Transcription of Eleanor Kinney for the show Maine Communities, #118
Lisa: This is Dr. Lisa Belisle and you’re listening to the Dr. Lisa Radio Hour and Podcast. Show number 118. Maine Community. Airing for the first time on Sunday December 15th. Today’s guests include Eleanor Kinney, Philanthropist with the Maine Community Foundation and Meredith Jones, President and CEO with Maine Community Foundation. Mainers are a giving group. We at the Dr. Lisa Radio Hour have been fortunate to spend time with a wide variety of giving individuals from Marks One of the Pebble Street Resource Center and Billy Shore and John Woods of Share a Strength to Julie Marchese of the Maine Cancer Foundation’s Tri for a Cure.
Our affiliation with Maine Magazine, Maine Home Design and the Kennebunkport Festival has given us a seat at a table with more 70 charitable organizations. Today we speak with Eleanor Kinney and Meredith Jones, two individuals who understand the importance of providing support in Maine Communities. We hope that you are inspired by our conversations during the season of giving. Thank you for joining us.
When I think about health I think about health not only as an important part of an individual’s life but also as part of the life of the community and so I’m really pleased today to have somebody with me who understands the importance of health and wellness in the community. This is Eleanor Kinney who is on the board of the Maine Farmland Trust and is also a member of the Environmental Funders Network and is also a part of the Maine Community Foundation, so thanks for coming in. You really have so many credentials that I could just keep talking and talking and talking and we could go in any number of directions with this but I’m really pleased that you’re here.
Eleanor: Thank you. It’s nice to meet you today.
Lisa: Eleanor, tell me why it is, I know that local food is very important to you. You’re the Cofounder of No Small Potatoes which is an investment club that provides microloans to Maine farmers and food businesses, so why food? Why is food so important to you?
Eleanor: I guess I really believe that we are what we eat and for me food is the integrator for so many of the things that I care about, so whether you care about open space conversation, whether you care about health, whether you’re concerned about hunger and food access and just for economic development. I mean food for me is a lens through which I work on and view all those issues. The way as a country, we have evolved in the last decade. This is not a healthy path in terms of how we grow food, how we distribute it.
The value that goes back to the farmers and then the health that goes to the consumer, so in Maine, in the slow money movement we are very focused on investing in local agriculture and rebuilding that infrastructure and so money is a national movement that Maine has probably the most active chapter in the country and I have loved the intersection with my work in slow money and investing, which is about investing in businesses, for me I’m an investor.
I’m a slow money investor, I call myself. I invest in farms and food businesses. You mentioned No Small Potatoes, that’s a microloan fund that three of us started and we provide small scale loans, but we’re also doing much larger pieces of investment and raising capital for businesses and it’s all about rebuilding a local agricultural system that creates jobs in the States, particularly in depressed rural areas and that is going to feed many people.
Lisa: Let’s back up a little bit. You’ve been talking about slow money. I think some people are familiar with the slow food movement but for people who aren’t familiar with slow food or slow money, can you just give us a little bit of background on that?
Eleanor: Sure. The slow money movement grew out of the slow food movement and the tag line for slow money nationals investing as a food farms and fertility matter and the goals are around redeploying some capital into the local food system. In Maine, the local chapter was started by Bonnie Rukin and our ministering committee and part of the active leadership and we are seeking to both connect people to network, it’s none a non-profit. We are a network of people working together out of common interest and passion for local sustainable agriculture and fisheries.
I don’t want to leave fisheries out. The role I play in the slow money network is both as an investor and as bringing in other investors in helping to aggregate capital. Maine Community Foundation has had a real role in this for me because I started my work in the State more as a Philanthropist rather than an investor, and I have a donor advise fund at Maine Community Foundation, and I’m part of the Environmental Funders Network which we do grant-making in the State.
Focus on the environment and quality of place but for me it’s all been coming together because I work with a group of foundation, many of whom are now getting interest in local food and so it’s been very collaborative where I’m both doing grant-making in the local food movement. I’m bringing another funders to do grant-making and so helping to raise those kinds of funds for these businesses but also helping to actually raise investment money. I do patient loans. I have equity investments. I do loan guarantees, so there’s a whole range of financial tools and Maine Community Foundation is also looking at how to do this kind of impact investing, and that’s something that I’ve gotten very excited about.
Lisa: What is your main connection? Why do you care so much about the community here in Maine?
Eleanor: I grew up coming here just in the summer, but for me all roads always led to Maine. I went to Yale and my thesis was about Mount Desert Island where I had gone in the summer and I went to graduate school of Oceanography. My oceanographic research was up on Mount Desert Island and I was always trying to get back here and always hated leaving, so I was leaving in Rhode Island and I had started a family there and I was doing conservation work and I saved the last old growth forest in Rhode Island and I thought I really want to do this work in Maine. For me, it’s always been my sole place and it’s a place that you can have tremendous impact.
