Rosalind Erwin

In 2023, the Onion Foundation collaborated with Northeast University’s Roux Institute to develop and launch the 

, an initiative designed to help nonprofits create earned-revenue streams.

Several of the participating organizations have since established income streams that help support their mission-based work. For Milbridge’s 

, however, the program offered tools for advancing two aspects of its work:an earned-income project and more accessible community-oriented programming.

As described by Experience Coordinator Lizzie Cunningham, WHRL’s focus has been on promoting the health and well-being of the woman, her family, and her community for more than two decades. Now, with a broader toolbox of community discovery techniques thanks to the Intrapreneurship Program, the WHRL team has begun listening directly to community members with disabilities and applying what they’ve learned to make their programming more accessible for all.

The current spirit of WHRL harkens back to its initial identity as a health lending library, a place for ensuring more people have access to the information and resources they need to live fulfilling lives. The activities that support this spirit, however, have evolved over time.

Today, WHRL offers workshops on various health topics, cooking classes, crafting meet-ups, and book clubs. It also maintains a series of nature trails throughout the area, including the Milbridge Commons Wellness Park and gardens.

“The gardens are a perfect metaphor for the type of work we do,” says Cunningham. “They’re a place to connect people with the outdoors, with each other, with nutritious food, and with educational programming.”

 program, participants hike along land preserves to learn about the local ecology of the Milbridge area. The Owlette program allows younger girls to do the same, while exploring the gardens of Milbridge Commons Wellness Park.

Everything WHRL does is centered around meeting the needs of the Milbridge community — which makes listening to the town’s people vital.

“We prioritize getting community members’ opinions about the work we do and what we could do better,” says Cunningham. “We want to be as responsive as we can to community needs because we are the community, too.”

, 11.7% of people under 65 in Maine live with a disability, and Washington County has the 

second-highest percentage of people with disabilities

 of all counties in the state. That’s 23% of the county’s population that Cunningham was determined to serve better.

Having learned various customer discovery techniques in the Intrapreneurship program, COO Susan Jordan Bennett advised Cunningham on creating a framework for interviewing community members with disabilities who were interested in the OWL program but needed accommodations for meaningful participation. Together, Bennett and Cunningham crafted questions for one-on-one conversations that generated more expansive discussions than previous organizational surveys had allowed.

These conversations illuminated several realities that interviewees face — and the WHRL team has quickly sprung into action to address them.

For many of the interviewees, trail and activity descriptions matter more than abled-bodied participants might think. The type of trail, the various routes, the level of incline, how high people will need to pick up their feet, bathroom accessibility — these elements all influence whether some community members with disabilities are able to participate in the activity.

Without robust and transparent descriptions, many people with disabilities don’t know whether they can or should participate, leaving many to not sign up at all.

Since the conversations, the WHRL team has overhauled their descriptions to be far more detailed. “This was a good moment for me to think about what’s 

 useful in a description for someone who wants to go on a trail,” says Cunningham.

After learning that participants with disabilities needed low-movement OWL programs, Cunningham added two shorter accessible trail hikes, using 

 and language to describe the routes accurately.

One of the interviewees explained that each day brings different mental and physical stressors for some people with disabilities, making it difficult to commit to pre-registration. “Drop-ins lower the stakes and the pressure,” explains Cunningham.

WHRL has since partnered with local organizations to add more drop-in programming to its lineup. In the spring, the organization worked with 

 to offer family activities on Saturdays. And come Halloween, WHRL will launch a seasonal drop-in program at a local elementary school for families to learn about creepy, crawly outdoor creatures.

Four Lessons Learned From WHRL’s Accessibility Work

As Cunningham notes, WHRL is only at the beginning of its accessibility journey — but a beginning rich with action and possibility. Here’s how the WHRL team has made a big impact in a short amount of time.

Creating accessible programming isn’t a one-and-done effort. It’s an always-on perspective that requires organizations to adapt as new needs arise. Cunningham regularly asks a few critical questions to stay flexible and adaptable: Should WHRL include accessible activities within the OWL program or as a separate initiative altogether? Should the organization move accessible programming indoors? How can WHRL reach a distinct subset of an already small population?

Answering these questions requires a bit of trial and error as well as a willingness to listen closely to people with disabilities, sometimes even on the go. When one person requested a standup paddleboard — equipment that would be easier on the person’s joints — during a kayaking excursion, for example, the WHRL team quickly adapted to include the gear and training needed to help that person meaningfully participate.

