Mission

Maine Initiatives is a network of individuals supporting greater social, economic, and environmental justice in Maine through informed, intentional, and collective philanthropy.

Vision

Maine Initiatives works at the intersection of community organizing, place-based philanthropy, and racial justice in the state of Maine.

Maine is often cited as the whitest state in the nation, according to census data. These statistics erase powerful historical and contemporary truths about race and racial injustice in Maine.

Truths like: Maine is the Dawnland, the ancestral and unceded land of the Wabanaki. Maine has deep historical ties to the chattel slave trade and was home to a well-connected and powerful Ku Klux Klan in the early 20th century. Despite a legacy of genocide, racism, and exclusion, the Wabanaki, Black Mainers, Latinx communities, and Asian and Pacific Islanders are here.

Maine has also experienced an influx of immigrants, migrants, refugees, and asylum seekers fleeing genocide, oppression, and extreme poverty in the past decade.

Undeniably, the truths of racial injustice persist: disparate outcomes in health, wealth, education, employment, and life expectancy. This is what racial injustice looks like and this is our work. Maine Initiatives’ vision and approach is community organizing and participatory grantmaking that funds and strengthens racial justice movement-building. Since 2016, we have raised and mobilized more than $5.7 million in grants for BIPOC-led and -serving organizations in Maine.