10 Years Into Building a Foundation in Maine: A Conversation With Fritz and Susan Onion

Ten years ago, Fritz and Susan Onion set out to build a foundation in Maine that could help drive change in the arts and environment sectors throughout the state. Recognizing the significant impact that access to art and the outdoors has on individuals and communities, they’ve since grown the foundation to support hundreds of organizations doing critical on-the-ground work across all 16 counties.

Here, Fritz and Susan reflect on the values they developed growing up in Maine and share their goals for the future of the foundation.

Tell us about growing up in Maine. How did your early experiences help you connect with the state?

Fritz: My dad moved us to Farmington, Maine, in the ‘70s to start a rural healthcare family practice, so I grew up in the area, went to Mount Blue High School, and spent much of my time skiing, hiking, and being outdoors.

Each summer, my father, my sisters, and I would get up at 3 a.m. and drive to Millinocket to hike Mount Katahdin. We’d get there early, hike the whole thing, and get home really late. Experiences like these really deepened my connection to outdoor recreation in Maine.

Susan: I was born and raised in Farmington, and I spent my early years with my dad fishing, hiking, hunting, and canoeing in the western foothills. I worked as a camp counselor at the YMCA camp in Winthrop, taught swimming lessons at our local pond, and volunteered as a ski patroller at Titcomb Mountain. To this day, I still feel a strong connection to the area.

What led you to establish the Onion Foundation in 2014?

Fritz: We had just received an influx of funding from my previous company, and we wanted to use it in a meaningful way. The first thing we did was meet with folks at the Maine Philanthropy Center [MPC], who put us in touch with five or six different foundation leaders. We spent the summer visiting all these leaders and getting their perspectives on what it means to run a foundation in Maine.

Susan: We also attended a conference in D.C. put on by the National Center for Family Philanthropy, as well as several of MPC’s workshops and trainings.

Fritz: Yes, and we heard a similar thing across the board: It’s the best job in the world. You get to make a difference in people’s lives and work with people who are directly doing the work. We decided to go for it.

The foundation has always been driven by key values. How did you identify those guiding principles?

Susan: We knew we had great privilege and a responsibility to give back to communities. And we wanted to be careful and methodical about how we did it. We worked with a consultant who met with each of us and our son and daughter to identify our personal values. Then, we discussed his findings together.

Fritz: Our values were remarkably aligned as a family.

When we hired Diana [the Onion Foundation’s executive director], we decided it was time to revisit our values as a foundation and worked as a team to refine them. We also spent time at the board level looking at our mission and vision statements. We keep these values top of mind as we do our work at the foundation.

Why is the arts sector such a primary focus for the foundation?

Fritz: Growing up in Farmington, we had access to amazing music teachers and vibrant arts and music scenes. Art is such an important element to human existence and building communities, and we’ve realized that a lot of communities don’t have resources like that. That’s a real culture gap that we’d love to see filled.

Susan: Yes, expanding access to the arts has always been one of our key goals. We wanted to fund broadly across the arts to provide communities — especially those in rural areas — with more arts resources.

What about the environment sector?

Susan: We recognize the well-being everyone gains from being outdoors. We also feel an urgency around climate action, as we’ve witnessed the increasing effects of climate change in our own backyard and have two children who are concerned about the planet’s future.

Our hope with our philanthropic work is to reach kids young, engage families, and make nature more accessible to everyone. I think there’s a responsibility to equity that we and other funders should fulfill.

Fritz: I agree. There’s an opportunity for supporting state climate policies and getting more dollars into the organizations that are driving climate action. We’re using a lot of their work already as guides for our own decision-making.

The youth in our state and across the country are energized and motivated to combat climate change, and foundations can help channel that energy into the most effective directions. We need to support newer organizations in pulling the right levers.

What have you learned through your philanthropic work so far? What shifts have you seen across organizations in Maine?

Fritz: When we first started, some people described us as the “Cinderella foundation” because we’d show up at their door and make a surprising gift. Over the next nine years, though, we’ve learned that a successful approach to philanthropy is to balance being open to organizations’ general queries and diving deep with some organizations that align well with us.

Susan: I really appreciate that the foundations in Maine communicate and share information. Most organizations have been talking about justice, equity, diversity, and inclusion [JEDI] for a while, but there’s been a big shift in recent years to embed equity deeper into philanthropic work. There’s also been more integration of trust-based philanthropy.

At our foundation, we’re embracing a lot of these ideas, especially equity, relationship-building, communication, transparency, and openness.

When you look back on the foundation in 20 years, what will signal to you that the team’s efforts have been successful?

Fritz: This is the big legacy question that we’ve been thinking a lot about! We want to see vibrant arts experiences across the state and more access to nature education and outdoor experiences. We also hope that Maine continues to be a leader in climate change advocacy.

Susan: It’ll be important for more regional and national funding resources to come into Maine to help organizations do this important work.

We’ll also know we’ve been successful if we’re remembered as a foundation that led with trust and transparency. Our relationships with people and organizations in Maine should be part of our legacy.