# STANDFAST — Work Lanes and the Service Corps **A framework addendum** Born Between 2 Generals · Data year 2026 --- ## Why this addendum exists STANDFAST assigns a mission rather than a referral. Until now the mission matcher has scored sixteen roles against what a veteran missed when they got out and how physical the work can be. Seven of those roles are internal placements that can be filled directly inside this portfolio rather than referred out. This addendum adds four lanes to that structure and one program underneath it. The lanes are ways a veteran can be useful and paid. The program is the answer to the question that stops most of them from trying: *if I do this, do I lose what I have?* The design rule from the recovery model carries through unchanged. **Work is the path with the rewards on it, never the condition standing in front of the benefit.** Nothing in these lanes is a test a veteran has to pass to keep what they are already entitled to. --- ## Lane 1 — Screen work The lane for a veteran who can work but cannot stand, cannot commute, cannot be in a crowded room, or cannot commit to a fixed schedule. Physical capacity requirement: none. **What the work actually is.** This portfolio has verification debt, and verification debt is real work that a careful person can do from a laptop: | Queue | Rows open | What the work is | |---|---|---| | LINTEL 1619(b) thresholds | 48 of 52 jurisdictions | Find the state's published threshold in a primary source, record the citation, mark verified | | LINTEL research queue | 162 rows | Confirm figures against SSA publications and rulings | | SOUNDING readiness grid | 507 rows | 51 jurisdictions across 11 fields — Medicaid 1115 reentry waiver status, MOUD in state corrections, juvenile pathway | | PLUMBLINE state law grading | 50 states | Read the statute, apply the rubric, record the citation | Every one of these is currently marked *open* rather than filled with a plausible number, on purpose. A person who fills one of them correctly has produced something that did not exist and that somebody will rely on. That is a better first civilian job than most of what gets offered. **Progression.** Verification → source review → quality control on other people's verifications → content review → testing → building. A veteran who works through that ladder has a portfolio, a reference, and a skill that transfers out of here entirely. **Why it belongs to veterans specifically.** The work rewards exactly what the military trains: following a standard exactly, not guessing when you are unsure, and marking your own uncertainty honestly. The confidence-state system — verified, likely, unverified, open — is the whole job, and it is a discipline most civilian hires have to be taught. --- ## Lane 2 — Security The largest existing private-sector pipeline for veterans, and the one with the shortest distance between a discharge and a paycheck. **Roles.** Unarmed post · armed post · event and venue security · access control · corporate campus · executive protection · site supervisor. **Licensing is state by state.** This is the single largest obstacle and it is not a small one — training hours, background checks, armed endorsements and reciprocity all vary. STANDFAST does not currently hold a state-by-state security licensing grid. Recommend it be built on the SOUNDING pattern: 51 jurisdictions, verified or open, never estimated. **The two-sided board.** You asked for postings from both government and ordinary people. That is two different products sharing one surface: - **Public postings.** Federal, state, county and municipal security roles are already published and can be surfaced without anyone typing them in. - **Private postings.** A business, a venue, a church, an event organizer posts a shift. **Flag for counsel.** The moment this platform accepts third-party postings it stops being a directory and becomes an intermediary. Verification of the poster, what happens when a posting is fraudulent, and whether routing a veteran to a bad employer creates exposure are all questions for Olson before the private side opens. The public side carries none of that risk and can ship first. --- ## Lane 3 — Working dogs Vocabulary, because the terms are used loosely and they mean different things: | Term | What it is | |---|---| | **Working dog** | The umbrella category | | **Detection dog** (EDC — explosive detection canine) | Detects explosives or narcotics. The handler role is the large private-sector job: venues, events, campuses, transit | | **Protection dog** | Deterrence and defense. Private security | | **Patrol / dual-purpose K9** | Law enforcement, usually both patrol and detection | | **Service dog** | Trained to mitigate a disability for one handler. Goes *to* the veteran | | **Therapy dog** | Works with many people in a facility. Not a service dog and has no public-access right | **Four ways a veteran enters this lane:** 1. **Handler** — work an EDC or protection dog. Highest paid, hardest to enter, requires certification. 2. **Trainer, or learning to train** — the apprenticeship route. Longer, and it ends in a credential that travels. 3. **Placement and routing** — getting the right dog to the right veteran. BILLET already does this: it scores temperament across eight traits and routes a dog between police K9, service and therapy roles. A veteran who understands both sides of that match is the right person to run it. 4. **Event work** — sweeps and coverage. Fits the veteran who wants intense, finite, high-standard work rather than a schedule. **Why this lane matters beyond the paycheck.** It is one of the few civilian jobs that reproduces the thing STANDFAST says gets lost at separation: a partner, a standard, a tempo, and being trusted with something that matters. A veteran who washes out of an office does not necessarily wash out of this. --- ## Lane 4 — Service The lane for a veteran who is not ready for paid work, or cannot do it, or does not want it — but who should not therefore be sitting at home. Placements in the same institutions this series is already built around: correctional campuses, recovery programs, veteran organizations, disaster response, courts. This is the lane that needs a program underneath it, and the program is the rest of this document. --- # The Service Corps **Working name: QUARTERS.