Senior Corps—RSVP: Disaster Services and Community Resilience During 2012 Colorado Wildfires: Table 1.

The Corporation for National and Community Service (CNCS) is an independent federal agency that supports community resilience (CR) and traditional disaster services through National Service programs, including Senior Corps and AmeriCorps (Bullock, Haddow, & Coppola, 2013). CR is the capacity of a community to withstand, respond, and recover from adversity and is a component of the National Health Security Strategy (Chandra et al., 2013; Moore, Chandra, & Feeney, 2013; Plough et al., 2013; U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, 2009). Traditional disaster service strategies often require disaster-specific investments,while CR strategies leverage existing non-disaster-specific activity. As communities experience greater fiscal constraints, they need to be able to “leverage work in other areas and engage in activities with dual benefit for both routine and disaster times” (UscherPines, Chandra, & Acosta, 2013). We present a conceptual framework of how Senior Corps grantees, through the RSVP (a Senior Corps Program), can contribute to both CR dual benefit volunteer service activity and traditional disaster services. RSVP (which originally stood for Retired Senior Volunteer Program) is a flexible volunteer service model that engages Americans age 55 in six national focus areas that includes disaster services. Although older Americans can be at higher risk of mortality during disasters (CDC, 2012; Chiu et al., 2013), Senior Corps programs like RSVP can engage Americans age 55 and older in support of CR. The RSVP Senior Corps model requires no set service schedules and provides no monetary compensation for volunteers (with the exception of meal and mileage reimbursement), but provides funding for volunteer recruitment, supervision, and training, which are important but time-consuming components of disaster preparedness (Aakko, Weed, Konrad, & Wiesman, 2008). In fiscal year 2012, RSVP engaged over 320,000 volunteers through 676 grants, providing independent living services to 742,800 adults, respite services to nearly 24,000 family or informal caregivers, and mentoring to more than 82,590 children. RSVP also supports traditional disaster services through training and volunteer placements that are specific to disasters. Finally, RSVP funding provides communities the capacity to manage RSVP volunteers in traditional disaster services or redeploy RSVP volunteers in a CR dual benefit roles through existing service relationships. In 2012, the Denver and Larimer RSVP Projects engaged in disaster response activities associated with the wildfires in Jefferson, El Paso, and Larimer Counties in Colorado (wildfires; Makings, 2013). Some RSVP volunteers served in deployments that reflect traditional disaster services, while others served in their routine volunteer stations in dual benefit roles in support of CR during the wildfires. The flexible nature of RSVP allows grantees to identify and address multiple community needs through National Public Policy & Aging Report Advance Access published July 8, 2016