In Bar Harbor, just miles from the coast, sits the 

, a pinnacle of decolonizing archival methods that center Indigenous heritage and culture. The 17,000-square-foot museum offers visitors a deeper understanding of Indigenous artistry, presenting both traditional and contemporary practices and illuminating the vast creativity of Wabanaki communities.

, now in its third year, brings hundreds of Indigenous and non-Native people from across New England together to celebrate Native art and history. This year’s festival combines regional art and the national stage through a partnership with the 

2026 Of the People: Smithsonian Festival of Festivals

The Dawnland Festival is breaking ground as the Smithsonian’s only New England festival partner. And with a lineup of basketmakers, drummers, jewelry makers, storytellers, and other artists, this year’s festival is set to be bigger than ever.

Evolving the Traditional Market Experience

For years, the Abbe Museum collaborated with the Maine Indian Basketmakers Alliance to offer a traditional market experience for visitors across Maine. When Betsy Richards became the Abbe’s executive director in 2022, she brought an ambitious goal of expanding that market to a full-scale festival that would help celebrate the Native creative economy.

“I wanted to create an arts and ideas festival where we could talk about the big issues of our time — the environment, democracy, art, technology, freedom, aging, education — from an Indigenous perspective,” says Richards.

The festival combines the tradition of Indigenous arts markets with an examination of the worldviews infused in the art. It’s a vehicle for appreciating the diversity within Native communities and renouncing the idea that those communities are monolithic. Showcasing expressive and material culture, the festival 

sparks conversations and spurs deeper thinking

 about the relationship between the artists and their art.

“It’s important to understand the values behind the work — the weaver’s relationship with the wool, with the sheep, with the land,” says Richards. “It’s all part of understanding artists’ worldviews and artistic practices.”

Eldon Hanning, Mi'kmaq, shares his art with festival goers.

Gabriel Frey, Passamaquoddy, talks to festival visitors about traditional basketweaving practices.

Chief Clarissa Sabattis, Maliseet, performs at the Dawnland Festival.

The Wabanaki Forestry Futures panel at last year's festival.

Lydia Soctomah, Passamaquoddy, shares her basket-weaving art with festival visitors.

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Held in July at the College of the Atlantic, this year’s multiday festival will support nearly 60 artists in the main market and bring in everyone from museum curators to Maine residents to non-Native people who are eager to learn more about their Indigenous neighbors’ cultures.

The festival will also host four panel discussions that will put Native histories in conversation with the contemporary moment:

Panelists will dive into the wide range of activities influenced by water, such as fishing and canoeing. The discussion will look at water from a cultural perspective and explore how vital and sacred water sources are to Native communities.

This panel will highlight both how Indigenous people have engaged with military efforts and the support they need and deserve today.

“Native people have fought in every conflict in U.S. history,” says Richards. “This feels like the moment to talk about the complicated relationship that Wabanaki and other northeastern Native people have with our democracy — their wonderful service to our country and their struggle to be seen as fully human.”

This panel comprises an artist, an educator, and a Native attorney who will discuss the fraught history of Indigenous freedom and the lack thereof. 

“No Native people had freedom of religion until 1978,” says Richards. “There’s a history of this country suppressing Native American culture, and we need to understand the structure for freedom of speech, expression, and religion.”

A Shinnecock photographer will join this panel to share their art and put it in the context of a history of Indigenous oppression. “We’ve had our photographs taken as a way of categorizing us, rather than understanding who we are as people and what our voices and visions are,” says Richards. This panel discussion will tackle that tension head on, bringing new, affirming perspectives to photographic art.

Part of the beauty of the Dawnland Festival is in its very name: It connects the arts 

 the ideas, not only through its panel discussions, but also through engaging, sometimes interactive performances.