** Two meanings, both true. Quarters is where you live and where you are mustered. *Quarters of coverage* is the technical term for a Social Security work credit — the exact thing this program is designed to produce. Alternate if a plainer name is wanted: DETAIL. Both need trademark clearance; QUARTERS is the stronger filing and DETAIL is likely too generic to register. ## What it does A veteran serves. The service is real and someone needs it done. In exchange the veteran receives: 1. **A stipend that does not cost them their benefits.** 2. **Points that accumulate and mean something** — status, placement priority, and the education award. 3. **Work credits.** Quarters of coverage toward Social Security, which is the piece that compounds. 4. **Protection from review** while they are in it. ## The legal spine ### What already exists and works **Volunteer stipends can be excluded from countable income. This is settled.** The HEART Act of 2008 directs SSA to disregard AmeriCorps benefits when determining SSI eligibility and when calculating the monthly payment — any benefit, cash or in-kind, covering the living allowance, health insurance, child care and the education award. Earlier, only AmeriCorps-VISTA benefits were excluded; the HEART Act brought all AmeriCorps programs under one rule. *Confidence: Likely — reported consistently across state eligibility manuals and program guidance. Cited POMS sections are SI 00830.537 (AmeriCorps and NCCC) and SI 00830.610 (AmeriCorps-VISTA).* **Open: confirm both POMS sections directly before this is relied on.** Separately, payments to volunteers under the Domestic Volunteer Service Act of 1973 are excluded — Title I including VISTA, and Title II including RSVP, Foster Grandparents and Senior Companion. *Confidence: Likely — appears in multiple state eligibility manuals.* **Open: confirm the statutory section directly.** **The significance.** The ask is not a new principle. It is one more entry on a list that already exists and has functioned for decades. That is the cheapest legislative posture available. ### The protection from review A beneficiary using their Ticket under Ticket to Work is not scheduled for a medical continuing disability review while the Ticket is assigned and they are making timely progress. Separately, a beneficiary who has received benefits for at least 24 months will not undergo a medical CDR triggered *by work activity alone*. *Confidence: Verified — SSA, Protection From Medical Continuing Disability Reviews.* **The significance.** The fear that stops people is not the arithmetic. It is *if I show them I can do this, they will decide I was never disabled.* Routing the corps through Employment Networks carries the statutory answer to that fear along with it, and it costs nothing to do. --- ## The gap, stated plainly **You cannot currently get the exclusion and the credits at the same time.** FICA is withheld only from the AmeriCorps VISTA end-of-service stipend — not from the living allowance, and neither are state or local taxes. *Confidence: Verified — AmeriCorps, FY2026 VISTA Program Grant Terms and Conditions.* So a full year of VISTA service produces an income exclusion that works exactly as advertised and almost no quarters of coverage. The volunteer is protected and gains nothing toward the retirement or disability insurance they will need later. Meanwhile ordinary paid work produces credits and counts as income, which puts the beneficiary back at the cliff. Every existing template picks one. **The corps has to do both, and that is the whole legislative ask.** ## The draftable ask A service-corps stipend that is: - **FICA-covered**, so it builds quarters of coverage the same way wages do; and - **statutorily excluded from countable income** for SSI eligibility and payment computation; and - **not evidence of substantial gainful activity** for SSDI during the term of service. Three clauses. The first two already exist separately in federal law — they have simply never been pointed at the same dollar. The third is the same drafting move Ticket to Work already makes. **Falsification condition.** If corps participants do not, at the end of the first cohort, hold more quarters of coverage than a matched group of non-participants while retaining benefits at the same rate, the exclusion is doing nothing the existing AmeriCorps rule does not already do, and the third clause should be dropped. --- ## Open items | Item | Who | Why it matters | |---|---|---| | POMS SI 00830.537 and SI 00830.610, confirmed directly | Research | The entire exclusion argument rests on them | | Domestic Volunteer Service Act — the operative section for the SSI exclusion | Research | Cited as sec. 404 in secondary sources; needs the primary | | Whether a FICA-covered stipend can be income-excluded without amending the SSI income definition | **Olson** | Decides whether this is one bill or two | | Intermediary exposure on third-party security postings | **Olson** | Gates the private side of the job board | | State security licensing grid, 51 jurisdictions | Research | Lane 2 cannot advise anyone without it | | Trademark clearance: QUARTERS, and the lane names | **McAuliffe** | Standard gate | | Whether service in the corps affects VA compensation or pension | Research → Olson | Same question HOMEPORT answers for treatment courts; assume nothing | --- ## What does not change No discharge-status gate. No contact details generated anywhere in the applications except the Veterans Crisis Line. Nothing transmitted off the device. Every factual cell says what it is, and gaps are shown rather than filled.