Mainebiz Special Editions

V O L . X X V N O. X X I G I V I N G G U I D E 2 0 1 9 – 2 0 2 0 6 O ne of the biggest challenges a nonprofit can face is how to grow responsibly over the long-term while staying true to its mission. Nonprofits have the operating costs of a business — they have payroll to make, employees to manage, clients to serve and expenses to pay — yet the core mission of a nonprofit is not to generate a profit. Instead, the mission is to serve the community in some way. e tension of needing to both run a successful business and serve the community in a way that does not organically generate a surplus often leaves non- profits in a constant state of fundraising. e prevail- ing question for most nonprofits is this: Where is the money going to come from to support the mission? "A nonprofit may apply for a grant for an infu- sion of capital to help it grow, but those sources of funding are often short-lived, so there's the problem of how to fund the work when the grant ends," said Jennifer Hutchins, executive director for the Maine Association of Nonprofits. "Identifying where sus- tained income will come from to fund future growth is more complicated for nonprofits that can't rely solely on a market-driven value proposition." In Maine, several nonprofit organizations have been successful in achieving longterm success in expanding their services and programs over the years, drawing on funding from individuals, foundations, grants and gov- ernment. eir success is also due to strategic partner- ships and their ability to evolve programmatic offerings as culture and populations have changed. Here, we profile three of these nonprofits and consider how they have met current funding chal- lenges while continuing to augment the services they offer communities in Maine. Planted seeds grow for Tree Street Youth Each day in downtown Lewiston, 120 to 150 children and young adults come through Tree Street Youth Center's front doors on Howe Street. ey come to Tree Street for its free afterschool, summer, enrichment, teen leadership, college prep and professional internship programs. Tree Street Youth Center's services are open to all children and young adults from the Lewiston area, most of whom need a safe place to go after school, help with homework or mentorship into their phase of life. Approximately 60% of those accessing Tree Street Youth Center's services are recent refugees or recent immigrants to the greater Lewiston-Auburn area. e idea for Tree Street was born over a decade ago when current executive director and co-founder Julia Sleeper-Whiting interned in a Lewiston Middle School English-as-a-second-language classroom while a student at Bates College. Lewiston's demographics were changing at the time, as refugees from Somalia and other East African countries settled in Lewiston. Sleeper-Whiting and fellow Bates student and co- founder Kim Sullivan saw a real need in the community for added academic and social support — and decided to do something about it. ey created Homework Help, a tutoring and support assistance program that began in a basement of a local church with Sleeper- Whiting, Sullivan and two other Bates students and eight teenage students from the community. As word spread about its free tutoring assistance, Homework Help quickly outgrew the church basement and eventually moved to a rented space at 144 Howe St. in 2011. Growth of Homework Help's programs continued and in 2014, thanks to donations and support from the Lewiston community, Sleeper-Whiting and company were able to purchase the Howe Street build- ing and call it a permanent home, officially launching Tree Street Youth Center that year as a nonprofit. For the last five years since, fundraising efforts for Tree Street have focused on a multi-phase campaign to overhaul the Howe Street facility, which was originally a paint retail store and preschool. In August of 2019, construction was finally complete, thanks to a five year, two-phase $2.4 million fundraising campaign. Both phases of the fundraising campaign were started with significant seed gifts: phase 1 with a $400,000 Next Generation Foundation of Maine grant and phase two with an individual donation. In phase 1, more than 300 individual contributors gave to the campaign. According to Sleeper-Whiting, Tree Street still has $120,000 more to go before officially meeting its fundraising goal. Sleeper-Whiting reports that Tree Street's continued success, expansion of its programmatic offerings and ability to meet its fundraising goals are rooted in the local support provided by the Lewiston P H O T O S / C O U R T E S Y O F T R E E S T R E E T Y O U T H UP C O N T I N U E D O N PA G E 8 » Scaling How three Maine nonprofits are increasing their reach B y C a t h e r i n e B e r C e Identifying where sustained income will come from to fund future growth is more complicated for nonprofits that can't rely solely on a market- driven value proposition. — Jennifer Hutchins Maine Association of Nonprofits Tree Street Youth provides Lewiston young people with free afterschool programs in teen leadership, college prep and professional internships. About 60% of those accessing the services are recent refugees or recent immigrants to the Lewiston-Auburn area.

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