Starting with the OWL program enabled the WHRL team to build an accessibility approach that they could then apply to all other programs. The team came to better understand how features like movement breaks during programs could benefit not only participants with disabilities in programs specially designed to be accessible but also people participating across all of their activities — pregnant people who needed to use the restroom, people with invisible disabilities, or those who simply wanted time to collect themselves.

Prioritizing one-on-one interviews over more widespread surveys allowed Cunningham to connect directly with potential program participants with disabilities, many of whom were Cunningham’s friends and fellow community members. “It gave them time to share their experience without the more prescriptive questions,” explains Cunningham. “People were able to provide a more complete picture of their needs.”

That community connection also extends to program outreach. Knowing that pre-registration can be difficult for many people, Cunningham calls or texts the community members she knows to encourage them to join upcoming accessible events and provide more details. For Cunningham, there’s power in that connection, a connection that creates trust and facilitates transparency over time.

For community listening to work well, Cunningham recommends building on the trust that’s already there: “The people we interviewed knew that I was a trusted community member with their best interests at heart. There are other ways to create that support, like working with another organization that people trust. It’s really important for people to be able to be vulnerable about their experiences.”

Maine Trail Finder’s digital trail maps — with detailed descriptions and accessibility ratings — are shining examples of accessibility in practice. And they served as perfect resources for Cunningham as she overhauled WHRL’s outdoor activity descriptions.

This is just one way Cunningham turned to other organizations for models of what effective accessibility looks like. Her advice? “Ground yourself in what other people are doing. Subscribe to all the newsletters! We’re really lucky in Maine because there’s a lot of great organizations already doing this work.”

Learn how Women for Healthy Rural Living used insights from its community to make programming more accessible for all.

How Did They Do It? Women for Healthy Rural Living’s Accessible Outdoor Programming

Data & Research

Equity

Outdoor Access

People With Disabilities

Ash Holland

In 2016, a group of researchers from the Catherine Cutler Institute at the University of Southern Maine established the 

as a means of achieving one primary goal: Helping organization leaders make data-informed decisions. For the DIP, data is more than a tool. It’s a vehicle for telling compelling stories, connecting with others, and laying the groundwork for achieving organizational objectives.

Data collection can feel daunting and elusive for many of the Onion Foundation’s 

, so the DIP team was a perfect partner to help support those efforts and encourage good data practices. We approached them in 2023 with one main question: How can organizations learn more about who is participating in their programs, without making assumptions or asking misguided or intrusive questions?

Learning about who’s in the audience helps us understand who 

. For organizations that seek a broad, diverse, inclusive representation of the people in their community — a 

 — periodic data checks help them compare intentions with results.

toolkit designed specifically so that arts and culture organizations could begin this work

. The Onion Foundation invited an advisory group, representing different kinds of grantee organizations, who gave input about how they might use such a tool and what they needed to do so. Subsequently, a pilot group worked with the DIP team to beta test the toolkit with real-world application. Participants worked through each step of the design, implementation, and data collection process to learn more about their programs.

We talked with the DIP’s Director, Sarah Goan, and Research Analyst, Madison Burke, to hear more about how they view data and what made this Onion Foundation collaboration so impactful. Here’s that conversation.

The DIP’s Approach to Data Collection and Analysis

What is the Data Innovation Project’s primary mission?

We started the Data Innovation Project because we recognized that there was often a mismatch between what funders were expecting or desiring from nonprofits and what the nonprofits’ capacity actually was to deliver on those expectations. So we’ve tailored our work to create accessible technical assistance, evaluation expertise, and data expertise to help bridge that gap. We try to meet folks where they’re at. We want to be really relational and approachable, and we try to make sure that our communities can use and be good stewards of data.

Yes, at the heart of our mission is trying to help organizations feel like they can do this. It’s about giving organizations the tools to feel more confident in their own abilities.

What does your work with organizations look like?

It’s really dependent on their needs, their capacity, and how deeply they want to partner with us and engage in this work. We provide workshops that help folks get a good introduction to data-related topics. We also offer short-term support through our data clinics, and we do contract-based work where we walk organizations through every step of the process from ideation to implementation to conclusion.