I mean, we are a large state with incredible natural resources and a small population and if you show up and you have energy and ideas and you just are willing to work and collaborate with others. I feel like you can get so much done.
Lisa: While talking with you about this, about the ability to have an impact really reminds me of the work that your 12-year-old son is doing with Save the Nautilus. You told me that he’s actually raised $20,000. As a 12-year-old and I guess he started this one when he was ten?
Eleanor: Yeah.
Lisa: Somehow he already had the idea that he could do something that would make a difference.
Eleanor: I feel like if you live your values, your kids are going to pick that up, and my son has been raised in a household where we love animals. I have a diversified organic farm. He’s always had an interest in science and has been exposed to ideas about conservation and so his best friend approached him when he read about the flight of the chambered nautilus which is heavily overfished and was covered in The New York Times. The boys launched this organization called Save the Nautilus and they designed a website and started getting recognized in the media and Rigdely is an artist, my son, so he designed this really cool logo with a nautilus and we’ve been selling it on t-shirts and notecards and just getting …
I mean we’ve had hundreds of letters from kids all over the country. They had an article from Time for kids that generated a lot of interest. There are classrooms of kids that are having bake sales and doing dog walks all to raise money and then they send us checks and all the money that we raised goes to the University of Washington, which is where the lead researcher is. The $20,000 that they’d now raised has gone for underwater cameras largely to help fund documenting the nautilus population. I just love seeing kids caring about things that are bigger than themselves, caring about wild life and conservation and then actually doing something about it.
Lisa: Chambered nautilus, for people who aren’t in to the oceans …?
Eleanor: Is that beautiful spiral shell that you see and the thing that’s so amazing about the nautilus is it’s a 500 million year old animal, way before the dinosaurs and has survived all those mass extinctions that we’ve heard about and now, now that we’ve brought it into the 21th century, it’s seriously threatened because of humans fishing it for its shell.
A lot of this effort is not just about trying to fund the research but increase awareness and that’s what’s been amazing because they’ve been on TV and then the news and done radio podcasts of their own and just trying to spread the word about not buying the jewelry, supporting the conservation, contacting eBay and other places where you can buy a nautilus jewelry and they’re eventually hoping to get it listed so that the trade is restricted.
Lisa: You’ve had your fingers in a lot of different pies. You’ve been involved in the Maine Farmland Trust. You’ve done work with No Small Potatoes and Maine Community Foundation. What keeps you continuing to seek? What keeps you continually interested in understanding the best ways of making an impact in the community?
Eleanor: I think for me, a lot of my focus is around alignment, so my model is living something and then how I live my life and then also how I deploy my resources in ways that benefit community, so part of my love for agriculture has led me to convert my property into a farm. I install all the energy as generated through solar power, and then I help launch young farmers and support new businesses. I care about economic development which is a huge issue on Maine. I’ve been an environmentalist since college and you end up fighting a lot of battles and trying to stop things. I took on a battle in my community to stop Super Wal-Mart from being built in Damariscotta, two of us led that campaign and we were successful. I thought to myself, “that’s the no.”
If we don’t want that kind of strip development in Damariscotta, Maine, what is the yes for Damariscotta, for Aroostook County, for Washington County, for all of these parts of the State? For me, a lot of the yes has been supporting the kinds of businesses that are creating healthy products that are good for people and good for the earth and build their communities. I try to live that in my own life by having a farm and raising my children on the farm and then I try to live that through how I invest my resources. For me I’d much rather, I’m in the process of consciously pulling money out of the stock market and taking it all off Wall Street and investing it into Maine businesses and Maine communities.
Lisa: I like that idea of what is the yes as opposed to the no. I think this is something that we bumped up against a lot is the sense that there are so many things that are kind of falling apart in the environment and sometimes I think that’s very discouraging for people who really want to do good things, helpful things, live in a mindful way on the planet and yet it’s just feel like everything, it’s so hard to grasp. When you say what is the yes, it gives you something positive to move toward rather than something negative to move away from.
Eleanor: People relate to that. I mean this is amazing to me. I speak in Maine and I speak out of state and people are really drawn in and it’s not political. That’s one thing I love about food. Everybody can relate to that experience of eating good food. People are really interested in where their food is grown. Now I mean, it’s definitely part of a whole national consciousness and in Maine where we’re just still have those rural landscapes, we still have working farms.
Yes, they are at risk and that’s why I’m on the board of Maine Farmland Trust because we are trying to secure farmland easements so that the land that is in farming stays in farming and that’s so important because without that, I mean, Maine has a real advantage right now, in terms of the rest of the New England. We are the land base for New England in terms of what we still have available for agriculture, but it’s going to take a conscious effort to make sure that we store that and that’s what the conservation piece is about and that’s what’s also making sure that farms and food businesses are economically viable and that’s the investment piece. We need to invest in those businesses because as long as their viable and they can make a living then that land will stay open.
