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Since René Colson started working for Healthy Island Project in Stonington a decade ago, the small nonprofit has grown to do far more social work than anyone expected.
What began as a community health organization 35 years ago has become a multi-pronged social service agency for the bridged island in Penobscot Bay, which also includes the town of Deer Isle. The nonprofit runs three food pantries, sends schoolchildren home with food, delivers meals to seniors, helps people find and apply for resources, visits them in their homes, and tries to meet whatever needs they have.
“We create our own programs here because we have to. No one is coming here to save us,” said Colson, its executive director. “That did not take me long to figure out.”
The needs just keep growing, according to Colson and members of the organization’s board.
Some of that comes from a yearslong decline in other resources on the island, ongoing inflation and rising housing costs. But federal funding cuts under the Trump administration also mean Healthy Island Project and nonprofits like it are seeing larger gaps, less money available to fill them and more demands on their small staff.
In Stonington, other nonprofits build housing for its workforce, conduct research that helps its lobster industry, run its community center, conserve its land and provide arts programming. It’s an example of how much of the responsibility for providing such services is shifting to outside organizations, which are also filling holes in the state’s social safety net. Those gaps are now being stretched by abrupt changes in federal priorities — and locals are trying to patch them back together.
“Our nonprofits funnel revenue into our towns, and services into our towns, that towns and even state government can’t and don’t provide,” said Linda Nelson, Stonington’s economic development director, who is also a consultant for nonprofits. “So, we’re extremely dependent on those nonprofits for both delivery of services [and] actually acting as pipelines to the funding available for those services.”
Since January, nonprofits nationwide have seen funding abruptly cut, grants canceled and research projects terminated by the Trump administration. That’s taken a toll across sectors in Maine, but particularly health, human services and education, according to Jennifer Hutchins, executive director of the Maine Association of Nonprofits.
“Nonprofits are Maine’s invisible backbone, delivering critical services efficiently, contributing to economic growth and strengthening communities,” she said.
In 2023, about 20% of the state’s workforce was employed by nonprofits, which contributed $16 billion to Maine’s economy that year, the group said.
On a recent Wednesday morning, a former church building bought by Healthy Island Project was bustling. A Good Shepherd truck delivered food to supply its pantries, volunteers packed 130 lunches to deliver to seniors, and people arrived for coffee at tables decorated for Christmas.
“I don’t know, seriously, what seniors would do without HIP,” said Fran Roudebush, 89, as friends stopped to greet her before coffee hour.
There’s a need for its senior programming because resources have been dwindling on the island, particularly for residents over 65, who made up more than 30% of Stonington’s population in 2023. About 20% of its population lives at or below the poverty line, and almost a quarter of households on the island make less than $25,000 a year, according to a local housing report completed this year.
Hancock County’s last skilled nursing home shut down in neighboring Deer Isle in 2021, meaning people are staying in their homes for longer, according to Colson. Northern Light Health, which runs the nearest hospital and has ongoing fin ancial problems of its own, no longer employs an island social worker or sends visiting health care specialists.
Federal heating assistance funds previously reached towns through Downeast Community Partners, a community action agency that collapsed this year. Its contracts have been taken over by a similar agency based in Aroostook County, which is in the process of forming a new tri-county agency. Even organizations that have resources available in theory often don’t have enough money or staff to make it to the island, Colson said.
At the same time, inflation continues while a worsening shortage of affordable year-round housing threatens the economy and community, according to local officials and residents.
Island Workforce Housing, a nonprofit that creates housing that workers can afford, has built apartments on the island and is building more to help meet that need.
It has never received federal funding, which isn’t available for people in the middle-income range. But its work is an example of how nonprofits fund projects that communities need by attracting donors when public money isn’t available, according to Pamela Dewell, its executive director.
Some of the housing is needed for the town’s lobster industry, the busiest in Maine. A local report earlier this year said lobster dealers often house their own employees in order to keep a workforce.
Other aspects of the industry are researched and supported by the Maine Center for Coastal Fisheries, another local nonprofit that aims to keep fisheries sustainable and economically viable.
Grants it received during the Biden administration were canceled earlier this year, according to Executive Director Alexa Dayton, who declined to say what projects were affected. Some were later reinstated.
The center’s work reaches beyond Stonington, but it runs a free museum there, offers a maritime mentoring and education program for high school students, and conducts research relevant to the town’s fishing community, like opportunities for lobstermen to diversify their income with scallops and a cost survey of lobstering that could help inform new gear rules. Those three initiatives received federal money.
Dayton is less sure what will happen a year from now when current grants come to an end and new ones don’t open up, though she said she sees opportunities to get creative.
Fisheries research matters for Stonington because it needs to stay on the “cutting edge” and be able to help drive policy, according to Nelson.
Still, she and others interviewed for this story noted, federal funding has waxed and waned under different administrations; the island has been through lean times before.
Now, Nelson is encouraging wealthy and seasonal residents to make larger donations. So far, nonprofits said, they have been generous.
“When you say communities have to do it for themselves, we mean that the people that have resources need to take care of the people that don’t,” Nelson said. “It’s really as simple as that.”
As other organizations lose funding, Colson, of Healthy Island Project, expects to see more gaps that her nonprofit and its small staff will try to fill.
Though the group doesn’t receive federal money directly, fruits and vegetables for its ever-expanding food pantries come from Good Shepherd, which was hit by cuts earlier this year. People are still anxious about what’s ahead, what aid they might lose, or if their insurance costs will rise, according to Colson.
“We have grown, and our budget has continued to grow, in response to the needs around us at a time when the federal government has made severe cuts,” she said.
Competition for outside grants has also increased dramatically as other organizations lose federal funding and look to make up the difference. A growing Healthy Island Project is also applying to more of them than ever before.
But some funders are now limiting how much they award and how often, according to Susan Toder, a member of the group’s board. The organization is ready to do the work whenever money becomes available, she added.
Toder spoke with a reporter while packaging biscuits with Edythe Courville, 89, who has lived on the island since she was 3 years old — before a bridge connected it to the mainland. Throughout her life, the island has always been close knit, with residents ready to help each other, Courville said.
Despite the challenges and continued uncertainty, the women love both their work and a community ready to meet whatever needs arise. Spirits seemed high as the coffee hour started.
“What we do should be filled with light and joy and happiness,” Colson said. “We’re not defeated in any sense.”