· Public charity
Maine Initiativesinc
Maine initiatives, a fund for change, cultivates social, economic, and environmental justice through grants and other support to grassroots organizations in maine communities.
What you funded, over time
Every grant placed by its stated purpose and the recipient’s mission, by year — across FY2017–2024.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
The 61 grants below total $1,621,676 — the rows itemised in this filing. The $1,682,536 headline is the total grant expense reported on the return, so the remaining $60,860 is giving the schedule does not break out: grants under the $5,000 itemisation floor, grants to individuals, and grants reported on other schedules. Every figure below describes the itemised rows only.
By grant size · FY2024
- Under $10k18 grants · $116k
- $10k–50k33 grants · $795k
- $50k–250k10 grants · $711k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| PRESENTE MAINE | $124,500 |
| MAINE COMMUNITY INTEGRATION | $105,000 |
| KHMER MAINE | $85,000 |
| MAINE IMMIGRANTS RIGHTS COALITION | $75,000 |
| SOMALI BANTU COMMUNITY ASSOCIATION | $55,000 |
| MAINE CONSERVATION ALLIANCE | $55,000 |
| IN HER PRESENCE | $55,000 |
| CAPITAL AREA NEW MAINERS PROJECT | $55,000 |
| RESOURCES FOR ORGANIZING & | $51,419 |
| NIWESKOK | $50,000 |
| MAINE CENTER FOR PUBLIC INTEREST RE | $45,000 |
| INDIGO ARTS ALLIANCE | $45,000 |
| YOUTH LED JUSTICE | $45,000 |
| FOOD FOR ALL SERVICES | $45,000 |
| HEALTHY ACADIA | $45,000 |
Do your dollars go where the need is?
Each grant placed by the hardship in its grantee’s ZIP, then read against the area’s typical level.
Your human-services grants (FY17–24, $2.0M) land where the poverty rate runs at 8%, against an area that typically sits at 11%. 17% of those dollars go to grantees based in above-average-need neighborhoods. Your grants skew toward lower-need ZIPs.
Matched: human-services grants are those whose grantee’s IRS cause code is Human Services. Placed by people below the poverty linein the grantee’s ZIP, averaged from the tracts in that ZIP; grantee ZIP can differ from where services are delivered.
US grants placed by each grantee’s ZIP, which can differ from where services are actually delivered. Need from public data — U.S. Census/ACS, CDC PLACES, Eviction Lab, USDA — shown as context about the area, never attributed to your giving.
Who you back again
Which organizations you funded more than once, and which you funded a single time. Each grantee is matched to its own filings.
And the relationships you keep tend to grow: grantees you re-up on have seen median revenue of +54% since the first grant, against +8% for the ones you funded once.
74 repeat relationships — 41 still active in FY2024, 33 since wound down; 20 grantees were first funded in FY2024 (too recent to call).
How the two cohorts compare
Organizations
Total granted
Median revenue growth · since first grant
Still filing today
New vs renewed · share of each year
In FY2024, 69% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $504k went to new ones.
Where new relationships form · theme of each grantee’s first grant
First-time = a grantee’s first year in your filing window; renewed = funded in an earlier year too. As a portfolio matures the renewed share naturally climbs — once funded, an org stays “renewable” — so the signal is the years that buck it (a new-grantee intake wave). The earliest year is left-censored: relationships that predate the data read as “new.” Theme is the grantee’s IRS cause.
Backed again, and grew
- MIMAINE IMMIGRANTS' RIGHTS COALITION7× · 2018–2024 · $866k · revenue ×24 · 41% of their budget
- RFResources for Organizing and Social Change8× · 2017–2024 · $743k · revenue +15% · 27% of their budget
- MIMAINE INSIDE OUT6× · 2017–2023 · $284k · revenue +23%
Funded once
- WYWABANAKI YOUTH IN SCIENCE INCone grant, 2023 · $75k · revenue +8%
- BLBOMAZEEN LAND TRUSTone grant, 2023 · $75k · revenue -57%
- COCity of Portlandone grant, 2021 · $39k
Repeat = funded in two or more distinct years; growth and survival are read from each grantee’s own subsequent IRS filings.
The map has a center of gravity: the average direction from the rest of the sector toward the organizations the foundation funds — the shape of its giving. Scoring every nonprofit along that direction surfaces the ones that look most like the portfolio. These are the closest matchesthat aren’t grantees — a resemblance in what they say they do, not a recommendation.
MCAN catalyzes transformative education and action in response to the climate crisis. We seek to honor, unite and amplify the voices of youth, frontline communities, and others historically excluded from the climate conversation and…
To build a permanent and powerful progressive movement in Maine. We will promote a healthy, just, equitable democracy through research, engagement, and education of Maine's citizens. We will engage in democracy expansion, voter engagement,…
To promote and ensure workers' rights
To recognize the resiliency of people who use drugs and to work in collaboration to create access points for overdose prevention and harm reduction services in Maine.
Maine Media Workshops & College educates and inspires visual artists and storytellers to achieve their creative potential. We provide lifelong learning opportunities for those pursuing the fine arts and media-related professions. We are…
To provide access to outdoor gear and know-how through a collaborative, equity-centered approach.
Maine & Company is a private, non-profit business development sales organization. Its purpose is to improve Maine's success in attracting new business and expanding and retaining existing business by providing a focused, statewide sales…
To build a permanent and powerful social change movement in Maine, supported by a network of committed donors.
