Segal AmeriCorps Education Award: Amount, Uses, and Deadlines

The Segal AmeriCorps Education Award is a post-service benefit that pays up to $7,395 for the 2025–2026 service year, and you can spend it on tuition and other costs at a school that participates in federal student aid, or on repayment of qualified federal student loans.¹ You earn it by completing an approved term of AmeriCorps service, you have seven years from the end of your term to use it, and whatever you use counts as taxable income in the year the payment goes out.

How Much the Award Is Worth

The full-time award is tied by law to the maximum federal Pell Grant for the fiscal year your term is approved, so the dollar figure moves whenever Congress adjusts the Pell.² For 2025–2026 that ceiling is $7,395. The Pell link was written into the program by the Edward M. Kennedy Serve America Act, signed April 21, 2009 and effective that October.³

Less-than-full-time terms earn a set percentage of the full-time award, based on the minimum hours the term requires:⁴

Full-time, 1,700+ hours: 100% ($7,395 for 2025–2026)
Three-quarter time, 1,200+ hours: 70%
Half-time, 900+ hours: 50%
Reduced half-time, 675+ hours: about 39%
Quarter-time, 450+ hours: about 26%
Minimal time or summer associate, 300+ hours: about 21%
Abbreviated time, 100+ hours: about 5.6%

If you have to leave for compelling personal circumstances before finishing, your award is prorated by the hours you actually served over the hours your term required.⁴

What You Can Spend It On

Two categories qualify: current educational expenses at an eligible school, and repayment of certain student loans. Payments always go to the school or loan servicer, never to you.

Current Educational Expenses

The school has to participate in the U.S. Department of Education’s Title IV federal student aid programs. Inside that door, eligible costs follow the school’s own “cost of attendance” determination and can include tuition and fees, books, room and board, and transportation.⁵ The Serve America Act also extended eligibility to institutions that accept GI Bill benefits and to some expenses outside the traditional cost-of-attendance definition.³

The costs have to have been incurred during or after your service. Expenses from before you joined AmeriCorps do not count. A school representative certifies each request through the My AmeriCorps portal or a paper voucher before payment is issued.⁵

Qualified Student Loans

You can direct the award to federal student loans made, insured, or guaranteed under Title IV of the Higher Education Act, to certain health-profession loans authorized under Titles VII and VIII of the Public Service Act, and to loans made directly to students by a state agency. That covers subsidized and unsubsidized Stafford Loans, Direct Loans, Consolidation Loans, Perkins Loans, and health programs such as HEAL and Nursing Student Loans.⁶

Parent PLUS loans are excluded. Private student loans are not on the qualifying list.⁶

Checking Whether Your School Qualifies

Accreditation alone is not enough. The school has to hold a Title IV agreement with the Department of Education. You can confirm this by calling the school’s financial aid office, searching the Department of Education’s database, phoning the Federal Student Aid Information Center at 1-800-433-3243, or trying to select the school inside the My AmeriCorps portal when you build a payment request.⁷

Requesting a Payment

Payments run through the My AmeriCorps portal. You verify the personal information already on file, enter the dollar amount to draw from your available balance, mark whether it’s for a loan or current expenses, and pick the institution from a searchable directory. Before you submit, you have to confirm that you hold a high school diploma or equivalent, and that you have not been convicted of possessing or selling a controlled substance since finishing your service.⁸

Once you submit, the request goes to the institution for certification, then to the National Service Trust, which sends the funds directly to the school or loan servicer.⁸

The Seven-Year Deadline

You have seven years from the date you complete your term to use the award. After that, whatever’s left expires.⁹ Extensions exist, but you generally have to request one in writing before the expiration date. The National Service Trust grants them for circumstances it considers “appropriate and compelling,” and program guidance lists qualifying situations that include another term of AmeriCorps or Peace Corps service, serious illness or disability, military service, or the death of a family member. Incarceration following a criminal conviction does not qualify.¹⁰

The Lifetime Cap

No one can earn more than the aggregate dollar value of two full-time education awards over a lifetime.¹¹ Because the cap is measured in dollars rather than terms, members in part-time positions may serve more than two (or even more than four) terms before they reach it. A rule finalized in January 2025 clarified that AmeriCorps will fund member benefits for either the number of terms it takes to reach the two-full-time-award cap or four terms, whichever is longer.¹² If a new award would push your lifetime total over the cap, the new award is discounted to keep you within the limit.⁴