Lisa: This reminds me of a conversation I had with Cecily Pingree about the work that she did, the movie that she created called Betting the Farm, and it really was, it was about Maine’s organic milk farmers. It’s Moo Milk. I laughed at her film and our conversation really revolved around the idea that we’re so in the middle of this, that we don’t have a happy ending yet.
Eleanor: Which is true with so many of our businesses, so I’m one of the early investors in Moo Milk. Cecily is awesome. She also serves on the board of Maine Farmland Trust with me and Moo Milk has been absolute rollercoaster ride and these are startups. These are startups in a really tough commodity-driven, low margin industry. That’s true of Moo Milk and that’s true in invested in Grist Mill in Skowhegan. Somerset Grist Mill. I’m invested in a veggie processing facility in the county called northern girl. I invested in slaughter houses and distribution companies and it’s tough.
It’s not like you get up and going and you’re necessarily going to be successful. We don’t know. Some of these businesses are probably going to fail and that’s a risk as an investor. For me it’s about all working together to ensure that they’re successful as they can be, so we focused not just on investment but providing technical assistance. I mean not all farmers know how to write a business plan. That’s helping bring together the different kinds of resources that can help nurture these companies while recognizing that what they’re doing has value for all of us and so we try to share the risk.
Lisa: More and more it seems, people who invest in something like an organic farm or a Grist Mill are looking for a return on investment that’s bigger than just money. For you, what is that looked like?
Eleanor: For me it looks like, you know we call it whatever, a triple bottom line, right. We’re investing, when I invest in the Grist Mill in Skowhegan I’m investing in a business that’s employing people, that’s buying grain from Aroostook County and so therefore benefit to grain growers. I’m looking at a business that’s involved in the whole food held in Skowhegan that has a year round farmer’s market that people can bring their EBT cards and use them to access fresh food, so there’s a MB subsidies in that way. There’s a match program. Again, the focus is about healthy food for everybody regardless of income level.
That’s really important. Their business is growing in Skowhegan that are pasta businesses and someone who makes wood fire ovens for bread baking. There’s a whole artisan bread movement. Skowhegan was the bread basket for the New England in the Civil War. I mean, that’s where the Civil War soldiers were at. That’s where the wheat came from that made the bread that they ate, so it has this history. We’re also connecting back to that past but also bringing it into the future in a way that’s really going to help grow those communities that have, I mean Skowhegan’s pretty down and out.
Lisa: When I asked you to come on the show, you noticed that one of the guests we were taping the same day that you were taping was Glenn Cummings, who was with the Good Will Hinckley School Maine Academy of Natural Sciences. He discusses in the interview that aired in November the work that is being done with the food hub in the Skowhegan and he mentioned your name actually. He talked about the Grist Mill and the wheat in Maine. It’s interesting to me that there are sort of links everywhere, that’s there’s a link to the person who is involved in education. There’s a link to the farmer. How is that feel to be in a state where there’s just so many connections?
Eleanor: That’s kind of going back to what I was saying earlier about Maine being in some ways are very small state where then you can have really big impacts. When you’re working on issues, it does cuts across many different areas and we’re a tight-knit community. We get to know each other. I mean I know in the food movement there are so many different people that have a relationship to it one way or another. Whether it’s through education and raising the next generation of kids who were interested in agriculture or it’s around the investment side or it’s around the conservation side.
People at the great work that Good Shepherd Food Bank is trying to do, so Good Shepherd Food Bank is now putting significant money into paying farmers to grow local food for them, so again, not just getting all the cans of commodity food but having healthy, fresh food to feed low income people. It’s just, we do, we build this community of getting to know each other and that’s what the slow money meetings that we have. There are people, they are from banks and from non-profits and there are the farmers that came down from Aroostook and there are a lot of people in the room from diverse background but what brings them together is caring about Maine and caring about a food system that feeds us all.
Lisa: Usually when I have people on the show, I ask them to tell us how listeners can find out more about what they’re doing but I don’t think there’s one specific website that people are going to be able to go to, to find out about all the different things you’re doing. I would encourage people to find out more about the Maine Farmland Trust, The Maine Community Foundation, No Small Potatoes, Slow Money Maine, The Environment Funders Network, really spend some time looking at these websites and learning more about the opportunities that you are currently making available to the people in the community in the State of Maine.
I really appreciate you’re taking the time to come in and talk to us about the work that you’re doing, Eleanor. I think that this is … Sometimes as we’ve said we can get caught up on what we can’t do but if we can find that yes. That we can work towards. I think it makes us all healthier as individuals and healthier as a community, so I appreciate you’re coming in.
Eleanor: Thank you. There’s a role for everybody. That’s what I tell people. I mean I know I get focused sometimes on the investment side but for me, we can eat local, we can buy local, we have a big role to play as consumers as well. Find your farmer’s market. Get to know your farmers and the people that are catching your fish. Develop those relationships that then reconnect us to each other and to our world and our resource base.
Lisa: I think you’ve said it well. I hope people who are listening, go out and do just that.
Eleanor: Thanks for having me.