Points of Light unveiled its National Volunteer Strategy last week on the main stage of its annual conference here, a $100 million initiative aimed at doubling the number of U.S. volunteers to 150 million by 2035.
I was a former News Division Chief for editorial and production at the United States Information Service, the announcement carried a personal echo. More than three decades earlier, as a GS-15/10 staffer, launched TV Martí, the U.S. government's television broadcast service to Cuba, which went on the air March 27, 1990, weeks after President George H.W. Bush signed the Television Broadcasting to Cuba Act into law.
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The connection to Points of Light is more than coincidental. Bush coined the phrase "a thousand points of light" in his 1988 acceptance speech, describing the volunteers and community groups he said were quietly doing the work government could not do alone. The phrase became the name of the nonprofit he founded the following year — the same organization now betting that the instinct behind it still runs strong enough in Americans to double the volunteer rolls within a decade.
Points of Light CEO Jennifer Sirangelo said the strategy is built on 12 goals across three areas: strengthening the nonprofit ecosystem, deepening volunteer engagement and expanding measurable impact. The effort comes as federal volunteer infrastructure has shrunk — the Trump administration cut AmeriCorps in 2025 — and as volunteering rates remain below pre-pandemic levels, according to Census Bureau data.
Even so, the numbers Points of Light points to are encouraging. UPS, a longtime partner, hit its own goal of 30 million employee volunteer hours four years ahead of schedule. Sirangelo said the appetite for service is there; what's been missing is the infrastructure to channel it.
That has been the through-line of Bush's vision since 1988, carried first through federal broadcasting reaching beyond America's borders, and now through a private organization trying to rebuild civic muscle within them. The instruments change. The bet on ordinary people doing extraordinary things, together, has not.