Fork Food Lab is a nonprofit food business incubator and shared commercial kitchen focused on growing the local food economy. We support the growth of sustainable Maine-based businesses by providing entrepreneurs with work space,…
The Eastern Maine Conservation Initiative (EMCI) is a non-profit organization with broad conservation interests that seeks to: 1) Foster environmentally sustainable communities of the eastern Maine coast; 2) Encourage an appreciation of…
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is Maine Immigrant and Refugee Services and the most unlike its peers is Food for All Services. Resemblance is measured on each organization’s own IRS 990 mission text; it reflects how work is described, not its quality or impact.
For each theme you fund, this compares how the sector’s money is shifting with how your own giving is shifting.
Sector change and giving change are each shown relative to their own range, growing (right) or shrinking (left); both normalized, so inflation isn’t mistaken for growth.
Your grantees are a median of 16 years old; the field is 21. You back the younger end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 17% startups (under 5 years old) — 15% of your grantees by number, and just 13% of your money.
The orgs you fund almost never close — 4% lost their exemption, against 10% of the field you don’t fund.
Age = years since IRS exemption (a founding proxy). “Closed” = auto-revocation for 3 years of non-filing — a floor on closure, not proof, and bigger established orgs lapse least. Association, not causation.
97 grantees tracked through their own filings, 2017–2025.
Each one resolved to its own IRS returns and tracked year by year — your grant beside their revenue from every source. Association, dated; never a causal claim.
Counted here: distinct organizations you funded across 2017–2025, not grant rows in a single year — so this will not match the grant count on the cover. 97 of the 117 grantees resolved in that span have returns of their own we could reconcile; the rest are funded organizations whose filings we could not track year by year.
Where your money sits — by cause, then by grantee
Each org by its size and your share of it — top-left is where you’re load-bearing
Go grantee by grantee — a decade per org, and how each moved after you funded them
A decade per grantee — revenue shaded, your grants as bars, all rows on one timeline.
- Who funds MAINE IMMIGRANTS' RIGHTS COALITION ↗
- Who funds Resources for Organizing and Social Change ↗
- Who funds MAINE INSIDE OUT ↗
- Who funds SOUTHERN MAINE WORKERS CENTER ↗
- Who funds MAINE COMMUNITY INTEGRATION ↗
- Who funds Hand in Hand Mano en Mano ↗
- Who funds Somali Bantu Community Association of Maine ↗
- Who funds MAINE-WABANAKI REACH ↗
- Who funds MAINE PRISONER ADVOCACY COALITION ↗
- Who funds THE THIRD PLACE INC ↗
- Who funds Presente Maine ↗
- Who funds Indigo Arts Alliance ↗
- Who funds In Her Presence ↗
- Who funds Maine Association for New Americans ↗
- Who funds CAPITAL AREA NEW MAINERS PROJECT ↗
- Who funds NEW MAINERS PUBLIC HEALTH INITIATIVE ↗
- Who funds WABANAKI CULTURAL PRESERVATION COALITION ↗
- Who funds MAINE CONSERVATION ALLIANCE ↗
- Who funds NEW ENGLAND ARAB AMERICAN ORGANIZATION ↗
- Who funds Wabanaki Alliance ↗
- Who funds PROSPERITYME ↗
- Who funds Maine Access Immigrant Network ↗
- Who funds SUSTAINABLE LIVELIHOODS RELIEF ORGANIZATION ↗
- Who funds Khmer Maine ↗
- Who funds INTERCULTURAL COMMUNITY CENTER ↗
- Who funds Gateway Community Services Maine ↗
- Who funds SPACE Gallery ↗
- Who funds FURNITURE FRIENDS ↗
- Who funds WHYHUNGER INC ↗
- Who funds Hope Acts ↗
- Who funds WABANAKI YOUTH IN SCIENCE INC ↗
- Who funds BOMAZEEN LAND TRUST ↗
- Who funds HEALTHY ACADIA ↗
- Who funds LADDER TO THE MOON NETWORK ↗
- Who funds CREATIVE PORTLAND CORPORATION ↗
- Who funds Maine Equal Justice Partners ↗
- Who funds PREBLE STREET ↗
- Who funds MAINE IMMIGRANT AND REFUGEE SERVICES ↗
- Who funds WABANAKI WOMENS COALITION INC ↗
The grantmakers whose grantees overlap with yours far more than size alone predicts. Each orbits closer the stronger the alignment; the arcs between them show where they also fund each other. Here it reads as a tightly interlocked camp — most of these funders back each other's grantees too.
Open a dossier: Maine Community Foundation Inc · Elmina B Sewall Foundation · Good Shepherd Food Bank · Onion Foundation · Maine Health Access Foundation Inc · Sam L Cohen Foundation · John T Gorman Foundation · United Way Inc · Quimby Family Foundation · Maine Humanities Council · Maine Womens Fund · Haymarket People's Fund Inc
Affinity is a Gamma-Poisson posterior co-funding rate, re-centered on the typical rate, so thin evidence shrinks toward no signal. A research starting point: overlap is association, not proof of shared intent.
Government reliance of your grantees
Every dot is one organization Maine Initiativesinc funds. Left–right is the share of its income from government; up–down is the share from you. Bigger dots raise more. Filter to federal or a single department — and drag the year to watch it move.
- Cooperative Development Institute Inc — 58% of income from government
- Resist Inc — 2% of income from government
Government income is each org’s traced federal awards (USASpending — grants and contracts) plus state payments (open checkbooks) as a share of its total revenue (IRS Form 990); the self-reported government-grant line (990 line 1e) is carried for cross-check: a grantee that reports government grants we could not trace to a source is left off the chart rather than shown as receiving none. An association, not a claim that your grant caused the public funding. Coverage is precision-first — a floor, not a census; state records exist for 9 states, so a grantee outside them shows no state figure (dimmed) rather than a false zero. Federal award amounts are obligations, which can span years, so a single-year share is indicative. 990 filings lag 12–24 months.