Grant Priorities

Geographic Priorities

The Betterment Fund makes grants exclusively to benefit the residents of the State of Maine and has a historical and continuing priority focus on the Western Mountains region of Maine which includes Oxford, Franklin, and Somerset Counties. The Fund also makes some grants in other rural areas around the top rim of the State of Maine down to the Downeast region. The Fund does relatively little funding in the geographic regions of Midcoast Maine, Southern Maine, and Portland. The Fund participates in some statewide or regional projects. Organizations and projects outside the listed priority geographic areas which are local in nature are rarely funded.

General Grant Considerations

In addition to the stated qualifications and priorities for Betterment Fund grants, the trustees use the following general criteria for evaluating grants:

1. Community: The concept of community is very important in all areas of the Fund’s grantmaking. Proposals should originate from the ideas and needs of the affected population and demonstrate extensive support and other resources from the community or constituency.
2. Use of Funds: The Betterment Fund makes grants for general operating support and specific projects and programs, and far less frequently for the acquisition of equipment or facilities. Endowment grants are infrequent. The Fund is more likely to fund applications that address issues on a permanent, systemic basis rather than discrete local programs providing services.
3. Typical Funding Ranges: For application-based grants, the Betterment fund’s minimum annual grant is $10,000. The maximum annual grant usually does not exceed $35,000. The average annual grant, whether for multiple years or a single year, is $15,000-$20,000. Three years is the maximum period of time the Fund will consider for a multi-year grant. The largest grants tend to be made to applicants with a successful history of grant management with the Fund. The Fund does not provide any single organization continuous support. With limited exceptions, a submitted grant application immediately after several consecutive years of funding without a break is less likely to be successful.
4. Other Sources of Support: Sometimes the Betterment Fund can be the first outside funder; sometimes, it is the last. It is rarely the sole funder. The Trustees also look for evidence of substantial support from the non-profit’s constituency. Collaboration with other nonprofits, municipalities, businesses, governmental entities, and other groups is favorable.
5. Needs of Particular Populations: The Fund has a particular focus on underserved rural populations. However, some other underserved Maine communities are distinguishable by common interests, experiences, history, age, language, race, religion, national origin, or other characteristics rather than by geography and may require special support to access services and opportunities within the context of other stated Fund priorities on a more equitable basis.
6. Climate Change: The Betterment Fund recognizes that climate change impacts Maine’s natural and human communities. Efforts that counter climate change by resilience or adaptation and that otherwise match the Fund’s priorities are of interest in any category of grants.
7. Fiscal Responsibility and Financial Sustainability: The application’s rigorous financial disclosure requirements are mandatory. They enable the Trustees to evaluate the application for financial planning, responsibility, management, and demonstration of a realistic plan for the continuance of the organization and/or program after the proposed Betterment Fund grant has been utilized. Evidence of an involved Board with relevant qualifications is valuable.
8. Exclusions: The Betterment Fund does not make grants to individuals or for the support of religious activities or programs.
9. Tax-Exempt Status: An application will be accepted from an organization only if, at the time of application, it is either.
   • Publicly supported and exempt from taxation under Internal Revenue Code section 501(c)(3) and not a private foundation;
   • Exempt as a government agency or body;
   • Tribal government; or
   • If not itself tax-exempt, relying on fiscal sponsorship by a separate publicly supported tax-exempt organization or government agency.
   • See further requirements under Online Application Instructions

Please see the Fund’s most recent annual Grantmaking Summary for examples of past grantmaking. However, certain extraordinary grants made at the initiative of the Trustees may represent trial forays into areas of tentative interest or one-time special focus grants and should not be taken as an indication of continuing interest by the Betterment Fund.

Current Grant Priorities

FOUR MAJOR SECTORS

COMMUNITY SUPPORT

The Trustees favor community-wide programs or regional systemic approaches to issues to improve well-being within the following current priority areas:

• Downtowns: Projects for comprehensive community planning with regional or state-wide organizations with similar missions, reduction of sprawl, and improved regional land use planning.
• Basic Human Needs: Improvement of systems for the efficient provision of services to meet basic needs such as food, permanent shelter, and transportation at regional scope in the Western Mountains, including statewide programs of a demonstrable effect in the region. It is not practicable to fund local programs such as homeless shelters, local food pantries, or gardening projects* under this priority (* but see Moving Communities to Health, below). Grants to such local programs outside the Western Mountains region are unlikely to be awarded.
• Legal Protections: Programs using legal channels to counteract the vulnerability of certain segments of Maine’s population including:
  • Civil Legal Access for the Underserved:  Programs for access to legal assistance in civil and governmental administrative areas for needy constituents in rural areas and other vulnerable populations.
  • Immigrant, Refugee, and Indigenous Populations: Strategies to remove barriers to employment and other civic participation and otherwise ensure the rights of members of immigrant, refugee, and indigenous populations.
  • Justice-Involved Individuals: Support for
    • re-entry programming for incarcerated individuals; and
    • alternatives to incarceration, including prerelease programs (particularly in jails) and measures to mitigate disparities in access to such alternatives based on individuals’ economic circumstances.
• Rural Media Reporting: The support of nonprofit organizations committed to:
  • Reporting on issues and stories that directly affect rural people and communities;
  • Elevating local stories and solutions in news media and discourse to promote the representation of rural perspectives and other values inherent in these Betterment Fund priorities; and
  • Independent and ethical operation with clear editorial standards and a public-service mission.

The Fund does not generally make grants for historic preservation, monuments, museums, theaters, and historical societies. The Fund’s former practice of modest one-time capital grants to rural community libraries is no longer a funding priority.

EDUCATION

The Fund believes that every Maine resident is entitled to an education which equips the individual to lead a satisfying, productive, and economically independent life, and we are interested in funding broad-based educational policy initiatives to that end. More particularly the Trustees fund:

• Educational Quality: Projects on a systemic level designed to improve the quality and effectiveness of Maine pre-K to 12 public education, including universal pre-K and, eventually, pre-k for 3-year-olds in the public school setting. This may include measures to encourage persistence in school, as well as programs to broaden students’ exposure to possibilities for fulfilling careers.s.
• Adult Education: Education programs which aim to increase the economic self-sufficiency of Maine adults, especially those who have not completed education through or beyond grade 12, and to acquire the skills to adjust successfully to changes in the Maine, national, and worldwide economies.
• Arts Education: Grants with a regional or statewide focus which have the potential of improving the overall landscape for pre-K to 12 arts education throughout Maine.
• Higher Education Aspirations: Programs which aim to increase the personal and family higher education and career aspirations of Mainers and provide accessible pathways to fulfillment of those aspirations.
• Please see “Health” and the Cross-Sector areas of “Early Childhood” and “Economic Development” for initiatives related to education in those areas

Proposals less likely to be funded include individual school programs, programming supplementary to the curricula of schools, and construction projects. Any funding of scholarships at Maine colleges and universities is done only at the initiative of the Fund’s Trustees rather than in response to grant requests.

CONSERVATION

Perpetuating a balanced, dynamic relationship between the natural and built environments in the three-million-acre corridor between the White Mountain National Forest and the Moosehead Lake region is of particular interest. To that end the Fund sponsors the following initiatives within the extensive and varied landscape which covers most of Oxford, Franklin, and Somerset counties:

• Preservation of special places, particularly those identified by the local communities, along the spine of the Appalachian Trail and in the Maine West and High Peaks Regions.
• Support of the responsible development of working forests and agriculture.
• Preservation and restoration of threatened natural habitats.
• Opportunities for traditional Maine recreation in the target region.
• Support of water quality preservation of lakes, rivers, and ponds.

Occasionally, the Trustees may fund projects of land trusts and environmental organizations located in the other rim counties, but focuses primarily on the western Maine counties listed above. The Trustees are not likely to fund coastal, ocean island, or fishing-related proposals.

HEALTH

The Betterment Fund is currently focusing Health grants in the following areas:

• Maine Public Health Policy: Programs to address a stronger state public health infrastructure, the collection of useful data, disease prevention, vaccines and leadership in issues of public health such as environmental health, adverse childhood experiences and resiliency, mental health, and pandemic preparedness.
• Oral Health: Improving oral health in Maine, particularly preventative oral health programs for children and other vulnerable populations.
• Increasing Educational Opportunities for Health Careers: Opportunities for Maine residents to pursue health careers at all levels of practice and continued learning for current health care professionals.
• Community Health Projects: A funded project will likely be a multi-focused effort which combines health improvements with factors relating to the social determinants of health, such as income and educational disparities, living conditions, social isolation, and inequities in access to health programs.
• Substance Use Disorder: The Trustees’ interest in addressing this subject is strategically focused, with limited exceptions, on:
  • Recovery programs in Oxford and Franklin counties;
  • Programs to curtail substance abuse relapse upon re-entry from jail; and
  • The development of state policies aimed at responding to substance abuse disorders.

