Grants for Change 2022 Applicant Info Session Looking for more information about applying for Grants for Change in 2022? We held an info session on September 15! Here’s the slideshow and recording of that session. Please reach out to the Grants for Change Directors if you have any questions after viewing these.

We are pleased to announce that Maine Initiatives’ 2022 Grants for Change program is LIVE!

Dear friends, I’m happy to announce $365,000 in new grants to 36 Immigrant-led and serving organizations supporting immigrants, refugees, and asylum seekers across Maine. Thanks to the Immigrant & Refugee Funders Collaborative and our broader community, the ILO Pooled Fund has provided $565,000 in grants over the last year, targeting resources to acutely impacted communities. […]

“Is there another side of all of this, Phil?” A friend recently asked me this question. By “all of this,” she was referring to the suffering, sorrow, inhumanity, cruelty, violence, loss, death. All of this.  And there has been a lot of it lately. Now I know my friend to be a person full of […]

Maine Initiatives is raising $500,000 to provide general operating support grants next month to approximately forty (40) immigrant-led and immigrant-serving organizations.  Donate here to the Immigrant-Led Organizations Fund at Maine Initiatives.   Here in Maine, we can sometimes feel removed from the many crises we see on our daily news feeds. War. Pandemic. Climate catastrophe. Gun […]

I am going to be the bearer of bad news today. Normally, I am more of a “love-can-conquer-all-things” kind of guy. But today is not that day. Because I need to tell you: we have a lot of work to do. It is going to be painful and difficult. And it starts here: America is […]

A few words are all I can manage in moments like this.  We know these moments all too well.   And we know these attacks are not isolated moments, but the violent expression of a white-nationalist movement on the rise, the latest tragic expression of the systemic racism in this country.  We know too well that […]

Dear friends:
I am shocked and not surprised by the news today about the pending SCOTUS decision to overturn Roe v. Wade. My shock is an emotional reaction: it hurts my heart. And I shouldn’t be surprised…