We’re always coaching. We’re helping folks navigate conversations with leadership or with their boards. We’re giving them perspectives to consider, questions to pose. It’s about guiding and consulting.

It’s exciting to see the way that we can expand organizations’ knowledge and capacity so that they feel ready to step into that data role with confidence.

What does data mean to you? How do you understand that concept?

At its core, data is information. We embrace the idea, wholeheartedly, that it’s not just numbers or surveys. It’s information and insight. We promote a mixed methods approach, which is gathering some numbers and some narratives — doing more than one type of data collection to corroborate across sources and perspectives to get a truer picture of what’s happening.

Qualitative data is data. Some people say, “They’re just anecdotes!” But there are things you can do to move from anecdote to actual data. We recognize and embrace those types of data, while teaching about how to tighten practices to make the data replicable and verifiable.

Are any of your clients hesitant to work with data?

So many people are terrified of data. But what I love about it is its capacity as a tool for storytelling. That’s where I see data as being powerful and beautiful — it helps us learn more about what we’re doing, make sure that we’re doing it the right way, and find the story that we want to share. We try to find ways to shift people’s perspectives about data.

Yes! A lot of people also expect me to tell them where they’ve failed. But we really believe that evaluation should be a partnership. We help nonprofits design programs and think about how to collect information in the easiest way possible. Good evaluators help you tell stories.

A good evaluator would never say, “Here’s where you’re failing.” They would say, “These are opportunities for you to grow and here’s how to do that.”

What values do you bring to each partnership?

That’s the first question we ask: What’s most important to you? Everything related to data, storytelling, and evaluation needs to go back to an organization’s mission, purpose, values, and vision. We deeply value transparency, accuracy, data privacy, and ownership of data. We want to make sure the stories organizations tell are actionable.

We’re experts in evaluation, but we’re not experts in organizations’ programming. It’s really about honoring their expertise and bringing our expertise to bear in a collaborative, equal partnership. We want to leave organizations in a position where they may not need us again, where they have a stepping stone to something greater.

How was it working with the Onion Foundation pilot group?

It was fun! We wanted to make sure that the products we created were meeting organizations’ needs, that our assumptions about their work were valid, and that our examples were resonating with folks in the field. We asked about their experiences, and we listened to what they had to say without moving to solutions right away. It was fascinating to convene the advisory group and hear about commonalities we see across the nonprofit sector, as well as the unique challenges particular organizations experienced.

It was exciting to validate the way we were thinking about the toolkit, but it was also a great opportunity for organizations to see that they aren’t alone in this and that they have collaborators in each other that they can rely on. Allowing space for them to talk to one another about those challenges was really meaningful. It also helped us figure out which sections of the toolkit we needed to spend more time with.

What information did organizations primarily want to learn?

There was a lot of interest in learning who organizations 

 reaching. That emphasized the need for us to bring in a needs assessment and rely on secondary data like the census. There was also deep concern around confidentiality and keeping participants safe. This toolkit is all about collecting demographic information, and in a time when certain identities don’t feel safe sharing that information, how do you collect the right data?

We tried to remind organizations that they should only collect what they actually need to make meaningful change. Don’t run away with your curiosity. We created a scaffolded approach to asking a range of demographic questions, so organizations could pick the option that worked best for them.

What role does a toolkit like this play in Maine’s larger arts sector?

It’s important for organizations across sectors to have a consistent and reliable way to talk about these topics. They need to have a resource that was developed with real organizations in their field and with the communities that they’re working with. This isn’t just a generic toolkit — it’s really tailored to the needs of their fellow organizations. That gives them a reliable way to talk about data collection. It also helps ensure community members are getting consistent survey questions so organizations can share a common framework.

I hope that this toolkit continues to be useful for organizations to develop a shared language and reminds folks that there’s a lot of different ways they can approach data collection. Data isn’t a scary beast! We’re here to help anytime.

Hear from two experts about what makes the Data Innovation Project's approach to data collection and analysis so impactful for nonprofits.

Storytelling Through Data: A Conversation With the Data Innovation Project

Capacity Building

In movement building, like other efforts that require creativity and sustained attention, young people are the future. And though they’ve been handed a divided world wracked by climate change and destructive policies, young people are stepping up to these challenges and working to leave the world better than they found it.

