Maine · Nonprofit
Friends of Acadia
Friends of Acadia (Maine) receives grants from 152 organizations whose IRS filings report $23,081,186 to it, the largest being NATIONAL PARK FOUNDATION ($3,455,372). 103 of them have funded it in more than one year.
- Revenue FY2024
- $14M
- Funders on record
- 152
- Grants received
- $23M
- Net assets
- $96M
What Friends of Acadia does
Mission
Friends of Acadia preserves, protects, and promotes stewardship of the outstanding natural beauty, ecological vitality, and distinctive cultural resources of Acadia National Park and surrounding communities for the inspiration and enjoyment of current and future generations.
As stated on its FY2024 Form 990.
Programs
Friends of Acadia makes grants from its Acadia Trails Forever project fund to the ANP trails program to maintain the park's 153 miles of trails. In 2025, the Trail crew undertook significant repairs to the Hunters Beach Trail and the North and South Bubble Trails. They also completed the rehabilitation of the Bubbles Divide Trail and worked with volunteers to install 500 feet of raised cedar boardwalk along the Hemlock Path, restoring natural water flow through the Great Meadow. They built two stone staircases and improved drainage along the Valley Peak Trail and completed additional sections of the Great Meadow Loop.
$565,009 spentof which $488,240 as grants5% of program spendingThe Carriage Road maintenance grants help to make possible the salaries of several Acadia National Park workers and interns who perform regular maintenance of the park's 44 miles of historic carriage roads. In 2025, the carriage road crew repaired washouts, graded 5 miles of carriage roads, and spread 150 tons of surface materials. They cleaned four miles of road ditches and, flushed culverts. They surveyed 138 of the documented vistas on the carriage roads and worked to clear 43 of those, including supervising volunteers who worked on 12 vistas.
$114,172 spentof which $101,212 as grants1% of program spendingAdditionally, Friends of Acadia contributes to a variety of community outreach events such as the Earth Day Roadside Clean-up and Soil to the Summits hikes. In partnership with Acadia National Park, Friends implements and contributes to other programs including the Summit Stewards, the Wild Garden of Acadia, the Recreation Technicians, the Acadia Winter Trails Association, the Island Explorer, invasive plant eradication, the peregrine falcon and hawk watch program, Acadia Teacher Fellows Program, water quality monitoring, rehabilitation of historic buildings, and a volunteer program that typically contributes over 5,000 hours of time per year to help maintain Acadia's trails and carriage roads. FOA continues to help ANP address the ongoing seasonal employee housing shortage. In 2025, construction continued at Harden Farm, an ANP project that FOA contributed an additional $4.5 million to help complete, adding to the $7M contributed during 2024. Phase One, 28 new one bedroom and studio apartments, was completed, and Phase Two, another 28 one bedroom and studio apartments, was initiated. Solar panels were installed at FOA's seasonal housing complex in Trenton, Maine with a potential…
$10,591,775 spentof which $6,707,398 as grants94% of program spending
The 3 programs described on its FY2025 Form 990, listed largest first by expense. Program spending in total: $11,270,956.
The organization over time
Each line starts at 100 in 2017, so what you read is the shape rather than the size: 150 means half as much again as 2017, 50 means half. The number beside each label in the key is where it ended. The shaded band is where the middle 50% of its peers' revenue would sit, given their growth.
Balance sheet
Total assets and total liabilities at each year end, in dollars. The largest one-year move in total assets was 2022 to 2023, from $75M to $94M (+26%).
How it's funded, over time
Each bar is one year's revenue split into where it came from, and every bar is the same height — these are shares, not amounts, so a year that raised twice as much looks the same size. Hover a bar for the split.
65% of Friends of Acadia’s revenue is contributions — about as donation-reliant as the typical peer (87% for the typical peer).
Surplus & reserves
Operating surplus or deficit each year, and months of liquidity in hand. 1 of the last 8 reported years ran a deficit.
reserve
Leadership and staff
The officers, directors, trustees and key employees listed on each return. Joined and no longer listed compare each filing with the year before, matching people by surname and first initial; a year after a gap, or a roster under three people, has no comparison.
Chief executive
Eric Stiles
President & CEO
Board chair
William C Eacho
Chair
As listed on its FY2025 Form 990.
Who funds it, year by year
2017 → 2023: the base broadened from 52 funders to 68 funders, grant income rose $2.2M → $3.3M.
30 of 152 of your funders are donor-advised or pass-through sponsors (tagged DAF) — 24% of grant dollars received. That money is really individual donors directing a sponsor; the institutions to cultivate are the non-DAF funders.
