Reach Out with Google Earth Outreach

Outreach may well be one of the more time-consuming and costly aspects of running a nonprofit organization. Face-to-face meetings with potential supporters can provide a human touch and a clear articulation of a company’s purpose, goals, and mission. But cost and time issues usually preclude meeting with every potential donor, and although organizations can direct people to their Web sites, this detached approach can leave donors cold. Enter Google Earth Outreach, a new resource developed to provide a visual — and intimate — presentation of a nonprofit’s efforts.

What is Google Earth Outreach?

First came Google Earth, a software program launched in 2005 that allows PC, Mac, and Linux platform users a virtual exploration of the world using superimposed satellite images and aerial photography. Google Earth users can click on or type in a point of interest and virtually fly through the air — past topographical features such as buildings, bridges, bodies of water, and mountains — to their desired location.

The beauty of the software lies in the way it serves to ground users in a chosen location by providing three-dimensional context and clues. Since its inception, the resource has fulfilled a variety of recreational purposes. Newcomers use it to zoom in on their home and work addresses. Athletes use it to map their training routes. Travelers seek out a bird’s eye view of their next destination before they even set foot in an airplane.

But when Hurricane Katrina slammed the Gulf Coast in August 2005, a philanthropic purpose was born. Google worked with the National Oceanic & Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) to publish real-time flooding imagery that the Coast Guard used to locate and rescue victims. The software provided emergency workers with a situational awareness by showing collapsed bridges, road conditions, and nearby landmarks. Many volunteers hailed from other states and used the resource to familiarize themselves with the area as they sought out people stranded on submerged homes.

Stories about Katrina victims rescued by using Google abounded and nonprofit organizations took notice of the software’s philanthropic potential. As did several people on the Google Earth team. Google employees devote 20 percent of their time to a project that impassions them, and several team members determined that their project would entail supporting humanitarian efforts with Google Earth.

And thus was born Google Earth Outreach, the do-good nonprofit outreach program launched on June 26, 2007. Outreach allows a virtual visit to a nonprofit organization’s project that is intended to get users engaged, passionate, and supportive of its mission and cause.

According to Rebecca Moore, Program Manager of Google Earth Outreach, the resource "shows the world what’s at stake, rather than just telling people about it." Now, just by downloading KML (Keyhole Markup Language) or KMZ (a zipped KML with a .kmz extension) files from a nonprofit’s homepage, people can be transported to exactly where the work is done on Google Earth’s globe. Once there, users are given further context and information with pop-up "balloons" that offer everything from text, to photos, videos, and blogs.

Case Studies: Nonprofits Already Reaching Out

Rebecca Moore reports that her team has worked with more than one hundred nonprofits over the past year and a half — from small grassroots groups to large organizations such as UNEP (United Nations Environment Programme). The Google Earth Outreach Web site shares several case studies of launch partner organizations that have already been using the resource to get users engaged in six different realms: environment and science, current affairs, public health, education and culture, global development, and social services.

One such case study in the Environment and Science category is Appalachian Voices, a small nonprofit based in North Carolina that, according to its Web site, "brings people together to solve the environmental problems having the greatest impact on the central and southern Appalachian Mountains." According to Mary Anne Hitt, Appalachian Voices’ Executive Director, the project began when Woody Harrelson read an article in the San Francisco Chronicle about Rebecca Moore’s use of Google Earth to show the potential effects of a logging company’s timber harvest in the Santa Cruz Mountains. Harrelson, a longstanding and vocal opponent of mountaintop removal coal mining, contacted Google and asked if the company would be willing to help Appalachian Voices with a similar project aimed at showing the destructive effects of the process.

A partnership was born. Staff had already finished the time-consuming process of amassing all the raw material, but still needed to distill the data and figure out how to publish it. Hitt explained that her ten-person staff does not include any programmers, but Google was "extremely helpful" in helping two of her employees put the project together. Although Appalachian Voices could have created a very simple project with the free download, Google donated the $400 Google Pro platform that offers more powerful authoring features and thereby allows for greater complexity. The process only took the two staff members six months of part-time work to complete.

The resultant Appalachian Mountaintop Removal project shows the impact of mountaintop coal mining on the central and southern Appalachian Mountains. When asked why Google Outreach decided to profile Appalachian Voices as a case study, Rebecca Moore said that they were a perfect example of what a small organization can do. As shown in the screenshot below, the expansive project includes an overview of the area, a user’s guide, a tour of a mountaintop removal site, the location of 22 featured mountains and communities impacted by mountaintop removal, and before and after overlays.

Appalachian Voices has been fortunate enough to collaborate with SouthWings, a nonprofit conservation organization that has donated time and resources to fly hundreds of journalists, politicians, and conservationists over Appalachia for a firsthand look at the effects of mountaintop removal. As Hitt explained, "there is no substitute for seeing it with your own eyes." But, she added, the project "is all about making information accessible" and noted how Outreach has significantly broadened the organization’s reach. Overlays like that shown in Screenshot 2 allow Outreach users to see current aerial shots of affected mountains alongside "before" shots. According to Hitt, the project has "been revolutionary in terms of getting people involved."

Another case study is the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum's Genocide Prevention Mapping Initiative. This example of a Current Affairs project illuminates the genocide in Darfur by allowing users to zoom in on satellite images of burnt-out villages, mosques, and schools in Western Sudan. As shown in the screenshot below, the crisis shifts from a distant civil war with limited context to a visceral genocide.

The Genocide Prevention project includes several layers that provide more detailed information. For example, clicking on camera icons brings up photos and stories in description balloons, as shown in the screenshot below. Clicking on the balloon’s "learn more" and "how can I help" links serves two purposes ― the project can determine who is coming to their site from the Google Earth layer and users can learn more information. The KML therefore fulfills its purpose of being not simply a place to stop and look around, but a means to inspire users to take action.

The dynamic case study and showcase pages provide a link through which other nonprofits who want to be profiled can submit their KML or KMZ files for consideration. According to Moore, in upcoming months, Outreach users can expect to see, among other foci, a number of projects that portray the impacts of climate change.

How to Reach Out

Google Earth Outreach users have a variety of helpful tools at their disposal, including a user guide and several tutorials with starter templates and information on content distribution. I can personally attest to the fact that a simple Outreach project can be done by a person with limited programming skills. My minimal programming experience had me trembling slightly at the thought of mastering KML. But I took the "Creating KML from a Spreadsheet" tutorial and created a basic project for my nonprofit within an hour.

For complex projects with more specialized needs, the site also has developers available to help. Since its inception, Google has granted hundreds of Earth Pro licenses to qualifying 501(c)3 organizations that fill out a simple online application form for Pro Grants. Also available are the Google Earth Help Center, a Google Earth Community, the official Google blog, and the Google Earth Outreach Discussion Group, where users can share information and questions with one another.

The nascent Google Earth Outreach is still humble, and so while it wants users to learn from each other, it, too, wants to learn from its users. Outreach wants feedback on how effective the resource is at helping groups, and what tools can be added. This humility makes sense in light of the fact that, according to Moore, "nonprofits have been and will continue to be Outreach’s driving force."

The earth awaits. Reach out.