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There's an emerging new status symbol for baby boomers looking to make some changes: an Encore Fellowship.

With a one-year Encore Fellowship, experienced Americans over 55 can use their talent, both from their jobs and the rest of their lives, to improve people’s lives and the communities they live in. They can help high-impact organizations and agencies scale up their operations and implement innovative approaches.

And the experience can set them up for their longer term encore careers by getting them in the door, in the field and on their way.

Making Encore Fellowship even more coveted: there aren’t very many of them. There are a mere 10 positions in a pilot Encore Fellowship initiative in California's Silicon Valley, supported by Hewlett-Packard and the Packard Foundation. The new national service legislation known as the Serve America Act authorizes, over time, 500 Encore Fellows. That will only be 10 per state, even when the program is fully implemented.

That's a tiny fraction of the millions of aging baby boomers eager to step up to meet our nation’s challenges, and tiny fraction of the talent needed to meet those challenges.

But that number could grow quickly as this new model for making a purposeful transition to a high-impact encore career takes hold.

Here’s how we could turn 500 encore fellowships into 50,000 each year, as part of the movement of millions of people pursuing purpose and passion in their encore careers.

• Make encore service an encore transition. In addition to the new Encore Fellowship program, the Serve America Act expands the number of annual AmeriCorps opportunities from 75,000 this year to 250,000 in 2017. At least 10% of the opportunities are targeted at organizations that take advantage of the talents of adults over 55. Adding encore transition services to those opportunities – coaching, financial planning, networking, placement assistance and more – could create as many as 25,000 encore fellowships each year.

  Some organizations are not waiting for Serve America to go into effect Oct. 1. They are exploring ways to use new national service opportunities created as part of the big federal recovery spending bill to create immediate encore fellowships to attract encore talent. For a list of organizations that received additional AmeriCorps funding through the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, click here.

• Expand corporate support. Some corporations are already helping employees and retirees transition to their encore careers, as a way to increase their impact in the community. A half-dozen HP veterans are among the first Silicon Valley Encore Fellows, spending a year in local environmental and education organizations. IBM pioneered Transition to Teaching and other innovative transition initiatives. A dozen corporations in California provide subsidies of $15,000 to help their alumni become science and math teachers through the EnCorps Teachers program. Other corporations could offer fellowships in areas that advance corporate goals, such as education or economic development, or in the communities where they operate.
• Leverage encore talent. Community foundations and other funders can help turbocharge the organizations they support by providing matching funds for encore fellows, who can quickly and flexibly build organizational capacity in marketing, human resources, business development and other crucial areas. Fellowships could be targeted to particular communities, or in particular areas, such as health or environment.

“I need, right now, in a dozen cities, people with construction management experience,” says Joel Rogers, director of the Center on Wisconsin Sustainability and a leader of Emerald Cities, a consortium of labor, community development and environmental groups that are mobilizing energy efficiency efforts in cities across the country. “I need lawyers to work the financing deals, accountants who know how to do the books, bankers to put the financing together, the retired electrician who has had his first heart attack. I could use all the help that Encore could provide.”

• Invest in yourself. You can create your own encore fellowship by building a transition plan that includes practical experience with an organization whose mission you support. If such a “fellowship” helps set you up for a longer term encore career earning a living doing important work that you love, it might be prudent to use a portion of your savings to spend a year getting the contacts and experience you need. You can withdraw IRA funds penalty-free for some educational expenses, or use tax-deferred 529 accounts to put aside money in advance for your encore transition. See "How to Finance the Transition to Your Encore Career."

There are plenty more ways, with both private and public funds, to arrange paid, time-limited, high-impact opportunities that take advantage of boomers’ skills while also helping them move to the next stage of their life journeys.

Early Encore Fellows can certainly claim bragging rights for being pioneers in the creation of a new stage of work devoted to social action after the completion of their midlife careers.

But the true mark of their success will be that their year-long adventures helped make the fellowship experience not exclusive but inclusive, of all the people willing, able and eager to make a difference in their encore careers.