PORTLAND, Maine — Two Maine organizations will share $640,000 in federal grant money designed to help support entrepreneurs in rural areas and to explore ways to get investor money to early-stage natural resource businesses.
The Maine Center for Entrepreneurial Development won a $390,000 grant to expand its entrepreneurship training programs, and Coastal Enterprises Inc. landed $250,000 to pursue a seed capital investment program that would cater to natural resource-based businesses in rural Maine.
Jay Williams, U.S. assistant secretary of commerce for economic development, was in Portland Monday to announce the awards for which 170 organizations nationally applied and only 25 won, including the two in Maine.
Both organizations matched the grant amounts with their own money or donations.
Don Gooding, executive director of Center for Entrepreneurial Development, said the organization will use the funding to expand its reach to rural entrepreneurs through a new Top Gun Rural Accelerator Program.
Gooding said the group this year started laying the groundwork to provide new online entrepreneurial training to more people in Maine and has begun adapting the course for recent immigrants.
The money also could support expansions to new physical locations for its Top Gun program, including the Lewiston-Auburn area. It now offers those courses in Bangor, Rockland and Portland.
Gooding said the money will help improve existing programs as well, expanding new courses in raising money in exchange for equity in a company and other challenges for entrepreneurs upon completion of the Top Gun program.
Keith Bisson, a senior vice president at Coastal Enterprises, said the community development corporation will use its grant to study how to create a program to get investor money to early-stage natural resource businesses, such as farms and aquaculture operations. That type of program could involve Coastal Enterprises assembling a portfolio of equity investments in rural businesses.
Gray Harris, director of Coastal Enterprises’ sustainable agriculture and food systems programs, said agriculture in Maine has experienced “extraordinary growth” in recent years and his organization hopes a new seed capital program for that sector could help it along.
U.S. Sen. Angus King said during a news conference that he sees both programs as helping to suss out a way forward for some of the state’s rural economies that have been hit hard by a decline in manufacturing.
U.S. Rep Chellie Pingree said Maine provides about 10 percent of the region’s food, and there’s a chance to grow that share, with more young people entering farming in Maine and growing demand for locally produced food.
“[Agriculture] is off the charts for growth and we are in the right place to fulfill more of that need,” she said.
The U.S. Economic Development Administration announced $10 million in grants Monday.