, the Listen Project is a research endeavor created by youth for youth, led by the 

Maine Environmental Education Association (MEEA)

Over the course of more than a year, these researchers gathered insights on the current state of the youth climate movement ecosystem, culminating with an 

 that outlines their key findings. Here’s a close look at the project and the young climate advocates who developed it.

The Listen Project team surveyed 123 young people (defined as 14-30 years old) and interviewed an additional 22 who are involved in the climate movement in Maine. With a second survey and series of interviews specifically with youth leaders of climate nonprofits, the researchers dove deep into organizational practices and challenges. They uncovered key aspects of the youth climate movement, including:

How young people are currently engaging in the movement

The barriers they’re experiencing to getting involved

The news sources they’re using to get information on the movement

The advocacy training opportunities that are available to them

Organizational details, such as budgets and counties served

These key insights from the research offer a broader view of how young activists are shaping the climate movement and, more importantly, what support they need from Maine organizations.

Phoebe Little, Co-Director of Maine Youth for Climate Justice

As a representative for Maine Youth for Climate Justice, Little joined the Listen Project’s working group to help design the survey, synthesize the collected data, and share results.

What were the working group’s primary responsibilities?

We created a plan to circulate the survey to reach young activists across the state. This process included leveraging our personal networks to make sure the survey was able to reach a wide variety of activists involved with a variety of organizations and spanning a large geographic area. Since the publication of the Listen Project’s results and story map, I’ve also worked with members of MEEA’s staff to present our findings at various events and conferences.

How would you describe your experience throughout the project?

It was really interesting to examine quantifiable data against knowledge that I held anecdotally. It was also a great opportunity for young people to design and execute a research project like this. The work strengthened our cross-organizational relationships. One of the main takeaways of the Listen Project was that the youth climate movement needs more collaboration, and our working group felt like a little experiment in what that collaboration might look like.

The results showed that 49% of participants self-identified as queer, 20% identified as coming from a racially diverse background, and 14% as disabled. This is important information that should guide how we engage the Maine youth climate movement.

Young people are growing up in an increasingly changing climate. Our world looks different from that of our parents, let alone our grandparents. We’re more powerful as a wide movement of changemakers rather than working individually in a vacuum. The Listen Project allowed us to see where our movement can be strengthened. Hopefully, good will come out of that data.

Laura Bither, Director of JustME for JustUS

In addition to being interviewed for the project, Bither served on the Listen Project’s advisory committee, a board tasked with providing feedback during the survey creation process.

Why do you feel young people’s perspectives are vital to larger climate and environmental activism efforts?

Young people are closest to both the challenges and the solutions in their communities. Not only do they have the most at stake by decisions being made now, but they’re also deeply underrepresented in decision-making spaces. Young people have the imagination, creativity, and energy to make things happen that older people come to believe are impossible. Young people are leaders of culture change work. We need that desperately when, clearly, what we’ve done up until now has not worked.

Which findings affirmed your understanding of the movement?

That two of the top issues youth experience are burnout and imposter syndrome was affirming, based on our work. We consistently find that advocacy language is exclusionary for young people without some kind of experience or familiarity with it, and, working in rural Maine, we are so intentional about trying to reach people with plain language who aren’t already participating in the climate movement.

What kind of impact do you think research like this has on climate activism?

The youth climate movement should be leading discussions on how to change the systems and structures that have gotten us here. I hope this research establishes how under-resourced yet vibrant our movement is, and how much we could achieve with sufficient resources.

Phoebe Dolan, Co-Director of Maine Youth Power

Dolan is a rural climate activist and committed member of Maine’s climate movement who co-founded 

 in 2020. She served as an interviewee for the Listen Project, providing insights from both her personal and organizational perspectives.

We’re a power-building organization, and our goal is to build power to win human dignity, equity, access, and a livable future across rural Maine. We work in and around elections with young folks to ensure they’re educated and voting. We also have a PAC through which we endorse candidates whose voices we believe will uplift young people’s perspectives and needs. We run radical book clubs, statewide membership meetings, educational opportunities, and communities of practice.

Why do you think it’s important to mobilize young people around climate issues?

So many social movements have been led by young people. We know that is a tried-and-true method. Young people will inherit the state, but they leave Maine more than their peers in other states. There’s an effort — and a necessity — for young people to be studying what would make Maine a good place for all of us to live. Young people feel the incredible weight of climate change and the danger of the rise of fascism, so we have to organize young people in order to set the agenda for Maine.

