National Human Services Assembly

The National Human Services Assembly, an association of the nation’s leading national nonprofits in the fields of health, human and community development, and human services, envisions “a just and caring nation which effectively addresses the development and care of its citizens” and seeks to realize its vision through bringing together its members to shape dialogue and build capacity for the sector.

With roots that date back to a 1920 meeting of twelve of executives of the leading national social work organizations, the National Assembly evolved to address problems facing the social welfare community throughout the century. Highlights of the National Assembly’s role throughout history include: the establishment of the American War Committee Services; the formation of the Young Adult Council in 1948 which today has become the National Collaboration for Youth; the publishing of the Standards of Accounting and Financial Reporting for Voluntary Health and Welfare Organizations, with the National Health Council in 1974; the formation of a web-portal in the late 1990s, the National Youth Development Information Center, (now merged with SparkAction) that not only provides youth agencies and their workers easy access to information on youth programs but engages youth too; and a partnership background check program in 2002 for members to perform background checks on volunteers. By 1965 the National Assembly (at that time called the National Social Welfare Assembly), was recognized for its role working across the social welfare sector to define and study problems of broad social policy affecting the needs of people and to plan action to meet these needs and, also, to serve national organizations and local communities in developing effective programs, operations, and administration in the field of social welfare. For more information about the history and programs of the National Assembly, please visit https://www.nationalassembly.org/about/history/.

Today, the National Assembly consists of roughly 50 national organizations which together with their local service networks collectively touch or are touched by nearly every household in America---as consumers of services, donors, or volunteers. They comprise a $32 billion sector that employs some 800,000 workers, operating from over 100,000 locations. A full list of members can be found here: www.nationalassembly.org.