The facts
The AmeriCorps Office of Inspector General has released a performance audit of the grants it awarded to California Volunteers, the state service commission that operates as part of the Office of the Governor. The audit, Report No. OIG-AR-26-06, was conducted by the independent firm Premier Group and is dated September 30, 2026. California Volunteers runs the largest AmeriCorps State program in the country and, according to the report, leverages over $150 million in public and private funding.
Auditors examined program activity from January 1, 2022, through April 30, 2024, a period in which California Volunteers reported $82,534,355 in federal costs and $85,245,842 in match costs on its federal financial reports. They also reviewed seven subrecipients holding a combined total of more than $54 million in awards. The verdict: California Volunteers and three of the seven subrecipients did not manage AmeriCorps grants in accordance with grant terms and federal regulations, and the program's subrecipient monitoring and oversight were not effective. Auditors found it had not conducted adequate pre-award risk assessments of subrecipients' financial management systems and internal controls, as required by federal rule.
The biggest problem was a nonprofit subrecipient called CivicWell. Auditors found CivicWell could not produce financial records that reconcile to the amounts it reported, so they questioned $4,827,195 in federal costs and $6,016,927 in match costs claimed by the subrecipient, for a total of $10,844,122 in questioned costs.
The report contains 17 recommendations. AmeriCorps concurred with 16 of them and partially concurred with one. California Volunteers agreed with eight, partially agreed with three, and disagreed with six, including the recommendation that AmeriCorps recover the federal questioned costs and disallow the match costs claimed by CivicWell.
Our take
Well, well, well. It turns out the office of the governor, that bastion of high-minded public service, is apparently run by a pack of fucking amateurs who couldn't monitor a piggy bank, let alone $150 million in grants. The audit is a masterpiece of bureaucratic understatement that basically says California Volunteers' oversight was a useless, flaccid joke. They didn't do the basic shit - like checking if the nonprofits they were shoveling money to had even a third-grader's grasp of arithmetic - before handing over the cash. What the fuck were they doing? Polishing their 'We Serve' pins? This isn't a program; it's a money-laundering scheme with better PR.
Then we get to the star of this shitshow, the nonprofit CivicWell. These clowns claimed $10.8 million - $4.8 million in federal dough and another $6 million in 'match' costs - and when the auditors showed up and said 'Prove it,' their response was essentially a shrug and a fart noise. They couldn't produce records that reconcile. Not 'our records are messy,' but 'we have no fucking idea where this money went.' That's not an accounting error; that's a goddamn heist. You could buy a small island with that kind of un-receipted spending, or at least a very nice yacht named 'The Civic Well-being.'
And the absolute, brass-balled gall of California Volunteers' response is what makes this a classic. Faced with 17 recommendations to fix their broken, leaky shit-show of an operation, they agreed with eight, hemmed and hawed on three, and outright told the feds to piss off on six. Which six? Oh, just the ones that involve giving any of the fucking money back. The recommendation that AmeriCorps recover the questioned costs? Nah, we disagree. The one to disallow the phantom match costs? Hard pass. Their position is a work of art: 'We acknowledge we failed at every basic duty of stewardship, but how dare you suggest we actually face a consequence for it?' It's the bureaucratic equivalent of shitting on the living room carpet and then arguing about the brand of cleaner.
This is the governor's own office. The place where, theoretically, adult supervision happens. Instead, they've been running a multi-million-dollar volunteer program with the financial controls of a stoned teenager managing a lemonade stand. They leveraged over $150 million in funding to achieve what? To demonstrate that you can lose track of ten million bucks faster than you can say 'transparency and accountability'? They are grifters in government drag, and their refusal to recover the cash is a giant 'Fuck You' to every taxpayer in this country. The only thing they've volunteered for is a masterclass in being absolute, top-shelf cunts.
