Project SHARE’s Impact
Assistance, which is typically up to $500 a year per household, can be used not just for Georgia Power payments but for other utilities.
During these cold winter months, it’s important for us to do what we can for those without. There’s one way in particular that comes to mind this season more than 40 years after the effort began. This would be Project SHARE, a collaboration between the Salvation Army and Georgia Power that my father, Georgia Trend Publisher Emeritus Neely Young, helped initiate in Dalton in 1985, and which has raised more than $91 million to help needy Georgians.
For 45% of Georgia’s households estimated to be living below the ALICE Threshold (Asset Limited, Income Constrained, Employed), this program has truly been a lifeline, providing emergency utility assistance as well as rental support and medications. The concept is simple: Georgia Power customers are given the option to add an extra amount to their utility bills that the company matches by 150%. In 2024 alone it raised $2.59 million, serving more than 7,000 Georgia households and nearly 19,000 individuals in need.
Setting Project SHARE apart from other assistance programs, the funding returns to the community where the donation was made, allowing donors to truly support their neighbors in need. More than 1 million Georgians have been helped through this program, an astonishing impact. The partnership has also expanded to include other energy providers such as Atlanta Gas Light and Gas South, as well as nearly two dozen utility donor partners at the state and municipal level.
The Georgia Public Service Commission partnered with Project SHARE as the first nongovernmental agency to receive funding from its Universal Service Fund. In 2023 this brought nearly $2 million over three years to Project SHARE for natural gas assistance. The flexibility of the program helps Georgia families endure. Assistance, which is typically up to $500 a year per household, can be used not just for Georgia Power payments but for other utilities.
Recent climatology reports note that Georgia has been warming, and the nights are getting warmer at a more rapid pace than daytime, a situation that seems unlikely to improve as long as our political climate continues to boil over. Unexpected weather events and outdated infrastructure issues also lead to instability among households, aggravating income strain and often forcing people to choose between putting food on the table or paying the light bill.
Lingering effects of COVID-19 have further increased the need for SHARE assistance, even to higher-income households. Meanwhile decreased funding for nonprofits both at the federal level and in terms of dwindling donations endangers institutions like the Salvation Army, which celebrated its 135th anniversary in Georgia in 2025 and plays a critical role in Georgia’s nonprofit network. The Albany chapter was recently in dire straits.
My father’s support for the Salvation Army goes back to his early days in Dalton and has extended throughout his life. I thank him for bringing me along to some of their meetings to help get me interested in nonprofits and helping the needy. It is truly an incredible organization, and there are many moving testimonies on their website related to Project SHARE and other missions.
Dad is typically modest about his role in beginning Project SHARE. But the fact that he was board chair of the Dalton chapter at the tender age of 43 tells you something about his commitment to community involvement. It’s true that being at the right place at the right time can absolutely contribute to unexpected impact. But it’s also true that you have to get there, and it’s not a big surprise to me that he did. As publisher of the Dalton Daily Citizen, Dad had then and continues to have a broad knowledge of community challenges and the need for local support. The concept of enabling such a broad base of donorship – even $1 a month has an outsized impact – may have been a no-brainer, but it took the newspaper’s platform to truly launch and sustain the effort, and the publisher’s commitment to the cause.
As I shiver through the season, I raise a glass of cocoa to both my father and the Salvation Army for their continued commitment to arguably our greatest of challenges: stabilizing the unhoused (one of the nonprofit’s primary missions). I feel fortunate to be working with the Salvation Army currently through Leadership Atlanta and encourage all Georgians to become more familiar with their local chapter to help the organization meet its needs. Salvation Army volunteers might only be out there ringing their bell in the Christmas season, but the band plays year-round. 
Ben Young is Editor-in-Chief and Publisher of Georgia Trend. | byoung@georgiatrend.com
