SAN FRANCISCO -- Mayor Gavin Newsom is asking all city residents to spend a day volunteering, whether it's working with the homeless or helping plant trees.

Newsom hopes the nonprofit program San Francisco Connect will motivate residents to give freely of their time.

"If every day we can get 1,000 people to give one day back to San Francisco, then we can harness that energy and we can focus it in a meaningful way," Newsom said Monday.

A nonprofit corporation managing the program hopes to raise the $750,000 to $1 million needed to run SF Connect each year. The program seeks to enlist as many as 5,000 volunteers to help reach goals that include getting 1,200 low-income families on the Internet and a creating a support facility for 80 homeless people.

Some politicians and government watchdogs are concerned about SF Connect's close ties to Newsom and the city government.

"Even when a nonprofit is created with a true social service mission, there can still be the unspoken relationship between a donor to the nonprofit and the politician, and the intent to curry favor with that elected official," said Kathay Feng, executive director of California Common Cause. "And that is a real concern."

Newsom countered that the nonprofit would make the names of all donors public.

"If somebody thinks they're going to buy me by helping the city by volunteering, they've got another thing coming," Newsom said. "We don't pay to play in this administration."