Alaskan generosity vital to Catholic Social Services outreaches

CatholicAnchor.org

Each Christmas Catholic Social Services (CSS) has a “Helping Holiday” project where local individuals and organizations provide Christmas gifts for families served by CSS. Today I received a touching thank you note from a family in our Homeless Family Services program that benefited from our Helping Holiday project.

The head of this family is a young mother, a military veteran, who fled domestic violence in the Lower 48. The family moved to Alaska because the mother had family in Anchorage and was able to find a job relatively quickly. The letter included wonderful drawings by her daughters of the Christmas gifts and tree. The sponsoring company, ConocoPhillips Aviation Services, was touched by the family’s situation and was very generous. In total, our donors sponsored 59 low-income households this Christmas and generously provided for hundreds, beginning with the St. Patrick’s Thanksgiving Blessing event, and continued through gifts, parties and decorations for Brother Francis Shelter and Clare House. It is an inspiration to start the New Year with so much generosity from the community and gratitude on the part of the people we serve.

I also experience gratitude by spending time in the New Year calling donors and thanking them for their financial contributions to CSS. I have had some wonderful conversations and have learned about the reasons people chose to donate to CSS as well as letting people know how their gifts help us serve those in need. The donors were all very humble about their gifts and supportive of the work we do. They truly exemplify the words in Matthew 6: 3-4, “But when you give to the needy, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing, so that your giving may be in secret. Then your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you.”

The new year also means it is Pick.Click.Give. time. This program, in its fifth year, was established to grow philanthropy in Alaska and increase the number of new donors to various organizations. The program was created by the Alaska State Legislature in 2008, and it allows Alaskans filing for their PFD on-line to donate all or part of it to eligible charitable and educational organizations. There are over 512 organizations in 50 communities to choose from and while the Archdiocese of Anchorage and our local Catholic schools and parishes are not included due to their religious status, Catholic Social Services is included. For Catholics who are financially able and would like a faith-based option for giving through Pick.Click.Give, Catholic Social Services is a good choice.

CSS has raised a total of $170,650 through this program since its inception — from $13,875 in 2009 to $58,325 in 2013 — that is a 320 percent increase in five years! These funds provide much needed support to our eight programs, allowing us to serve more people. Research indicates that after five years of the Pick.Click.Give program, 78 percent of Alaskans know about the program, but only four percent donate.

Last year, a record 26,000 Alaskans donated $2.4 million from their PFDs. More than $7 million has been raised statewide through the program since it began, but there is room for growth.

Generosity and gratitude are constant themes in Alaska, in our Church and at CSS. It was truly beautiful that Pope Francis quoted Mary’s words from the Annunciation during an October Mass at the Vatican that reflected on the importance of Christian gratitude. The pope explained that Mary’s words, “My soul magnifies the Lord,” are actually “a song of praise and thanksgiving to God, not only for what He did for her, but for what He had done throughout the history of salvation.”

I am grateful for the steadfast support you have shown for CSS programs over the years. With your continued generosity we can continue to serve the hungry, the homeless and the vulnerable. Please prayerfully consider sharing a portion of your PFD with CSS through the Pick.Click.Give. program. Thank you.

The writer is executive director of Catholic Social Services in Alaska. For more information about CSS, call 276-5590 or visit cssalaska.org.