The 2026 festival will host two primary performances:

The Mi’kmaq artist and former museum director will weave Indigenous history into a puppeteering show on the main stage

The activist, actor, and freestyle rapper will speak truth to power, drawing from his Mohawk and Mexican backgrounds for his featured musical performance

Throughout the festival, visitors can head to the smaller stage to enjoy performances from storytellers, hand-drummers, singers, and dancers from various northeastern tribal nations.

Over the past three years, the Dawnland Festival has solidified its place as a staple 

 event. What’s more, it’s become a rich avenue for honoring the artistic legacy of the Indigenous people in this region.

And with its emphasis on both the arts and the ideas, it’s a great opportunity to listen, learn, and leave with a deeper understanding of the Wabanaki traditions that ground Maine’s history.

Learn all about the Dawnland Festival of Arts and Ideas, a celebration of Indigenous culture and creativity.

The Dawnland Festival of Arts and Ideas: A Celebration of Indigenous Creativity

With summer on the horizon, students across the state are looking forward to getting out of their classrooms and spending months exploring the outdoors with friends. But more than 1,000 of Maine’s youth have already combined the power of classroom learning with outdoor experiences, thanks to the 

MOSFA is a coordinated network of eight outdoor education organizations working hard to ensure every student in Maine has access to 

high-quality, residential nature-learning programs

In early 2025, the MOSFA network made Maine history by coming together to advocate for a bill that granted statewide access to outdoor learning programs. The bill passed and, while it wasn’t funded by the state, 

the MOSFA network raised enough funding from private foundations

 to run a first-year pilot — and it’s seen remarkable success so far.

“Outdoor school has a long tradition in Maine,” says Ryder Scott, executive director of the 4-H Centers at the University of Maine’s Cooperative Extension. “Summer camps and day trips are great opportunities, but outdoor school is truly immersive education.”

The passing of the bill established the outdoor school program at the University of Maine’s Cooperative Extension, making Scott and his team funding administrators. Scott’s vision for the MOSFA program is shared among other outdoor school leaders: “We view this as an equity issue. We had a notion that we could provide life-changing outdoor experiences for all Maine students, regardless of family status, school budget, or zip code.”

In the 2025-2026 school year, the MOSFA program made huge strides toward accomplishing that goal. The team worked to secure just under $450,000 in private grant funding. It costs the MOSFA program around $395 per student to facilitate the program, which includes two nights and three days of meals, lodging, and environmental science instruction outdoors and in outdoor school facilities. MOSFA’s ability to garner those funds in private grants enabled it to serve more than 1,000 students from 11 of Maine’s 16 counties.

“We’re very proud of the fact that we were able to stand up a website, create a grant process, and prioritize program quality — all without the full funding amount we need,” says Scott.

The pilot program has set the tone for what 

 can accomplish, primarily due to the deliberate choices the program designers have made:

Districts get to choose which grade level they want to support, which helps institutionalize the program. “Kids coming up through elementary school know that, when they reach that grade, they’re going to have this amazing experience,” says Scott. “It becomes part of the culture of the community.”

Students in the pilot program engaged closely with field-based science, handling wildlife, gathering data on ecosystems, and even taking compost out to the garden after their evening meals.

The outdoor school organizations align their curricula to both the Next Generation Science Standards and each individual school’s needs. When one school in the pilot wanted to focus on leadership development, for example, the outdoor school centered its hands-on learning around those skills.

So far, these overnight trips have helped students and teachers see each other in a different light, learning about the world around them and the people who inhabit it. Educators have seen students develop greater social-emotional health and blossom in outdoor settings. “A student who’s not necessarily the star academically in a classroom will often thrive in the outdoor school environment,” says Scott. “We’ve heard that consistently from teachers in the pilot program.”

While the initial results from MOSFA’s pilot year have been sincerely impressive, Scott and his team know this is just the start of something even greater for Maine. The goal now is to secure state and private funding totaling $6.2 million, the amount needed to serve 14,000 students throughout the state each year. In 2026, the team is working toward that goal by generating the funds to serve 50% of that number.