What role does research like the Listen Project play in mobilization efforts?

This question has really been on our minds recently. In rural Maine, young people have a clear sense of their experience of what is bad — climate issues, public transit, Palestine, housing. Surveys capture those experiences on a granular level, setting the stage for endorsing candidates that align with those perspectives. We listen to the trail of the data, and we understand the relevance of it to the future of Maine. Then the question becomes, how do we show up and highlight these things as priority issues? How can we use our lane to provide solidarity?

We’ve learned that strategic coalitions are how you win. I want everyone to have the data on what works so we can all understand how to move forward together.

Hear from three youth climate activists about their role in the Listen Project's groundbreaking research.

View the Map

The Listen Project: Profiles From the Front Lines of the Youth Climate Movement

Youth Engagement

Climate Action

As a mission-driven, inclusion-focused arts nonprofit, 

 has championed accessibility in their programs for more than 50 years. Now, with the community it’s assembled and the expertise it’s developed, ODA has embraced a second mission: to train other arts nonprofits to be accessibility champions, too.

“Through programs, partnerships, and training, our team works to ensure that people with disabilities can fully engage as artists, audience members, and cultural leaders,” says Dani Rose, director of cultural access at Open Door Arts.

 is central to its goal of increasing people with disabilities’s access to the arts. The Hub helps cultural institutions “skill up” in accessibility, providing tools and guidance for transforming nonprofit programming into fully integrated, accessible resources for people with disabilities.

Starting in September 2025, ODA shared their expertise and custom tools with 28 

 via a 10-month Cultural Accessibility Peer Learning Cohort. Through a series of professional development sessions and workshops, the organization’s leaders guided participating nonprofits through a self-assessment process aimed at analyzing their current accessibility needs. Organizations gained insight on why accessibility is so critical and how they can move beyond accommodations checklists to infuse accessibility into their organizational culture, operations, and approaches.

And in the past year, the organization has significantly increased the training resources available on its Hub and has recently launched a cultural access certification program — activities that will further empower and prepare nonprofits to turn lessons into action. Here’s a look at the initial peer learning cohort and what’s come out of it thus far.

ODA anchored the cohort in its Accessibility Self-Assessment tool, a self-paced digital evaluation tool comprising 300 multiple-choice questions organized around the nonprofit’s:

Overall approach, including policies, practices, and procedures

 examined their organizations’ current practices, learned about the importance of inclusive programming, and identified gaps they could address to improve the accessibility of their operations, organizational culture, and programs. The range of topics the survey covered meant that cohort participants had to work collaboratively with their staff, board members, and volunteers to complete the self-assessment.

“What makes the tool unique is that it's both an assessment and a learning tool,” explains Rose. “Throughout the process, participants will find glossary terms, legal guidance, examples, and companion resources that explain accessibility concepts and requirements.”

After looking inward and learning core concepts, organizations move from assessment to planning. Upon completion, ODA provides a personalized report of the organization’s self-assessment results with data visualizations, key insights, and an accessibility action plan template, enabling organizations to identify priorities for their future accessibility planning.

In the final months of the peer learning cohort, participants translated their self-evaluation results into action steps, with guidance from ODA on how to prioritize, sustain momentum, and build accountability into their planning. At the end of the cohort, organizations had not only a comprehensive understanding of where their accessibility practices stood, but also a roadmap of where they were going next and what more they needed to learn.

‘You Can’t Grow What You Don’t Know’

The impacts of ODA’s learning communities boil down to one of the organization’s key mottos: You can’t grow what you don’t know. The learning community helped nonprofits build the self-knowledge needed to address critical areas for growth. It also helped:

“Accessibility touches every part of an organization, so the work can feel enormous when you look at it all at once,” says Rose. The self-assessment tool and cohort learning are designed to break this work into smaller pieces, helping organizations move toward more inclusive practices incrementally.

Accessibility is about more than one-off activities or accommodations. According to ODA, true accessibility is a far more involved practice that requires organizations to embed inclusion into their core operations.

This cohort training helped nonprofits better understand the nuances of accessibility: “Accessibility often involves navigating gray areas, balancing organizational realities, and thinking through unique situations,” says Rose. “Those conversations helped participants move beyond checking boxes and toward making thoughtful decisions that fit their organization.”

