The newest name in the US Senate sweepstakes: Alan Khazei, cofounder of the national service organization City Year, who says he’s considering entering the Democratic primary for the seat held for 47 years by the late Ted Kennedy.

Today’s Boston Globe story carrying that news points out that the 48-year-old Khazei has no experience in elected office. What it doesn’t say, however, is that Khazei has in recent years been refocusing his efforts from the direct-service volunteerism of City Year to a vision of public service concerned with tackling big problems at the policy level — which sounds a lot like the work of an elected official, among others. Two years ago, Khazei stepped down from his post at City Year to found a new organization, Be The Change, that aims to push a policy agenda to tackle poverty and other big social problems.

In 2001, CommonWealth wrote about the explosion of volunteerism through groups like City Year and Citizen Schools that seemed to have taken the place of political activism among young people. Just beginning to stir at that time was an expanded vision that included not just a commitment to tackling problems at the street level, but also an interest in the systemic change needed to truly change conditions across entire communities. 

Eric Schwarz, the cofounder of Boston-based Citizen Schools — and a longtime friend of Khazei’s — said at the time that there had been “a recoiling from the political sphere, in the sense of people wanting to take direct action on things closer to home. I think now what we’re seeing is a melding of the two, and a recognition by people who have been involved in direct service for a decade or more that … to achieve broader change that is sustained, we’re going to have to meld direct service with political action.”

As for hints that Khazei might train his sights on elected office, a profile earlier this year in the Chronicle of Philanthropy seems to have had a pretty good crystal ball, even if it got a little ahead of things: