Valley joins voices for Pick. Click. Give.

PALMER - As Alaskans everywhere apply for their Permanent Fund Dividend checks starting this month, Valley nonprofits are teaming up to urge their neighbors to consider a donation.

The Pick. Click. Give. campaign is more than three years old and is showing results, with most charities reporting year-to-year growth in donations.

"Our agency last year received $3,000 from Pick. Click. Give., and that's gone up. We've participated every year," said Mark Lackey, executive director of CCS Early Learning Center.

Campaign organizers credit him, Mat-Su Health Foundation head Elizabeth Ripley and Palmer Senior Citizens Center chief Rachel Greenberg with spearheading a collective effort to get the word out.

Lackey said the idea is for area nonprofits to pool their resources, take out advertisements together and participate in online activities like Facebook together.

"We've taken turns going to the radio station," Lackey said. "On Facebook, we highlight a different agency and say this is what they do and this is an example of how Pick. Click. Give. affects them."

He said that in addition to saving resources, the team approach also means residents are less likely to be overwhelmed by a barrage of nonprofits all trying to get the word out.

"We're trying to be less annoying and more cooperative in reaching out to the community," Lackey said.

At pickclickgive.org, people can search participating organizations. The list of Valley charities includes people working with schools, farmland, historic buildings, animals, senior citizens and a host of other areas.

Not counting organizations in Anchorage or elsewhere that happen to have Valley branches, about 50 organizations pop up when searching for Valley groups. They're spread between Wasilla, Palmer, Big Lake and Talkeetna.

Lackey said that one of the good things about the Pick. Click. Give. money is that it comes with no strings attached.

Nonprofits get a lot of their funding through grants, but grants usually stipulate how the money can be spent. Unrestricted money can be hard to come by, Lackey said.

"We have very little of those, and if something breaks down and it's something that you just don't have in your grant budget, you're stuck," Lackey said.

For CCS, which provides pre-school, early pre-school and related services, a lot of that money comes from the federal government.

"We are almost completely federally funded. But we have to have a 20 percent non-federal match in order to get those funds," Lackey said.

And 20 percent is a tall order, usually something like $600,000. CCS can make that match through state and local grants, volunteer hours and Pick. Click. Give.

"That's why it's important for us," Lackey said.

Contact Andrew Wellner at andrew.wellner@frontiersman.com or 352-2270.