Taxes on the Award

The education award is taxable federal income in the calendar year the payment is issued, not the year you earned it, and no tax is withheld at disbursement. You are responsible for setting aside money to cover what you’ll owe.¹³ If your education award payments plus any interest payments on qualified loans total more than $600 in a calendar year, you get a Form 1099-MISC with the amount in box 3 (“Other Income”), and you report it on Schedule 1, line 8i of Form 1040.¹⁴

Using the full $7,395 in one year adds that amount to your taxable income for that year, which can produce a bill of a thousand dollars or more depending on your bracket, with nothing withheld to cover it.

Loan Forbearance, Interest Payment, and PSLF

During your term, you can ask your loan servicer to place qualified student loans in forbearance so you don’t have to make monthly payments. The forbearance is granted by the servicer, not by AmeriCorps.¹⁵ Interest still accrues, but if you complete service and earn an education award, the National Service Trust pays all or part of the interest that built up during the forbearance. That interest payment is separate from the award and does not reduce your award balance.¹⁶ It is also taxable.¹³

Full-time AmeriCorps service also counts toward the 120 qualifying payments required for Public Service Loan Forgiveness. A 2023 PSLF regulation confirmed that time in AmeriCorps forbearance counts toward PSLF and that full-time AmeriCorps positions qualify as PSLF-eligible public service employment.¹⁷

VISTA Members Choose Between Award and Stipend

If you serve in AmeriCorps VISTA, you face a choice other AmeriCorps members don’t. At the start of service, you elect either the Segal Education Award or a smaller end-of-service cash stipend. The award is worth substantially more, but the stipend (listed in program materials at $1,500 in one source and $1,200 in another, reflecting different program years) has no restrictions on how you spend it.¹⁸

Only VISTAs who choose the education award qualify for student loan forbearance during service. You can switch from the award to the stipend up until your tenth month, but not the other way around.¹⁹

Transferring the Award to a Child or Grandchild

If you were 55 or older when you enrolled in your term, you can transfer your award to a child, stepchild, foster child, grandchild, or step-grandchild. The recipient has to be a U.S. citizen, national, or lawful permanent resident, and has to use the transferred funds within 10 years of the date you completed service, which is longer than the seven-year window that applies when you use the award yourself. An award can only be transferred once, and the recipient’s total received awards (including any transferred amounts) cannot exceed the value of two full-time awards. You can revoke the unused portion of a transferred award at any time.²⁰

1
College Aid Services. 2025-26 Federal Pell Grant Award Amounts Released
2
HESC New York. Segal AmeriCorps Education Award
3
AmeriCorps. Summary of the Edward M. Kennedy Serve America Act
4
eCFR. 45 CFR 2525.100 – Education Award Amounts
5
AmeriCorps My AmeriCorps Portal. What Else Is Considered a Qualified Current Educational Expense
6
AmeriCorps My AmeriCorps Portal. Is My Loan a Qualified Loan
7
AmeriCorps My AmeriCorps Portal. How Do I Know If My School Is a Qualified Institution
8
AmeriCorps My AmeriCorps Portal. How to Request Your Eli Segal AmeriCorps Education Award Payment
9
AmeriCorps My AmeriCorps Portal. Award Extension Overview
10
Nebraska Judicial Branch. Education Award FAQ
11
AmeriCorps My AmeriCorps Portal. Eli Segal AmeriCorps Education Award Overview
12
Federal Register. AmeriCorps State and National Updates
13
AmeriCorps My AmeriCorps Portal. What Can the Education Award Be Used to Pay For
14
Internal Revenue Service. 1099-MISC, Independent Contractors, and Self-Employed
15
AmeriCorps My AmeriCorps Portal. Forbearance Overview
16
AmeriCorps My AmeriCorps Portal. Interest Accrual Benefit Overview
17
AmeriCorps. AmeriCorps PSLF and R2R
18
AmeriCorps My AmeriCorps Portal. What Is the Difference Between the Education Award and the Stipend
19
AmeriCorps My AmeriCorps Portal. How to Select Your End of Service Benefits
20
AmeriCorps My AmeriCorps Portal. How Can I Transfer All or Part of My Segal Education Award