Turn Accommodations Into Organizational Systems

Throughout the learning community, nonprofits learned about building accessibility best practices into staff training, committee activities, communications, and strategic planning. As Rose explains, “They began to realize where to put their efforts and resources in the immediate present while planning for a more accessible future.”

At the end of the cohort session, nonprofits had not only a clearer picture of their core goals and objectives, but also a better sense of how to improve over time.

The cohort learning workshops both inspired and equipped the organizations to undergo transformative change. Many have begun turning practices into formal policies. Others have reached out to potential service providers. And others have built accessibility into their planning conversations. Here’s what two participants had to say about their experience.

Since 2011, Delilah Poupore has served as the executive director of 

, a nonprofit that, in her words, “works to create a vibrant, inclusive, and sustainable downtown through community development, placemaking, and public events.”

The cohort helped move accessibility from being something we thought about on a case-by-case basis to something we can intentionally build into our planning. The sessions were practical, welcoming, and realistic (focused on continuous improvement rather than perfection). It was also valuable to learn alongside other organizations working through many of the same questions, and making some of the same mistakes we've made. Dani Rose modeled accessibility throughout the training, from the way sessions were facilitated to the resources and tools shared.

Based on the workshops, what kinds of strategies have you included in your action plan to improve accessibility?

The assessment highlighted how much accessibility depends on having consistent systems and planning. We realized that many of the things we do happen informally and that creating clear organizational practices — such as event accessibility standards, communication guidelines, and requests for accommodation processes — will help us provide a more consistent experience for everyone.

Our plan focuses on creating accessibility standards for all events, improving the accessibility of our communications, and building stronger relationships with disability-related organizations and with people with disabilities in our community. We also plan to begin evaluating accessibility at our major events and to incorporate accessibility into the planning of exhibitions, ArtWalks, and other arts programming, rather than treating it as something to address after plans are already in place and someone has made a request.

How would you describe the overall impact this workshop series has had on your organization?

The workshop series gave us a practical way to think about accessibility as an ongoing organizational practice instead of a checklist. Rather than leaving with a list of ideal solutions, we left with realistic goals we can begin implementing now while continuing to learn and improve over time. For a small organization, that made the work feel approachable and sustainable.

 community programming steward, Emily Guirl, joined the cohort to learn more about accessibility and practices she could implement right away. The Institute hosts outdoor educational programs focused on community well-being, sustainability, and deep relationship-building.

I was initially overwhelmed in the accessibility cohort, being fairly ignorant of the disability rights movement, workplace requirements, and disability inclusive language. The facilitator, Dani, created a compassionate learning environment in which I felt welcome and supported in my learning. The spreadsheet that Open Door Arts provided to help us write our accessibility plan was extremely helpful!

Cobscook Institute is a progressive and inclusive organization, so I was surprised to find through the assessment how much more we could be doing on campus and online to improve access for people with all kinds of disabilities.

Training staff and designating an accessibility coordinator or hiring an accessibility auditor (who’s also a person living with disabilities) were at the top of our action plan items. These steps will assure that access work stays at the front of organizational planning.

I think the program has started a shift within the organization to be proactive in our inclusive strategies. If we wait for people with disabilities to come to us to tell us what they need, they might never come and we’ll miss an opportunity to serve part of our community.

For Rose and the rest of the Open Door Arts team, accessibility is core to nonprofit work, and building a more accessible future in programming starts with curiosity.

“People often ask if they’re ready to begin this work, but I don’t think there’s any such thing as ‘ready,’” says Rose. “Curiosity is readiness. If you’re asking questions about accessibility, you’re already taking the first step.”

Leading with curiosity, the nonprofits in this cohort are on a path toward greater inclusion for 

Opening Doors to Mainers With Disability: A Look at Open Door Arts’ Accessibility Workshops

Arts Access

Diana Morris

, Onion Foundation cofounders, Susan and Fritz Onion, explained their reasoning for creating a spend-down foundation. The blog has generated considerable interest and, in many cases, expressions of appreciation for the Onions’s transparency and commitment to spending the foundation’s resources at a rate much higher than the 

 that the IRS requires all private foundations to give out.

Some grantees, however, have expressed concern that the foundation — and our support for them — might change in the near term as a result of spending down. We want to reiterate that, while our strategies will continue to evolve, we’re not likely to make any abrupt changes. Our foundation has operated as a spend-down organization since its inception, and we remain committed to helping our grantees sustain their work long after we close our doors 18 years from now.

