AmeriCorps program today. Basl is a highly accomplished national service leader and manager of complex human service projects. He joins CNCS following an eighteen-year tenure as the Executive Director of the Washington Commission for National and Community Service.
“AmeriCorps is an indispensable resource for communities across our nation,” said Wendy Spencer, CEO of the Corporation for National and Community Service. “Bill Basl's vast experience and knowledge of the program at the local and national level will be instrumental in advancing AmeriCorps to its full potential.”
Basl brings 40 years of dynamic experience with a reputation for excellence, innovation and results in high-impact national service programming. He began his career as a VISTA member serving migrant farm workers in Eastern Washington before moving on to a successful career in state government where he founded the Washington Service Corps in 1983. Basl has been involved in helping to develop national service legislation since the 1980s.
He also founded the nation's first veterans' corps and is noted for establishing a collaborative regional network to provide AmeriCorps training across the Pacific Northwest. He is a past chair and board member of the American Association of State Service Commissions. In June 2011 Basl was selected by the White House as a Champion of Change-Service Innovator.
The AmeriCorps program provides opportunities for Americans to make an intensive commitment to service. The AmeriCorps network of local, state, and national service programs engages more than 80,000 Americans in intensive service each year.
AmeriCorps members serve through more than 3,000 nonprofits, public agencies, and faith-based and other community organizations, helping meet critical needs in education, public safety, health, and the environment. The variety of service opportunities is almost unlimited. Members may tutor and mentor youth, build affordable housing, teach computer skills, clean parks and streams, run after-school programs, or help communities respond to disasters.