“The private sector can’t foot the bill for this forever,” says Scott. “We hope the state sees that, even without its financial support, we were able to start up the grant program and it’s been quite successful.”

When fully funded, MOSFA will be able to hire program coordinators in each of the five designated regions of the state who would get to know the school districts in their region, understand the barriers students face to outdoor learning, and match schools with the right 

It’s a big dream, but one that’s well underway already. And as the 1,000 students in the pilot program know, it’s one worth pursuing.

Discover the incredible progress the Maine Outdoor School for All program has had in its first pilot year.

Inside the First Year of the Maine Outdoor School for All Program

Foundations and the nonprofits they support share a unique blend of altruism and pragmatism. Regardless of the fields in which we work, we’re driven by our values and we envision a world that offers conditions and opportunities different from those that currently exist. We want things to be better — more fair, more efficient, more comprehensive, more aligned with science and evidence-based practices, or more humane. And our day-to-day work is focused on how to achieve that.

, practitioners, academicians, and field experts. We consider successful and failed approaches tried elsewhere. And then we develop pragmatic, strategic plans, detailing the concrete steps to take first, second, and third. We establish benchmarks and indicators to assess our progress toward our vision. We work hard to implement each step, intent upon realizing our vision.

But then, too often, we’re confronted by the limitations of “the best laid plans.” Sometimes, we can revise our plans and forge ahead. But other times, our progress is blocked in more complex ways — by misinformation (or, worse, disinformation), competing interests, powerful bad actors, outdated or unsound policies, entrenched practices, or inadequate funding. Surmounting these impediments requires foundations to raise their voices and support their grantees’ advocacy efforts in any way they can.

It’s important that foundations not shy away from supporting their grantees’ advocacy activities or speaking up themselves, advocating for their own views. Yet, there continues to be confusion about what foundations, under federal IRS regulations, are permitted to do, resulting in many foundations not supporting advocacy at all and thereby undercutting grantees’ success in achieving their goals.

The truth is that public and private foundations may legally support all kinds of advocacy activities, including:

 defines lobbying as “any activity that attempts to influence or expresses a view about specific legislation.” Congress has prohibited private foundations from lobbying, except lobbying for a project that’s jointly funded with the government or in self-defense to protect their existence, tax-exempt status, powers and duties, or deductibility of contributions to foundations. Public foundations, such as community foundations, are subject to many fewer restrictions.

Importantly, the restrictions on lobbying don’t carry over to foundations’ grantees. While private foundations can’t earmark support for lobbying, they can provide:

General operating support, which a grantee can choose to use to support lobbying activities

Unrestricted project support, which a grantee can also use to support lobbying activities as long as the grant is equal to or less than the grantee’s budget for non-lobbying activities

What Foundations Can Do To Support Grantee Advocacy

By not supporting any advocacy activities, foundations are, in effect, abdicating their responsibility to make the most of their resources. Fortunately, there are many steps foundations can make to make advocacy a central part of the way they 

The Alliance for Justice’s Philanthropy Advocacy Playbook

 sets forth the benefits and potential impact of foundations supporting advocacy activities and advocating themselves. The document also describes the legal rules relating to advocacy, including lobbying. It’s a comprehensive, clearly written, and well-researched document — dispelling myths about foundations’ engagement in advocacy and providing case studies of foundations exponentially increasing their impact through advocacy.

Foundation board members and staff would benefit from taking the time to review it together. In addition, they can attend educational sessions periodically offered by the 

 on grantmaking to support advocacy. Its 

, held in conjunction with Bolder Advocacy and grantmakers in Connecticut and Rhode Island, will take place on May 19th.

Foundations can also support grantees’ advocacy efforts by:

Providing general operating support and unrestricted project support to activist nonprofit organizations

Removing restrictions on lobbying from their grant notification letters

They can also encourage grantees to conduct advocacy activities, including lobbying, taking full advantage of their experience, knowledge, and perspectives.