From the IRS filings of Friends of Acadia’s funders (the co-funder graph). Top 30 of 152 funders by total. Association, not causation. Trends are read to FY2023, the last fiscal year that has finished arriving. FY2024–FY2026 are still being filed and are shown unshaded; they do not move any figure on this page.
How concentrated its funding is
Friends of Acadia has a broad base — no single funder exceeds 15% of grant income, and it takes 5 funders to reach half.
the vertical line marks half of all grant income — 5 funders to its left
39% of the income these shares are computed over arrives through pass-through sponsors or from payers whose filings do not say what kind of payment it is. Concentration is still measured over all of it, because the money is real; what it does not support is a claim about how many institutions have chosen to fund Friends of Acadia.
Largest funder’s share by year: 2017 22% · 2018 32% · 2019 31% · 2020 29% · 2021 18% · 2022 64% · 2023 45% — growing more concentrated.
“Effective funders” = inverse Herfindahl index (1 / Σ shareᵢ²) — the number of equal-sized funders that would give the same concentration. Trends are read to FY2023, the last fiscal year that has finished arriving. FY2024–FY2026 are still being filed and are shown unshaded; they do not move any figure on this page.
How long its funders stay
49% of Friends of Acadia's funders are still giving 3 years after their first grant; 68% give in more than one year at all.
Share of funders still giving k years after their first recorded grant, pooled across every acquisition cohort. A funder counts as retained in a year only if it made a grant that year. Measured to FY2023, the last fiscal year that has finished arriving — a funder cannot be counted as lapsed in a year most filers have not reached.
Where its funders are
Friends of Acadia draws 95% of its grant income from funders outside Maine, across 22 states in all.
In-state vs out-of-state, by year
Funder states come from each funder’s own filing. $5.5M arriving through sponsors registered in 18 states is excluded from the map and the split above: a sponsor holds money on a donor’s behalf, so its registered address would place those dollars somewhere no donor need ever have been. Trends are read to FY2023, the last fiscal year that has finished arriving. FY2024–FY2026 are still being filed and are shown unshaded; they do not move any figure on this page.
Against its field
Friends of Acadia's funding base is broadening — from 52 funders to 68 as grant income climbed.
this organization peer median middle 50% of peers· 330 environment nonprofits $10M–$100M, FY2024
Organizations like Friends of Acadia
Organizations whose mission and program text most resemble this one, by semantic similarity over every organization in the US filings — the closest peers, and often the clearest route to shared or prospective funders.
In Maine
Nationally
Read directly from this organization’s own Form 990, as neutral context.
Where the money goes
88% of spending goes to programs.
Governance
Public support
75%
Share of support from the public (Schedule A) — the basis for its public-charity status.
Footprint & structure
Files a return copy in 19 states
Screen this organization
A dated, signed PDF of the compliance screen for Friends of Acadia: IRS status (Business Master File, Publication 78, auto-revocation), the OFAC sanctions lists, the Internal Revenue Bulletin, and California registration, with the Rev. Proc. 2018-32 §8.01 reliance elements stated element by element. Generated from the current files at the moment you download it.
Screens are triage, not determinations; a source that cannot be read reports not screened, never clear. Screen this nonprofit · How the screen works · on the API as GET /api/screening/{ein}?format=pdf
Questions and answers
- Who funds Friends of Acadia?
- Friends of Acadia (Maine) receives grants from 152 organizations whose IRS filings report $23,081,186 to it, the largest being NATIONAL PARK FOUNDATION ($3,455,372). 103 of them have funded it in more than one year.
- How many funders does Friends of Acadia have?
- IRS filings report 152 organizations giving $23,081,186 in grants to Friends of Acadia, 103 of which have funded it in more than one year.
- Who is the largest funder of Friends of Acadia?
- NATIONAL PARK FOUNDATION is the largest funder on record, with $3,455,372 in grants. The full list of funders is on this page.
- How can an organization like Friends of Acadia find more funders?
- Start with the funders already giving here, then look at the foundations that back similar organizations in Maine. The funding by cause and by state pages list the largest funders for a given area and how to approach them.
These figures are read directly from IRS Form 990 / 990-PF e-file XML: this organization’s own return for FY2024 (financials across 2017–2024), and the filings of 152 funders that report grants to it. “On record” means captured in the filings we have parsed — a funder that does not e-file, or whose grant detail is not itemized, will not appear. Filings run roughly 12–24 months behind. Trends on this page end at FY2023, the last fiscal year that has finished arriving; later years are shown and marked, and move no figure. Data on this page was exported October 22, 2026. What this page cannot tell you · view filing