Office of the Acting CEO
Dear Colleagues,
I want to share some exciting news about the King Day of Service and our work with the Presidential Inaugural Committee (PIC) to make this King Day the biggest King Day of Service in history. Please read and forward this to your grantees as it contains an important action request for any organization planning a King Day of Service project.
Earlier this month, the PIC announced that President-elect Obama, Vice President-elect Biden, and their families will join millions of Americans in service on King Day. The President-elect is calling for a national day of service to take place on the Martin Luther King holiday and will ask Americans to make an ongoing commitment to service in their communities.
Given the Corporation for National and Community Service’s long history in leading the King Day of Service, we are pleased to be working closely with the PIC to support President-elect Obama’s call to service, which will give a major boost to our effort to engage Americans in service on the King Holiday and throughout the year.
One of the places we are coordinating our efforts is on a new website the PIC is building that will enable Americans to find volunteer opportunities on King Day. This website will launch next week and will attract millions of visitors over the next three weeks.
The PIC has asked us to reach out to all of our grantees and partners to encourage you to list your MLK Day projects on this new website. Signing up will only take a few minutes and will ensure that the millions of visitors to this new site will have the opportunity to learn about or volunteer with your project. Representatives from the PIC will be calling organizations registered on our website to offer assistance in listing on the new PIC website.
To register your project:
- Visit the Create an Event screen at http://pic2009.org/newevent
- Fill out the online form. It will ask about your project’s location, local contact, description, and how many volunteers you can support.
We encourage every organization planning an MLK project to list your event on the PIC website, even if you have already registered your project on our http://www.mlkday.gov website and even if you already have recruited all your volunteers. We understand this will require additional effort at a busy time of year, but in this time of transition we believe this new call to service represents a major opportunity to engage more Americans in service on the holiday and throughout the year.
Please note that the http://www.mlkday.gov website will continue to function and offer valuable tools, news, resources, and updates for planning and carrying out your King Day project. However, the website’s functions for registering your project and finding a volunteer opportunity will be replaced with a link to the new PIC website early next week. If you have questions, please contact mlkday@cns.gov or call Rhonda Taylor at 202-606-6721.
Thank you for helping make this year’s King Day of Service the largest and most successful ever.
Nicola Goren
Acting Chief Executive Officer
Corporation for National and Community Service
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