Please note that projects focused primarily on physical activity and healthy eating should be submitted under the cross-sector “Moving Communities to Health.”

Proposals that are not as likely to be funded include medical research, projects relating to a single disease, actual delivery of medical treatment, and capital construction or equipment purchases.

CROSS-SECTOR AREAS

The Fund has identified the following areas as being particularly susceptible to consideration under more than one of our traditional priority categories.

ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT

The Fund recognizes that the expansion of Maine’s economy will advance other areas of Betterment Fund concern. The Trustees particularly support the following:

• Entrepreneurship: Programs that promote scalable entrepreneurship, particularly in rural areas. Subjects of particular interest include women and minority-owned businesses and improved coordination of existing entrepreneurship and economic development efforts, including with educational initiatives. The development of careers and businesses in the trades is also of interest.
• Agricultural Capacity: Improvements to the competitiveness and long-term viability of Maine farms and farmers by providing technical support and improving access to distribution and markets.
• Tourism: Promotion and development of quality tourism as an engine for economic opportunity in the mountain and forest regions, with particular preference for the western Mountains region.
• Broadband: Support of planning and implementation projects to increase access to broadband in local communities of Oxford, Franklin, Somerset, and northern Cumberland Counties, conditioned upon local municipal and/or nonprofit community entities’ commitment of resources to such projects.

The Trustees do not fund support of individual business ventures or farms.

CREATIVE ECONOMY

The Fund is primarily interested in regional and statewide strategies which promote the economic enhancement of communities through arts and culture. Stand alone organizations will rarely be funded for local projects.

EARLY CHILDHOOD 

The Fund has prioritized improvement of the education, health, and general well-being of Maine’s youngest children, from before birth through preschool age. The Fund’s focus in this area is funding the development of best practices for the physical, mental, and psychosocial health and development of young children. The Fund supports policy work that leads to the adoption of state or federal policies to achieve these outcomes and the establishment and maintenance of the broad infrastructure to carry out this work. The Trustees also are interested in the development of an economically viable and accessible system of childcare for working families. The Fund is unlikely to make grants to individual school or childcare center programs.

MOVING COMMUNITIES TO HEALTH

Of interest are community-scale initiatives taking advantage of natural and other qualities inherent in the community’s locale and promoting the participation of its residents in active recreation and other activities (such as healthy eating) conducive to healthy lifestyles and prevention of illness. Essential elements of this priority include:

• A demonstrated connection to individuals’ physical and/or mental health; and
• Initiation by and for the residents of an identified geographic-based community (as opposed to individuals with common interests or attributes drawn from more disparate geographic areas).

PHILANTHROPY

The Betterment Fund embraces opportunities to collaborate with other state-wide philanthropic organizations that seek to improve grantmaking and support charitable activities in Maine.  In addition to making grants, the Betterment Fund supports and participates in a number of Maine based funder groups around specific issues.

TRUSTEE-INITIATED

MAINE WEST AND HIGH PEAKS INITIATIVES

Beginning in 2014, the Betterment Fund has selected approximately twenty organizations from the 27 townships collectively having approximately 25,000 residents that span Bethel to Norway/South Paris and Rumford (Maine west) and the Rangeley area (High Peaks).  These organizations receive annual stipends from the Betterment Fund to defray costs to work collaboratively to increase their collective impact in a geography which has experienced serious stress from a decline in paper product manufacturing and the demise of many of the smaller wood mills that once dotted the region’s river towns.  This effort had its origins in the Bethel area and from 2004 to 2014 was known as The Mahoosuc Initiative. In 2014 the Fund decided to broaden Maine West’s initiative’s focus from being based strictly on conservation to encompass also other areas of Betterment funding, namely education, health, and community support, so as to enhance the quality of life of residents most broadly.

OTHER TRUSTEE-INITIATED PROJECTS

Other Betterment Fund grants made on its own initiative (as distinguished from those based on applications) are often a direct outcome of collaborations with other funders.

In addition, each year there are several $10,000 grants made to organizations chosen by the Trustees which, as stated above, should not be considered as indications of relevance to grant applications.

PROGRAM RELATED INVESTMENTS

The Betterment Fund utilizes Program-Related Investments within its investment portfolio to further advance its charitable mission alongside grantmaking.