BELFAST, Maine — Memories of the young girl pestered by classmates because she was without a computer to complete a school assignment stick with Jodi Martin.
As executive director of PCs for Maine, based in Belfast, she has been witness for the last 14 years to cases in which technology and information are just out of reach. And the economic and personal consequences are steep, she said.
“Information is power,” Martin said. “Information can be healing, information can be inspiring. Information can be sorrowful and dreadful and scary but it’s all the good things with it. Information is everything.”
This year, the nonprofit that started in Chris and Jodi Martin’s kitchen is eyeing a move south to Westbrook by the end of the summer. The expansion will give PCs for Maine and the store that supports it, PC Medix, a presence closer to one of its key corporate donors, Idexx, and a new market for people who face barriers to accessing technology and the Internet, including not having the proper guidance. They’re two ends of a problem state and industry officials have identified as putting the brakes on economic development in Maine.
A recent study by the state’s broadband access authority found nearly 97 percent of Maine households have access to high-speed Internet in 2013. Around 75 percent subscribed.
“There are two primary barriers to entry,” said Phil Lindley, head of the ConnectMe Authority. “One is people don’t understand the need or value of having a connection to the Internet, and the second barrier is cost.”
That’s where PCs for Maine and PC Medix come in, he said.
On a recent visit to the Martins’ Belfast retail store, which raises funds for its affiliated nonprofit, Patricia Shannon of Lincolnville was retiring a defunct computer she called “Grandpa” for a new desktop computer she plans to use in the course of her work on various church and town committees.
“I’m kind of the default secretary for a lot of things in Lincolnville,” Shannon said.
In light of the price, she also picked up a $90 laptop loaded with the open-source operating system Linux, for personal use. That purchase saved her “a whole bunch of money” compared with the tablet computers she was considering buying. The lowest-priced computer running Windows costs around $240 in the retail store, a higher price mostly due to software licensing fees, for which Martin gets a discount.
The revenue from PC Medix of nearly $900,000 last year supports the nonprofit PCs for Maine, which provides high-powered desktop and laptop computers to people below certain income thresholds and nonprofits for $130 for a basic system and $200 for computers built for heavier uses.
Income thresholds start at $22,980 annually for a one-person household and are tiered based on the number of residents, up to an eight-person household making a combined $79,260 per year. Each computer comes with technical support services as well, which Martin said can be a critical help to new computer users.
“I’ve got seniors who come in daily asking questions,” Martin said. “I want that open-door policy and I don’t want them to feel like they have to get out their credit card every time they have a question. Yes, I do have to pay my staff, but there’s that educational piece that we put into it.”
In the nonprofit’s early days, Martin said they tried giving computers away, but found that was not effective because the free computer was the first thing to be sold or bartered.
“There has to be some investment,” Martin said.
PCs for Maine has developed new partnerships this year to expand the reach for computers its supplier and affiliated nonprofit, Waterville-based Ewaste Alternatives started by Chris Martin, takes in from companies including Bangor Savings, Sappi Fine Paper and MaineGeneral Medical Center.
One such partnership is through Susan Corbett, CEO of the Machias-based Axiom Technologies and a champion for digital literacy as an economic development strategy.
Corbett worked with the Sunrise County Economic Council to win a $300,000 grant from the John T. Gorman Foundation to keep a computer training program operating through this year. Corbett said she had originally budgeted 12 new laptops for the program, but through the Martins’ business was able to buy 14 laptops for a mobile computer lab in addition to 12 desktop computers.
Corbett said around 1,200 students have taken courses this year and last year through the program that started in 2010 with a $1.4 million federal grant. Of those, she said, about 200 were in charge of small- and medium-sized businesses.
“It opened up their world if they wanted to do a website or if they want to have an online presence,” Corbett said. “We worked with a farmer who wanted to do value-added product and he learned to make labels and do brochures and put products online and it’s a real economic driver if you’re a small business in a small, rural area.”
Corbett’s program is also an early effort to gauge the economic impact of personal and small-business access to technology. The data they gather from surveys of their classes eventually will be compiled in a report by a team at the University of Maine, she said.
Martin is hoping to increase that type of training further this year through a new arrangement with the Maine State Library as well. Martin said she’s developing a curriculum for web-based training in computer fundamentals that would be taught through the state library system, which in April bought refurbished computers, with warranties and two years of technical support, through her nonprofit. She said it saved the system around $80,000.
Library computers are one way to expand access to information and technology, but Martin said the personal computer program has distinct benefits.
“A single mom — she can’t go to the library with her kids to do her studies. It’s impossible,” she said.
Since starting PCs for Maine in 2002, Martin said the nonprofit has sold more than 10,000 low-cost computers to families and nonprofits across the state. The combined nonprofit and for-profit make the 13-employee Belfast company sustainable, Martin said, without relying on the ebbs and flows of grant funding.
The new partnerships come as the business and nonprofit are putting more focus on a long-term vision and giving Martin the time to move away from the day-to-day operations. In line with that, Martin’s office recently moved upstairs in the company’s Searsport Avenue building and she hired past board member Marty Duggan to oversee and improve its processes for intake and reconfiguration of computers.
“We’ve gotten everyone thinking about process improvement,” said Duggan, who was hired in November after decades working at Sappi Fine Paper in Westbrook as a program developer and head of the company’s IT help desk.
Martin said she plans for Duggan to lead the Westbrook operation — for him, much closer to home — after the nonprofit’s expansion there, where she sees potential to reach many more people.
Checking the U.S. Postal Service’s mailing lists within a 10-mile radius of Westbrook turned up 85,000 households; to cover all of Waldo County takes around 15,000 fliers, she said.
The implications of access to information are real for Martin, who for years fought Lyme disease that went undiagnosed.
“I wouldn’t have had that information without technology to do the research,” Martin said.