Photo description: Clockwise from top left, Rasmuson Foundation staff volunteer with the Eagle River Nature Center, Alaska PAWS, the Musk Ox Farm, and the Nordic Skiing Association of Anchorage.

Our office-wide collective volunteering projects are such a highlight for me. Each year, we ask a local organization how we can help out as a team. Side by side, we have crafted toys for muskox, served food at Bean’s Café, sorted clothes for the Clothesline Project, shoveled paths for staff at Alaska PAWS, and cleaned up trails for Nordic Skiing Association of Anchorage. 

This year, we took a trip to Eagle River Nature Center to weed flower beds and spread gravel. Our wonderful hosts briefed us on bear safety and on Nature Center history, sharing that the center relies heavily on volunteers. The small staff and its dedicated volunteers keep the center running year-round, chopping and hauling wood to its cabins, maintaining trails, teaching visitors about local flora and fauna, running public programs, and more. 

Often, when we think of Alaskans helping each other, we think of giving financially. From a Foundation perspective, this makes sense — our work, after all, focuses on grantmaking. But time spent volunteering can be an equally valuable way to contribute to making our community a better place to live. Time, talent, treasure: There’s more than one way to give back. 

Volunteers are the lifeblood of so many Alaska organizations. The day before the Foundation team volunteered at the Nature Center, five-time Olympian and Executive Director of Nordic Skiing Association of Anchorage Kikkan Randall led us on a short tour of the association’s new race and event storage building at Kincaid Park. She described how an event like the four-day U.S. Nationals can require about 200 volunteers to set up the race course, distribute bibs, time races, and take care of all the other details that make a large event a success. Local and high school races hosted by the association take about 20 to 40 volunteers. 

The volunteers who enable an organization to fulfill its mission are perhaps even more essential in our rural communities and urban neighborhoods. In small communities, it’s locals who best understand the needs of their neighbors — and they’re the ones meeting those needs by giving their time to deliver a meal, tutor a child, or build a park. Across the state, Alaskans are improving Alaska by investing their time: 

  • This May, parent volunteers led the way to school for Nome’s first-ever “bike bus,” an organized group of students who road their bikes to school together for safety. 
  • In Soldotna, the Tsalteshi Trails are supported with a collection of pit toilets that are maintained for public use by a single dedicated volunteer. 
  • Meanwhile in Juneau, Trail Mix volunteers work four to six hours twice each week taking care of local trails. 
  • Like most elder-serving organizations around the state, Wasilla Area Seniors Inc. relies on volunteers to spend time with seniors, supporting their social connection. 
  • Throughout the state, our search and rescue networks are largely volunteer-powered. When accidents happen on trails and waterways, we rely primarily on volunteers to respond. 

Inspired? When you find a cause you care about, in addition to or in lieu of a financial donation, consider giving the gift of your time. Often, nonprofit and other organizations need people on the ground as much as they need financial support. Become part of the network of Alaskans making Alaska a better place: volunteer. 

Thank you for all you do,

Gretchen Guess 
President and CEO