September 3, 2009
At a time when America finds itself at a critical crossroads, renewed ideas of civic engagement and national service are coalescing in a moment of enormous promise and opportunity. This is especially the case for young Americans, who are frustrated by perceived failures of government but inspired by the voice of a new president to answer a timeless call to service. The recently passed Edward M. Kennedy Serve America Act contributes to this growing movement by drastically expanding national service opportunities and resources. It is with this backdrop that myImpact.org will serve as the virtual roof under which all young people who serve, from the full-time AmeriCorps member to the weekend volunteer, can gather to enhance and extend their work. MyImpact.org will be an innovative platform and social network that will provide its users with the opportunity to chronicle and share their experiences, as a way to appreciate their work in a greater context, gather support and inspire others. Answering specific needs within the national service field, myImpact.org will also provide service organizations with the ability to track the collective impact of their participants through custom metrics and easily integrate their volunteer’s user-generated social media on their own site. This not only promises greater transparency for organizations, but also a means to increase their effectiveness by leveraging new tools to demonstrate how they are making a difference. In addition, myImpact.org will be a valuable way for young people who seek to become involved to discover how they can make an impact on a certain issue or in a specific region. Research indicates that one of the greatest obstacles in engaging young people in service is demonstrating that they can make a difference. By bringing the work and success of others alive online in a dynamic way, myImpact.org will help engage a generation of community-minded leaders. It is important to stress that we seek to create a new social media site in order to improve the effectiveness of those that already exist. Integration of content already being uploaded to Web 2.0 sites such as Facebook, YouTube, Twitter and Flickr is an essential element of how myImpact.org will function. MyImpact.org will be an important tool that aggregates and exports this content in a way that will be beneficial to the work of many existing organizations. MyImpact.org combines a traditional American ideal with new technology. Service will no longer be confined to a series of isolated actions, but exist online where its full impact can continue to be realized. By challenging young people to use the power of the web to answer a simple question, “what is your impact?” we aim to contribute to the vision of a country where service is a civic rite of passage for every young American.