The problem involved a new search tool on the state's Pick-Click-Give donation page. A likely culprit was the inability of the search tool on the state's computer system to deal with the high level of traffic.
Permanent Fund Dividend Division officials didn't know Monday how many donors were affected but they said the problem is now fixed. The division wants people to report any problems by sending an e-mail to dor.pfd.info@alaska.gov.
The division is still analyzing the best way to enable donations by people whose previous attempts failed.
When the fix is ready, "It will be widely published. Widely," said Debbie Bitney, the division's director.
Friday -- the first day of the year -- was the beginning of the PFD filing season. The fact that thousands of people apply for their dividend in the first weekend of the year was a source of concern for some nonprofits hoping for PFD donations. By Monday, roughly 70,000 people had applied for a dividend.
Rasmuson Foundation spokeswoman Cassandra Stalzer said that so far, a smaller percentage of applicants made donations this year than in the same time period in 2009, the first year of the Pick-Click-Give program. "We'd expect the number to be higher," she said.
Bitney said she's seen fewer than 20 complaints so far from people who experienced problems. "It's not an issue for everybody," she said.
Reactions to the PFD system's failure from donors and charities were mixed on Monday.
Among the people unable to donate was Jordan Marshall, who runs the Rasmuson Foundation's Pick-Click-Give campaign. On Sunday afternoon, he couldn't get the charity search tool on the state's Web page to load on his computer screen. The head of the foundation, Diane Kaplan, also said she was unable to donate.
Marshall said he was disappointed that the donation method didn't work but he remained optimistic that the PFD division would fix it.
Fred Traber, a retired city employee, was so irritated that the PFD Web site wouldn't allow him to donate money to a charity on Friday that he sent complaints to state legislators and the state revenue commissioner about it. He felt that the state failed to do its job and that charities would suffer as a result.
But the Food Bank of Alaska -- the charity that received the largest amount of PFD donations last year -- isn't too worried.
"There still will be a lot of people who will continue to apply (for a PFD) online," said food bank spokeswoman Marleah LaBelle.
Last year, the majority of those donations were made in the first few weeks, according to the Rasmuson Foundation.
The search tool that created trouble this weekend was designed to make it easy for people to sort through a list of nonprofits eligible for PFD donations. Using a Rasmuson grant, the state hired a contractor, Alaska-based Wostmann & Associates, to create it. The reason for its creation was that many PFD applicants complained last year that it was too hard to find charities they wanted to donate to on the state's Pick-Click-Give page, Bitney said.
Bitney said that she didn't know yet whether the problem resulted from a programming error or an overburdened state computer system. The division's main focus now is finding a solution for people who weren't able to donate, she said.
"We're not interested in pointing fingers," she said. As of Monday evening, the division said on its Web site that the problem had been fixed.
Among the problems reported over the weekend, some people couldn't figure out how to get the search tool to work correctly and others faced lengthy time delays or time-outs when they tried to use it. The time delays in some cases caused the Pick-Click-Give page to shut down and a PFD application to be processed before a donation could be pledged.
Within the next few weeks, the PFD division hopes to announce a remedy for people who weren't able to make their donations, Bitney said.
She said the division's computer system cannot do a postmortem analysis on which applicants this weekend failed to get the Pick-Click-Give page to work correctly. However, the division does have a record of all of the people who applied for the PFD during that period, she said.
She said that people should go ahead and use Pick-Click-Give when they apply for their dividends, but she suggested that they apply during the evening hours, when traffic on the division's computers is lighter.
Roughly 1 percent of last year's PFD applicants donated to a nonprofit through Pick-Click-Give last year, raising $545,00 for more than 100 nonprofits.
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