By Daniel Pearson

When ImpactOnline President and CEO Jay Backstrand was in junior high school, he took a trip to South America and observed a philanthropist make a significant donation to a biologist working to conserve endangered species, especially the Caribbean Pink Flamingo.

The young man was inspired as he watched two people come together in such a remote location to solve a problem most people didn't know existed. From then on, he knew what he was going to do with his life.

Since that day, Backstrand has been seeking new ways to connect people on behalf of positive social change. A few years ago while working for Sun Microsystems on a project called "Net Day" -- which put Web-based volunteers into schools to wire classrooms to the Internet -- he figured how the Web could help him make those connections.

"Most Web sites build ways for people to give money," Backstrand said. "VolunteerMatch builds ways for people to give time."

It works like this: Anyone who wants to volunteer in their area logs on to the VolunteerMatch Web site and sees an invitation to "Find an opportunity." The user enters his or her home zip code into a search box, and then they are prompted to decide how far they can travel, when they want to volunteer, what type of opportunity they may be looking for and what type of organization they want to work with. There are literally thousands of opportunities for people to sift through.

So far the Web site has mobilized about 50,000 people to volunteer opportunities across the country, Backstrand said. In one 10-minute span he watched as 13 people were linked to causes where they could give their time.

"Our sense of this is there are a lot of people who want to give back and be involved in their community," Backstrand said. "We feel like we're really building something to get people engaged."

People such as Erica Reiner, a 28-year-old strategy business development manager who recently relocated to Manhattan from Chicago. Reiner said she wanted to give more of her time to social causes, but having just moved, she was not only removed from a network of friends and colleagues, she wasn't aware of what organizations were located near her home.

She doesn't remember how she heard of VolunteerMatch, but she found her way to the site, plugged in her zip code and decided to help a group called New York Cares that has several different types of philanthropic opportunities every day.

"The thing I thought was kind of cool is you know you want to volunteer, but that step between knowing you want to and actually picking up the phone and calling an organization is a big step," Reiner said. "I think it's a great site because if you have any interest in volunteering, it just makes it so easy."

Which is great news for the estimated 10,000 nonprofits linked to VolunteerMatch, including the Colorado Springs, Colo.-headquartered Junior Achievement, which educates young people about the importance of free enterprise, business and economics and motivates them to start their own businesses.

"We can sign volunteers up through this service in less than four minutes," said Brad Kaufmann, JA's public relations director. "We have 87 out of our 162 local offices that are linked to it. Recruiting through the Internet is the easiest and fastest way to provide information to volunteers. It also saves us time and money."

The 32-year-old Backstrand uses the site himself to find out about opportunities in Palo Alto, Calif., where he grew up and where he now lives. He left Palo Alto to attend Brown University and eventually Johns Hopkins University, where he earned a master's degree in international affairs. He said many of his friends also use it to volunteer throughout the year.

"You'd be amazed; people are just psyched," Backstrand said. "It's wild, because now I'm running into people who have heard of it in random places. I was sitting next to a woman on a plane once who had used it."

Melissa Wolfe, a communications specialist for National CASA, agrees with Backstrand about the sites explosive impact on the world of volunteering. She said ever since National CASA -- which helps promote and support the use of citizen advocates for abused and neglected children in court proceedings -- partnered with VolunteerMatch, their volunteer numbers have more than doubled.

"If we hadn't run across this site, I honestly don't know where it would have led our outreach efforts on the Internet," Wolfe said. "And they're wonderful people to work with. They're extremely positive and listen to your concerns."

From pink flamingos to watching nonprofit workers get tickled pink about their volunteers, Backstrand's dream has slowly become a reality, and so have the dreams of countless other local groups along the way.

Daniel Pearson can be reached at:
danielpearson@mindspring.com