Similarly, foundations can influence advocacy efforts and conversations by:

Sharing their expertise on issues with policymakers, journalists, and other funders

Accepting written invitations from legislative committees to provide testimony (considered technical assistance)

Awarding expenditure responsibility grants for the non-lobbying activities of 501(c)4 organizations

, foundations can commission nonpartisan research and analysis on policies, practices, and unmet needs. Further, they can convene nonprofits, academicians, former government officials, and other key actors to discuss public policy issues and explore novel approaches.

Foundations invest considerable thought and effort into shaping their grantmaking and non-grantmaking activities to reach particular goals and create new opportunities and better conditions. But we run the danger of significantly reducing our progress and impact if we don’t support advocacy activities and raise our own voices.

The Washington Post is known for its slogan “Democracy Dies in Darkness,” which emphasizes the importance of transparency. In the philanthropic sector, a similar slogan has become increasingly critical to our work, underscoring the importance of advocacy: “Change Dies in Silence.”

Hear from executive director Diana Morris on why supporting grantee organizations' advocacy efforts is a key responsibility of Maine foundations.

Change Dies in Silence: On the Importance of Advocacy in Philanthropy

 purchased condos in 2025 to house artists coming to Maine from around the world, they saw it as much more than a financial decision. It was a declaration of the vitality of Black-led arts and the importance of artists claiming space.

But taking ownership of two condos is a significant step in any nonprofit’s trajectory, one not without its challenges.

How did the Indigo Arts leadership team come to this decision? And what steps did it take to make it happen? According to Jordia Benjamin, Indigo’s executive director, the decision was all about taking steps toward the organization’s legacy goals and ensuring its work would last for generations.

While Indigo Arts Alliance resides on Portland’s peninsula, it fosters 

 among artists around the world. “We’re a Black-led arts incubator space dedicated to the amplification and professional development of Black and Brown artists locally, nationally, and globally,” says Benjamin.

With a 4,000-square-foot multidisciplinary art studio and a smaller working space for 

 of color to learn, create, and connect. Through public events, residencies, and studio engagement, Indigo Arts reached more than 140,000 people across 377 cities in 2025 alone.

Central to Indigo Arts’s work is its mentorship program, in which invited artists from the New England region are paired with nominated visiting artists from around the globe for one- or two-month intensive collaborations.

As Benjamin notes, the program functions differently from the typical mentoring initiative. “Our model isn’t hierarchical,” she explains. “It’s more about being in a community of exchange, storytelling, leadership, and networking.”

 through which visiting and local artists can create something greater than the sum of their parts. That intentionality starts at the very beginning: “We take time to create the right pairings,” says Benjamin. “Artists have a lot of conversations beforehand, so when the residency begins, they’re starting from a place of commonality and not from a place of introduction.”

Artists collaborate during Indigo Arts Alliance's Art in the Wake symposium.

Dr. Deb Willis, C. Daniel Dawson, and Deidra Harris-Kelley in conversation during the C. Daniel Dawson Curatorial + Research Fellowship’s 2025 launch event in New York City. This six-month fellowship is dedicated to celebrating the remarkable legacy of C. Daniel Dawson by supporting Black and Brown artists, curators, and scholars pursuing innovative research and curatorial projects focused on African American art, African Diaspora studies, photography, and art history. This is Indigo Arts Alliance’s inaugural New York City-based program.

Indigo Arts Alliance's multidisciplinary work space offers various materials and equipment for multiple types of artmaking.

Julia Arrendondo ‘24 IAA Mentorship AiR Alum during her residency in 2024. 

Sarah K. Khan ’19 IAA Mentorship AiR Alum during her residence in 2019. 

IAA photo carousel

Making — and Claiming —Space for the Artists

Because the mentorship and residency program is such a core element of Indigo Arts’s work, the nonprofit has invested heavily in evolving it over time. The team took mentorship virtual during the pandemic, then secured an AirBnB on the Eastern Promenade to house artists for a time. When that building was sold and unavailable for use, they rented an apartment, fully recognizing the challenges of continuous change.

On top of the instability, Indigo Arts also needed to address housing for local artists as it expanded to include artists from all around New England. “Asking regional artists to figure out housing on their own just wasn’t in line with the spirit of our mission,” says Benjamin.

For those reasons, and to contribute more fully and permanently to the local economy, the organization decided to purchase two condos about a 15-minute walk away from the studio. “The area is quite diverse, and we wanted our community and our artists to work in harmony together,” explains Benjamin.”

Like most housing ownership efforts, Indigo Arts’s came with a long task list and a need to overcome certain challenges related to:

The executive team worked with the finance committee to map out the vision for their housing model, then launched a soft capital campaign with existing and new donors to raise the funds needed to reach that vision.

The team needed to communicate more intensively with sellers to explain that the spaces would function differently than a typical home. They wouldn’t be occupied all year round, and different people would occupy them at different times as residencies shifted. Benjamin and her team made it a priority to work closely with sellers to ensure they understood and were aligned with the vision for the homes.

 It was important to Indigo Arts’s mission that its choice of home connected well with its mission of bringing people together, so the team purposefully chose nearby condos that would enable connection. “In the condos, community members speak to each other,” says Benjamin. “The artists bring a sense of culture to the space, which adds to the uniqueness of the environment.”

Navigating these decisions required the Indigo Arts team to have a solid plan in place, be intentional about aligning their priorities with their choices, and be confident in their right to claim space as Black and Brown artists.

From the outside, purchasing condos in the fourth and fifth years of the nonprofit’s existence was an ambitious undertaking. But for Benjamin and the rest of the executive team, doing so was a vital part of fulfilling their mission and building a lasting legacy. It also had the added effect of demonstrating that the Indigo Arts Alliance was here to stay.

“Speaking about our legacy at the time raised some eyebrows, but in a good way,” says Benjamin. “People saw that this was just one step in a very long trajectory of strategic plans we’ve laid out for the organization.”

That legacy underscores the vitality of Black and Brown art, while emphasizing the right to and importance of claiming space as artists. As Benjamin says, the permanent housing positions the organization “to not just open doors, but create windows, avenues, and bridgeways to ensure there’s constant opportunities for Black and Brown artists.”

Going forward, the Indigo Arts Alliance is working to solidify the nonprofit as a global organization by integrating global arts perspectives into its work as well as partnering with artists from African diasporic countries to bring 

For Benjamin, ambitious thinking is simply part of Black and Brown artistic brilliance: “We’ve always dreamed big, beyond what some think are our limitations,” she says. “That’s a direct result of what it means to live and work out of an artist’s mind.”

How Did They Do It? Indigo Arts Alliance’s Quest To Claim Permanent Artist Housing

When invasive aquatic plants appear in Maine lakes, experts and volunteers know it’s time to act. These plants threaten everything from 

, crowding out native plants and affecting the waters that are valued by all who enjoy and rely on them.

Protecting Maine’s freshwater resources takes a coordinated and collaborative effort among organizations such as 

the Maine Department of Environmental Protection

, local municipalities, lake associations, and hundreds of dedicated volunteers.

Together, these experts and volunteers educate, survey, map, remove, and monitor invasive plants — working to keep the state’s lakes clean and healthy for all.

Invasive plants most often travel by boat, so trained volunteers educate boat owners to inspect their equipment at boat launches to prevent the spread of invasives from one water body to another. Here, a Courtesy Boat Inspector examines a vessel for invasive stowaways at Androscoggin Lake.

Lake protection organizations host workshops to train community volunteers to identify characteristics of invasive aquatic plants. In this photo, volunteers inspect reference sheets at a workshop hosted by Lake Stewards of Maine.

 and members of watershed protection organizations regularly survey lakes from boats or by swimming to monitor the presence of invasive plants like variable-leaf milfoil or swollen bladderwort. This image shows this work in action, as a volunteer snorkels in Wilson Pond, patrolling for invasive aquatic plants.

Phase Three: Control and Remediation Efforts

If an invasive plant is introduced into a lake, organizations work together to survey the littoral zone, or the depth at which sunlight no longer penetrates to the bottom. Teams then map the infestation via organized sections of the lake. Here, North Pond Association volunteers mark areas with invasive curly-leaf pondweed.

Teams pull burlap mats known as benthic barriers to block the sunlight aquatic plants need to grow, preventing the spread of already established variable-leaf milfoil. This image shows volunteers pulling a 30-by-50–foot mat on Great Meadow Stream, Great Pond.

Teams use various techniques — including hand-pulling plants from their roots, using diver-assisted suction harvesting technology, or applying herbicide — to remove an invasive plant from a lake. In this photo, a diver carries a bag of invasive variable leaf milfoil pulled from Messalonskee Lake.

After they’re removed from the lake, invasive plants are then bagged and sent to be composted. Here, two divers from 7 Lakes Alliance float next to their harvest at Oakland Public Landing on Messalonskee Lake.

Since most invasive plants spread easily and rapidly, organizations regularly monitor affected areas to identify any new infestations and control their spread. Here, an invasive plant patroller looks through a scope and documents any signs of invasive aquatic plants.

Learn the steps invasive plant patrollers take to prevent the spread of dangerous invasives and protect the lakes that Mainers hold dear.

Big Lake

Economics of Lakes

Volunteer Series, Part One

Volunteer Series, Part Two

Preventing the Spread of Invasive Aquatic Plants: A Photo Essay in Four Phases

For nonprofits across Maine and across the country, challenges — some expected, many unexpected — seem to be mounting. But when change is rapid and uncertainty persists, predicting what comes next is only half the battle. Being able to adapt with confidence to an unclear future is a skill unto itself.

Sandi McKinley, founder of the Massachusetts-based consultancy 

, specializes in guiding nonprofits through the challenging work of planning for potentially difficult scenarios. Taking a comprehensive, relational approach to scenario planning, McKinley equips organizations with the tools needed to tackle the toughest problems that might come their way.

In 2025, the John T. Gorman Foundation and the Elmina B. Sewall Foundation initiated scenario planning skill development for Maine nonprofits by working with McKinley to offer a two-hour webinar on the topic. Later in the year, we built on that introduction by holding two workshops for 

 aimed at building capacity to navigate change.

With a hands-on, collaborative format, the sessions gave 

 organizations the tools to think ahead and move into the future with resilience.

The SectorWind sessions helped participants learn how to transform theoretical planning into actionable, adaptable strategies for managing plausible scenarios. Participating groups were required to bring at least one executive staff member and one board member to the sessions, and each team worked through unique forces shaping their organization. The process was intentional and methodical. McKinley asked participants to take the following key steps:

Name three uncertainties within the organization’s operating context

 Build out a few plausible future scenarios based on those uncertainties

 Assess the potential impact of those scenarios across five core areas: programs and services; people, culture, and capacity; community and relationships; operations and infrastructure; and finance and money

 Translate potential scenarios into actionable strategies

Having consulted for more than 1,500 nonprofits in her career, McKinley was the perfect guide for this work, helping organizations not only understand the importance of scenario planning, but also use tools for developing stronger organizational strategies.

Ten grantees from the Onion Foundation’s 

 participated in the workshop sessions, all leaving with a greater sense of how to plan for coming situations. Here’s what two of those nonprofits had to say about their experience working with SectorWind.

 has long been the only company producing fully staged and orchestrated operas in the state of Maine. In addition to offering classic opera performances, the nonprofit also hosts a studio artist program for emerging performers.

Here, burgeoning opera artists can learn from veteran performers and get experience on stage in productions that highlight stories relevant to today. “We find that these performances allow us to break down some of the stereotypes that get in the way of us learning with empathy,” says executive director Caroline Koelker. “Art is wonderful in that way.”

Like many nonprofit teams, Koelker and her trustees felt the pressure of planning for the future during the pandemic: “COVID required us to move directly from planning to action. That helped us see the value of having scenario plans in place before they’re even needed.”

While Koelker saw some commonalities across all the arts organizations in the group — including capacity concerns, trouble rightsizing, and knowing how to effectively market the work — she and her team focused on planning for:

Managing emerging artist housing on a tight budget

One of the primary benefits Koelker gained from the sessions was being able to put seemingly abstract concepts into concrete terms. “We used a probability analysis to grade our scenarios based on best practices and the organization’s history,” she says. Transforming ideas into actionable insights enables Opera Maine to make more informed decisions about the future.

Similarly, Koelker and her team learned how to pull and analyze data effectively, which equips them to measure the success of their initiatives and the impact of their decisions more accurately going forward.

What the Future Looks Like for Opera Maine

The SectorWind sessions helped Koelker generate buy-in for the collective work of strategic planning. “Having an expert explain to our trustees in concrete terms why this work is so important was a great way to bring our leaders into the process,” she says.

With that collective focus in place, the Opera Maine team is now far more equipped to engage in longer-term scenario planning. “We identified scenario planning as a strategic priority for our three-year plan that we’re working on,” says Koelker. “We’re building off of the SectorWind work, which helped us find direction and best practices.”

In 2015, residents from Mount Desert Island came together to find ways to address the use of fossil fuels on the island. A year later, 

The nonprofit is a community-driven organization committed to climate action, focusing primarily on clean energy, zero waste systems, transportation, and public policy. The team helps communities build resilience by planning and implementing strategies to boost local economies, infrastructures, and health programs.

“In our strategic plan, we talk about how things might change and how we’d need to adjust, but we’ve never formalized that work,” says executive director Johannah Blackman. “The SectorWind sessions really opened our eyes to what we could do without expending too much time or too many resources.”

During the sessions, Blackman and her team learned how to develop potential scenarios using a graph with X and Y axes focusing on unique challenges they might experience in the future. They mapped out a spectrum of community support for their work on one axis and a spectrum of donor support on the other, which allowed them to visualize four quadrants representing four potential scenarios.

Then, the team zeroed in on one particularly problematic scenario: increased donor support but decreased community support.

“We don’t ever want to be in a position where we’ve lost touch with the needs of the community, but are aligned with donor needs. That would indicate we’re not achieving our mission,” says Blackman. “We want to think in advance about how we can communicate to donors what we’re hearing and learning on the ground so we don’t ever get to the point where those two entities are at odds with each other.”

What the Future Looks Like for A Climate to Thrive

Like Opera Maine, A Climate to Thrive benefitted from connecting with other organizations doing similar work. “We realized that there’s a lot we could be doing collectively to prepare for different scenarios,” says Blackman.

The connection between staff and board members was also impactful for the team, creating a cohesive focus and deepening strategic insight by enabling the team to problem solve together. Equipped with a common north star vision, A Climate to Thrive is now putting what it learned in the workshops into practice. “We’ve shifted our strategic plan to align with SectorWind’s framework,” says Blackman. “Now, it’s easier for us to apply scenario planning to our strategic work.”

A Climate to Thrive, Opera Maine, and the 20 other Onion Foundation grantees that participated in the SectorWind sessions are now empowered to balance short-term needs with longer-term organizational sustainability. When the future is unclear and challenges persist, this type of work equips nonprofits to proceed with confidence, knowing they’re resilient and sufficiently prepared to handle what comes next.

Hear from two Onion Foundation grantees about what they got out of recent scenario-planning sessions with the SectorWind consultancy.

