It’s impossible to deny that 2025 has challenged our relationship with hope and courage. Hoping for the best can feel irresponsible in times like these, when the realities of rising authoritarianism and attacks on civil rights and liberties force us to plan for the worst. Yet here at Maine Initiatives, we still make a case for hope.

Our stance is born out of ten years of experience, beginning in 2015 when Maine Initiatives’ board and staff decided to focus our grantmaking specifically on racial justice. That decision was built on the radical hope that people can come together around shared values and make progress on the most painful and complex issues of our history. As a foundation that raises all of our funds from the community, we were asking everyone- including our donors- to go on a journey with us that we weren’t sure they’d be willing to take. Our radical hope was quickly tested when we lost 40% of our donors that first year. Some of them left quietly. Others were clear in communicating that they didn’t support this shift in focus and would be taking their philanthropic dollars elsewhere. Some returned in 2020 in the wake of George Floyd’s murder and the racial reckoning it inspired. Others we never heard from again.

Our organization’s hope was modest compared to what we were asking of the Black, Wabanaki, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC) communities in the invitation to engage with us – a white-led organization at the time – in cross-race, cross-class conversations about racial justice in Maine. Accepting this invitation required a leap of faith: belief in possibilities yet unseen.

Hundreds of people took that leap with us in 2016 when we launched our first participatory grantmaking program, Grants for Change. They signed up to participate in conversations around key questions: What does racial justice mean, look like, and require in Maine? Who is doing that work? How can we, as an organization and a funder, be in right relationship with these efforts?

Their feedback was rich, resounding, and undeniable: Racial justice in our work means centering and honoring Black, Wabanaki, and Immigrant voices, visions, and leadership. It looks like commitment to truth, reconciliation, and repair. It requires resourcing a wide range of community-led efforts and organizing including Wabanaki sovereignty, abolition, cultural preservation, health equity, policy change, food access, the arts, and so much more. It also requires a long view, standing firm in the commitment to protect and advance racial justice regardless of the direction that political, cultural, and social winds may blow.

Radical hope, and the courage to continue, defines our work. It has built deep community relationships, launched four participatory grantmaking programs, engaged thousands of people in ongoing conversations around racial justice, and granted over $10 million to organizations leading this work. In 2025 alone, we have made over $2 million in grants to support BIPOC-led organizations in Maine, our largest annual mobilization of funds to date.

Join us in a hopeful and courageous long view. What could the next decade bring? Will you include Maine Initiatives in your year-end giving?

Shima Kabirigi, Julian Rowand, Phil Walsh
Maine Initiatives Leadership Team