Click pick give: time to think about giving in the new year.

AuthorStomierowski, Peg
PositionSPECIAL SECTION: PHILANTHROPY IN ALASKA

Pick.Click.Give. (PCG) is helping grow support for Alaska's community nonprofit programs from Permanent Fund Dividend donations. A few years ago, an extended family crisis made Steve Handy a convert. Now he takes care to contribute to PCG and encourages others to, as well.

The Anchorage man in 2009 was busy living his life when his elderly father, long prominent in the local carpenters' union and now suffering the ravages of mesothelioma and Alzheimer's disease, was struggling with survival in other ways. Because of extenuating (and emotional) personal circumstances, his father couldn't be assured of a roof over his head and three meals a day. As Handy and his father both learned, Anchorage can be a tough place to be old and cold in the winter.

"We were challenged to maintain the quality of life he was used to," Handy recalls. "Never in my wildest dreams did I ever think we'd be in a subsistence situation like this. I knocked on a lot of doors, and I wasn't too proud to do it. It was a tragic event, but it had a silver lining."

Handy began dialing charities to help stabilize his father's prospects, and eventually his dad received cash assistance for food from the Mabel T. Caverly Center, one of the PCG charities offering senior assistance in Anchorage. Other help with his dad's needs followed, until his father died at 87.

A LONG VIEW BEGINS

Unique to Alaska, where there is no State tax requirement, the Pick.Click. Give. program aims to facilitate individual online charitable giving from State Permanent Fund Dividends ($1,174 this year) at the point of filing. While residents may review a list of eligible organizations at www.pickclickgive.org, they earmark personal choices when applying for the dividend at www.pfd.state.ak.us.

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Perhaps a close cousin to the program, observes the Rasmuson Foundation's Jordon Marshall, is Give Minnesota, in which 0.8 percent of Minnesotans donate cash to good causes. Although the program is only vaguely comparable to PCG, he figures, participation in PCG already is 400 percent higher.

Donations in Alaska's timely new program not only held up but also increased, sources reflected, as the economy restricted in historic recession and many traditional funding sources flattened out or dried up. As of the Oct. 6 distribution of dividends, about $1.5 million was to be paid to eligible nonprofits listed on the PFD site, according to Debbie Bitney, director of the Permanent Fund Dividend Division...

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