Planning for an Uncertain Future: How a Scenario-Planning Cohort Built Nonprofits’ Resilience

In a time when political divisions are widening and discord is as heightened as ever, fighting for the safety and wellbeing of a community can be a remarkably difficult thing to do. Fear of conflict — real or perceived — poses a barrier that keeps people out of grassroots activism.

 isn’t afraid to get involved — and to equip others to do the same.

Spanning six states across New England, Slingshot is deeply knowledgeable about environmental health risks such as contaminants, unregulated development projects, and pollution that threaten communities throughout the region.

 rely on healthy environments, and Slingshot empowers everyday people to take on challenging 

Protecting the Environment and the People Who Love It

At its core, Slingshot provides people with tools, resources, and training to organize and mobilize their community against development projects poised to do significant environmental damage. That could look like many things: drinking water contaminated with dangerous 

; landfills expanding into residential areas; or pipelines designed to fill corporate pockets while laying waste to communities.

“Most people want to take action to protect the health of their community, but they often don’t know what to do,” says Dana Colihan, Co-Executive Director. “We come in as a resource to help figure out what they want and how to get it.”

 initiative, for example, to protect vital ecosystems from a landfill expansion led by a for-profit trash corporation. The expansion is projected to bring more than 11.9 million cubic yards of waste — the equivalent of 8.6 Empire State Buildings — to the area.

By helping Don’t Waste Maine build grassroots campaign plans, messaging, and mobilization strategies, Colihan has supported the initiative’s team to identify and address dangerous legislation and share better waste management practices with the broader community.

Slingshot image carousel

When it comes to advocating for change, there are many ways to get involved, from putting up flyers on street corners to donating money to support lobbying at city hall. For Slingshot, though, 

 is the most effective vehicle for long-term transformation.

“Local people know best what they want for their community, and they also know the best visionary solutions to key issues,” says Colihan. “We’re trying to equip people with the skills they need to survive and thrive.”

How does Slingshot help communities capture and use that local knowledge? The “guide don’t decide” approach. Through one-on-one coaching calls, workshops, and campaign development, the Slingshot team enables local organizers to make key decisions that lead to change within their own communities. One teenager got involved in an 

 group, for example, and used the skills he learned to eventually become a city councilor, making decisions to help his area thrive.

In advocacy, Colihan notes, one person is easy to write off. But when hundreds of community members come together around one north-star vision, it’s much harder for governments and corporations to ignore. In a moment of intense federal-level rollbacks, grassroots organizing is an effective pathway to defend against current and future threats.

Community organizing isn’t without its challenges, however. Feeling like the underdog can cause many to feel powerless and afraid in the face of large corporations.

But this is where Slingshot’s approach shines: Colihan and her team help local communities find and seize their power. Rather than feeling isolated and helpless, communities that partner with Slingshot recognize that they’re part of a larger whole with immense power to drive change. Coaching helps people see what they’re capable of and find tangible pathways to advocate for or against policies that impact the environment.

Similarly, community members are able to draw on the power of Slingshot’s New England network to share information, skills, and advocacy tactics. “When community leaders plug into these networks, they feel less alone,” says Colihan.

Turning Concern Into Activism in Wiscasset

In Wiscasset, for example, Brady Winn was worried when she discovered that an unknown corporation was considering setting up a massive 300-acre AI data center in the community. She quickly reached out to Colihan for help, and the two went to work. Colihan helped her learn about organizing and create a plan that eventually brought more than 40 community members together to discuss their concerns.

“These big AI companies can disenfranchise local decision-making and undercut democracy,” says Colihan. “Once they have set up shop, they don’t need to ask for permission before taking action.”

At the initial gathering, community members expressed similar concerns: Many were worried about how the data center would impact electricity rates. Some were concerned about light pollution and water usage. Richard Davis, a retired Berklee College music professor was troubled about noise pollution.

Learn how New England nonprofit Slingshot empowers communities to organize, mobilize, and advocate for environmental justice.

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