January 19, 2009 | Read Time: 1 minute
Many charities are using the holiday celebrating Martin Luther King Jr’s birthday as an opportunity to publicize efforts to increase volunteerism.
The Web site VolunteerMatch, for example, used the National Day of Service to unveil a new online service that allows people to find volunteer opportunities with help from Google Earth.
People can use the service to browse volunteer opportunities at more than 62,000 nonprofit organizations.
The Google Earth mapping service is an online tool that allows prospective volunteers to enter in the name of a city, street, or zip code and see the closest available opportunities on an interactive map.
To show how the Google Earth tool works, VolunteerMatch has produced a video demonstration, which is available on YouTube.
For more on how organizations are marking the King holiday with service activities, many at the urging of President-elect Barack Obama, see The Chronicle of Philanthropy’s Inauguration 2009 blog.
