JEAN CASE:  Can you talk a bit about your own personal career path, your position now, and some of the highlights in your career path that have brought you to where you are today?

DAVID EISNER:  Well, I think what really started me on my career path was being in college, having no clue to what I was going to do, and being pre-med because my father was a doctor, and failing organic chemistry three times in a row before I got it in my head that it really wasn't what I was interested in.  What I was actually interested in was political science.

I started an alternative newspaper at Stanford, and once I realized that I wasn't going to be a doctor, I decided to go to Washington to help out in what was then called the Reagan Revolution.  I graduated in 1983, and President Reagan had been in for a couple of years, and I really wanted to help out.  So I came to D.C. and couldn't find a job in the administration and ended up as a congressional correspondent in a House Member's office, and I got really interested in policy and have stayed with it ever since.

The most important thing that I remember telling my parents was that doing policy could affect many, many people at once.  Whereas, being a doctor, I would have only been able to impact one person at a time.

JEAN:  That's pretty profound.

DAVID:  It really hit me hard, and so then I became a press secretary on the Hill.  I made an unsuccessful transition after a couple of bumps to try to turn my interest in policy to an interest in public relations and public affairs.  When I went to the PR agency Fleishman Hillard, I became an advocate for different organizations and also helped sell some corporate identities, but I didn't really become impassioned again.  At that time, I felt I was in a dead-end career wise, and I went to law school because I thought I might not be able to do policy unless I went to law school, while I was still at Fleishman.  And then I bumped into AOL.  It was the first time I connected my policy passion with the public affairs/public relations skills set, and I sort of realized that was the space that I wanted to be in, and I was fortunate enough to be able to work on the AOL account for a couple of years, working on issues like youth safety, privacy, and other important policy questions for the online world at that time.

I loved the connection between those policy questions and public relations -- the public positioning of the Internet as a sector.  Then I went over to AOL and just got deeper and deeper and into it, and helped create the AOL Foundation.

I guess the transition between where I was then and where I am now is that as I was focused more on this intersection between policy and PR, I realized that one of the most important things that AOL and the technology sector needed to do was build the capacity of the nonprofit world.  I became pretty focused on that as a specific issue, and my interest broadened beyond technology.  So, when this opportunity at the Corporation for National and Community Service became available and I had already worked a little bit with the administration, I felt that I would like to try to make a contribution in a broader way to expand the infrastructure and capacity of the nonprofit world.

JEAN:  Since you have joined the Corporation for National and Community Service, what have been some of the similarities and differences between the private sector and the federal government?

DAVID:  I'm still looking for some of the similarities.  The differences are very profound.  There's a level of complexity in federal service that I hadn't anticipated.  As an example, I am an administration official and serve the President, and yet I have responsibilities to Congress, and I have a board of directors who hold me accountable.  So governance can get very complicated.   

The capacity that a CEO in the private sector has to basically manage their way out of boxes doesn't really exist here.  The kind of statutory constraints that we're under dramatically limit management flexibility, so managing your way out of a box begins to feel more like a magic trick than a regular piece of discipline.

JEAN:  But you've brought much of the same business discipline to this government agency as you demonstrated in your earlier positions.  One thing that's often lacking in the area of service is clear goals and measurement, but the Corporation recently put together a new strategic plan, right?

DAVID:  Yes.  I'm so delighted that we actually built the strategic plan.  My first two years here were very much about fixing problems, and our goals were all internal around building accountability, building credibility, and improving customer service.  Once we got those things fixed, it was such a delight to be able to take our eyes off our shoelaces and look at the horizon and develop some meaningful plans.

So now we have a strategic plan that we worked very closely with our board of directors on, and I think is very aspirational, but also very doable, and it centers on a new sense of identity for the Corporation.  Rather than just being the agency that runs a set of programs, we are the agency that is at the center of America's movement around service and volunteering.  Our goals are not just about the number of volunteers or the number of hours of service.  Instead, they focus on what America can achieve in the area of service and volunteering.

JEAN:  Some people say that volunteering is fine, but wonder if it really makes a difference at the end of the day.  How do you measure your outcomes in terms of stronger communities and changed lives?

DAVID:  That's something we spend a great deal of time talking about, and in developing the strategic plan, we wondered if it would be better to have goals around disaster preparedness, the environment, and other things or whether it would be better to focus on service.  Ultimately, we're the government agency that focuses on service, but none of our grantees do service for service's sake.  They are using service to get these other things done.

So in addition to the specific goals we have, we also know we're going to see many of our grantees focus on education and tutoring, that we're likely to see very significant work done to help elderly, frail elderly Americans stay independent, that we're likely to see increases in service that help disenfranchised people, particularly minorities and immigrants, and that there will be an increased focus on issues around justice, equity, equality, and improving lives -- particularly overcoming poverty in our communities.

JEAN:  Those are some pretty big goals and really impressive outcomes, but obviously, government can't do it alone.  As you do your work and you've got these goals in front of you, what kind of support do you look for from places like faith based groups, the corporate sector, and educational institutions?

DAVID:  Well, I say it even more strongly.  It's not just that we can't do it alone.  We can't even aspire to doing it, period.  We have to very carefully understand that what we are about is providing resources to let other people do the work.  The Corporation generally serves its highest value when it is putting rocket boosters behind social entrepreneurs who are operating out of the private sector, so that we are supporting folks like Teach for America, City Year, our state commissions, and Jumpstart, who are actually solving critical community needs.

We have found that in certain areas, like mentoring and efforts around really tough situations, some of our faith based community partners right now are the ones that are innovating the best, areas like children of prisoners and prisoner reentry and overcoming addiction to drugs or alcohol.  We see very powerful work going on within the faith based community, and we see a lot of education reform activity -- organizations like Citizens Schools and others that are driving a strong education reform agenda.

Again, our role is to find a way to build a public private partnership, so that we can help bring more resources to bear, and so that we can stimulate stronger civic participation as folks struggle to solve these challenges.

JEAN:  A lot of people reading this may have never heard of the Corporation for National and Community Service, but you do have a program called AmeriCorps that some people are familiar with.  Can you talk a little bit about the AmeriCorps model?

DAVID:  AmeriCorps is a program that was started in 1993 under President Clinton, and the idea is that someone that does full time intensive service for a year earns a scholarship for education, and to enable that service, they also receive a living allowance that actually keeps them below the poverty level, but at least enables the service to happen.  During the current administration, we've moved from 50,000 AmeriCorps members a year to 75,000 a year.

These folks are in communities across the country.  They are not -- some people think of them, mistakenly, as though they are federal employees.  They are not.  We provide the slots and the opportunities for nonprofits to hire these people, and they get to pick them and provide them the stipend and provide them the education award in communities across the country.  And they are doing some of the most amazing and cutting edge nonprofit work that is happening right now in America.

JEAN:  You just completed a national report on volunteerism.  What are some of the highlights?

DAVID:  We did it because we knew we wanted to grow volunteering, but we needed to have a better understanding of where our opportunities were, where our strengths were, and where we were still lagging behind.

I think the big headline is that there is an incredible amount of diversity in the amount and type and source of volunteering in states across the country.  We go from Utah, with more than 60 percent of its citizens volunteering, to its neighbor Nevada, with fewer than 20 percent of its citizens volunteering.  We see, for example, in Mississippi, the most prevalent kind of volunteering is food preparation and delivery, to Nebraska, where the most common kind of volunteering is transportation and physical labor, to California, where the predominant form of volunteering is mentoring and tutoring.

Then you see that in Utah, as you would imagine, a lot of the volunteering is driven by churches, but then you also look at a state like Vermont, which is very high in terms of the number of volunteers, but where less than 15 percent of the volunteers come through a faith background.

JEAN:  So is there some lesson in that about thinking globally or nationally, but acting locally as you see the diversity in the kind of service that is taking place around the nation?

DAVID:  Yes.  I think it's really important to understand how much volunteering is ultimately driven at the local and community level, and that important endeavors -- for example, the President's Call to Service -- seemed to be very effective in driving more people to serve, and at the same time, that service all happened at the local level and took very different shapes in different communities.

JEAN:  You have a staff in Washington, but you also oversee the work of 50 state offices and thousands of partner organizations, as well as individual volunteers who are part of what you are doing.  What are the management challenges in that, and how do you manage that kind of a task?

DAVID:  I think different people have different ways of doing it.  Mine is team based and collegial.  A lot of managers would say that you shouldn't have more than five or six people reporting directly to you.  My executive team has 20 people on it.  It's probably not the way I would prefer it, but because my agency is so fractionalized, I now have every element reporting directly to me.  That creates a bit of an administrative burden and time burden on me, but it has been instrumental in creating a stronger sense of teamwork.  So I think that that big executive team has been vital.  The other thing I've been doing is going to all the states and meeting with all the employees.  Within a year, every one of our 600 employees had been in a small group setting with me.

JEAN:  Kind of continuing on that same thought, many in the service field focus on driving people to volunteer service, but another important area is making sure that we continue to inspire young people to consider government service as part of their career, and particularly talented young executives.  You've obviously made a very successful transition from the private sector to the public sector.  What would you say to young people who may be considering whether a government role is right for them in the future?

DAVID:  Our government does very important work and needs bright and talented people from the generation that's growing up now.  I do think that the insights from the private sector are incredibly helpful to a career in public service.  I don't think I could have done this job if I didn't have my experience from outside of government to rely on.

JEAN:  So would you encourage young people and others in the private sector to maybe think about making a sector switch?

DAVID:  Yes.  I think sector switches are terribly invigorating because you meet people who are so different than you would ever imagine operating in a different sector, and you have to learn how to do new things in new ways, and you learn different value propositions that you might not have appropriately valued before.  We need more people in the private sector to come into government.  We also need more people from the nonprofit sector.  I would also recommend to someone getting out of college to dabble in politics in some way, and get some private sector experience.

JEAN:  And then someone along that path, give a year of service?

DAVID:  At least a year of service, and I think, you know, it could be with a program like AmeriCorps or the Peace Corps, or a government agency or nonprofit, or a foundation.  Then, in a very practical way, I think these people will end up being better    people will end up being better recognized and compensated when they bring new skills to a sector than when they simply have the same skills that everyone in the sector is expected to have.

JEAN:  What is the biggest challenge in the volunteer/service area today?

DAVID:  I think we are not effectively connecting the dots.  There is an awful lot of work that a lot of people are doing, and there's too much wheel spinning and reinvention of the wheel.  I can tell you from my agency, when I see a bunch of high school seniors doing service-learning projects who are theoretically moving on a path to a lifetime of service and yet we have demonstrated that fewer than 2 percent of them have ever heard of AmeriCorps, then our agency has failed to connect the dots because we're funding service-learning and AmeriCorps.  We need to turn one into a pipeline for the other.

And it's the same thing at the state level.  When I see United Ways that don't know where the volunteer centers are and volunteer centers that don't know where the state commissions are and state commissions that don't know where the Senior Corps offices are, all at the local level, we are missing some of our most profound opportunities to actually have an impact because everyone has got their nose so close to the grindstone that people aren't noticing that they are doing the same thing their neighbors are doing.

JEAN:  That's such a critical point, David, maybe the most important point.  We've seen that there's tremendous power in a more collaborative approach, both within and between sectors.   Thanks for taking this time to share your insights with us.

DAVID:  Thanks so much, Jean.