In their blog, Susan and Fritz posed one question that, for me, gets to the heart of philanthropic work and, frankly, is the hardest to answer: 

Where can we make a difference that will hold?

 It’s the kind of question that can keep me up at night and that can provoke conversations with plenty of silence. Simply pondering the question makes clear that it’s not so easy to give money away well.

Catalyzing Multiple ‘Differences’ in Maine

Both perpetual and spend-down foundations confront this question. If they’re serious about their missions, they’re driven by it as they develop, implement, and assess their strategies and activities.

But for spend-down foundations, the question is acute. The years speed up. There’s less time to correct the course and start anew. Being clear about the “difference” we hope to achieve becomes paramount, requiring three things:

Board and staff agreement on the foundation’s values, mission, and legacy goals

Deep, unfettered conversations with people directly affected and others with expertise and relevant experience

Honest, nuanced discussions with our grantees to understand the changes their work is bringing about, what more they want to accomplish, and what they need to do so

 — there are endless “differences” that the Onion Foundation can aim to catalyze. As a place-based funder, we take our lead from local and statewide organizations, especially those that offer high-quality programs and regularly assess and tweak their work. These organizations have strong relationships with the communities they serve and shape programs to respond to community needs and interests.

We feel comfortable working hand in hand with 

 and others with relevant experience to identify the specific “differences” toward which we use the foundation’s resources.

 — is the most challenging. How do we ensure change will hold? How do we help grantees achieve sustainability? What factors impede an organization’s long-term stability, and how do we solve those challenges?

We have a strong conviction that healthy organizations have a better chance of sustaining their work. Accordingly, we’ve devoted more resources to our grantees’ organizational development in recent years. As described in our 

, our technical assistance offerings have included:

Organizational self-assessments using an instrument created by the TCC Group

Workshops on making programs, facilities, and practices welcoming to 

We also launched an Intrapreneurship course at 

Northeastern University’s Roux Institute

, which prepares nonprofits to develop an earned income stream using their existing expertise, facilities, and/or networks. Going forward, we plan to broaden the portfolio of capacity building tools, workshops, and coaching available to our grantees.

We continue to encourage our grantees to embrace the 

. This fall, we’ll be supporting five free advocacy workshops offered by the Maine Association of Nonprofits, which we sincerely hope our grantees and other nonprofits will attend.

Effective advocacy can result in more public investment in nonprofit organizations’ important work as well as new policies and regulations that help them accomplish their goals or remove roadblocks. Public education and storytelling aren’t only the first parts of an advocacy campaign but also critical to increasing sustainability.

When the public and targeted audiences have a comprehensive and accurate understanding of what a nonprofit offers, participation and appreciation increase and the value of the nonprofit is better understood. All this paves the way for greater public support and a sustainable future.

Strategic Communications To Build Support

We’ve also ramped up our own communications capacity with 

 and email newsletters so that we can bring more attention to the good work of our grantees. By doing so, we hope to increase the number of foundations and individuals supporting the work. Grantees can also use this content within their own networks. Blogs provide a platform for sharing what works and “how they did it” stories, all meant to strengthen other nonprofit organizations.

With 18 years ahead of us, we’re looking hard at what’s missing in the arts and environment landscapes. Are there organizations we could help build or strengthen that would provide important resources and support to nonprofits in the arts, environment, and philanthropic sectors, even after our doors close? Where could we help increase collaboration, efficiency, and impact?

, for example, has allowed it to expand its role as an 

, providing funding and technical assistance to land trusts throughout the state. Our hope is that the regranting mechanisms and programming that Momentum has established will attract new sources of support for conservation groups, increasing the likelihood of their sustainability. With guidance for the nonprofits in each sector, and with an eye to nonprofit infrastructure in other states, we’ll continue to seek out similar opportunities.

In the years ahead, we plan to immerse ourselves in learning about the experiences of other spend-down foundations, looking for lessons that have application to conditions in Maine and our work. For now, though, we welcome your ideas of ways to increase the sustainability of arts and environment organizations and to create robust sectors.

Hear from Executive Director Diana Morris about the Onion Foundation's commitment to ensuring grantee organizations thrive well beyond the foundation's end.

Test Blog Post

Photo 1