Bruce Reed and John Bridgeland, the heads of Domestic Policy for Presidents Bill Clinton and Bush, respectively, issued a report today highlighting a looming crisis in the charitable sector:

“More than 14 million Americans – 11 percent of American workers – are employed by or volunteer full-time in the nonprofit sector. That’s more than the financial industry and the auto industry combined;
Churches, many of which deliver social services to the poor and needy, raised $3 billion to $5 billion less than expected in the last quarter of 2008;
United Way saw a 68 percent increase during the past year in the number of calls for basic needs such as securing food, shelter, and warm clothing;
Goodwill of Central Arizona reported nearly twice the number of visits to its centers on December 23, 2008, compared to the same day in 2007”

They cited many other examples of the non-profit sector’s capacity contracting as the need expands — and offered several “post partisan” suggestions for how to help the non-profit sector.
One idea they point to is expanding full-time national service. How would that help? One of the great misconceptions about AmeriCorps is that it’s a big government-run corps like the CCC of the New Deal. In fact, most of the AmeriCorps members work for non-profit groups. It is, in effect, a highly cost-effective non-profit subsidy program.
I say highly effective because one of the main things these full time service folks do is recruit and manage unpaid volunteers, thereby acting as a force multiplier for the non profit.
They also suggest a fund for social innovation,tax changes to encourage charitable giving and other creative ideas.