Transcription of Meredith Jones for the show Maine Communities, #118
Lisa: Health and wellness are important parts of our community and there’s no one that can speak better about the idea of community or at least as it relates to the work she does with the Maine Community Foundation then Meredith Jones, who is the President and CEO of the Maine Community Foundation right here in Maine, so we’re very privilege to have her with us today.
Meredith: I’m delighted to be here, Lisa. Thanks for the invitation.
Lisa: Thank you. You have so many things that you’ve done in your life. You actually have an honorary doctorate of letters that you got from the University of Maine in 2013. Your family has been here for more than 200 years in Washington County. What was it about Maine that caused you to not only be brought up here but to kind of come back here and do the work that you do?
Meredith: Here’s the story behind the story because I actually was in Washington D. C. speaking to a group of Mainers, who now live in D. C. and indeed I did comment to the group about how the Jones family roots go back in Washington County for about 200 years and after I spoke an individual from Calais, Maine where my dad was born, came up to me and said, “What street did you grow up on?” The truth of the matter is I was raised outside of Pittsburgh and certainly summered in Maine and it is true that my father was born in Maine as was his father and his father and his father.
However, I was not born in Maine. A raised children in Windtrup so I’ve been here for about 33 years but a more direct response to your question about why here, why anywhere? I think my story is a good one in that I did choose to live, chose to raise children here. My husband at that time and I came from New Hampshire and have always felt, perhaps because of my youth spending time on the banks of the St. Croix River, that this really is home.
There are so much that is appealing about it and in the work that I do today, talking to individuals who might live here part time, almost to a person what they will talk about is the sense of community that exist here that has been lost or never had been achieved in the part of United States where they live right now. We are unique here in the sense that our communities are big enough to enjoy but small enough to get our arms around and many of us really do know our neighbors, so it’s a special place.
Lisa: Describe to the people who are listening what the Maine Community Foundation is? What it is that you’re actually doing?
Meredith: We are celebrating our 30th anniversary. We were founded obviously 30 years ago by an individual who spent most of his year in New York, had a relationship with our counterpart in New York and felt that Maine needed a community foundation. What is a community foundation? Just like the name says, we are about community. We are a grant-making institution, so we are making grants and we’re all about Maine. We have about $330 million in assets and interestingly enough, it started off 30 years ago with a $10 gift from this man, whose name was Bob Blum, and that $10 has grown to $330 million.
The reason it has is because there are a number of people in Maine who want to be philanthropic, who may not have what they would consider to be sufficient dollars to create a private foundation and so they would use … what they will use a community foundation for their philanthropy. Many of the assets that we have under management were given to us by individuals, who have established a fund, a named fund that money is accounted for separately and what those donors do is make grants from that fund, so they have the joy of being a philanthropist and we do all of the heavy lifting and that’s one of the pieces of work that we do.
We also do a variety of other things. It’s 18 different competitive grant programs where a non-profits are applying to us for grant support and on an annual basis we are giving away about $18 million a year, so we do that plus we also are involved in other activities that really do come under the umbrella of building Maine community. We can talk a little bit if you want about a survey that we were part of, a number of years ago that really did assessed the level of civic engagement and the level of what Bob Putnam, in his book Bowling Alone calls social capital, and it relates very directly I think to a community’s health and well-being.
Lisa: Let’s talk about that. What is social capital?
Meredith: Bob Putnam uses polysyllabic words to describe it but it’s actually the reciprocity that occurs in a community. It is an individual’s connection to that community. Whether that individual is connected by knowing his or her neighbor, connected because they’re doing volunteer work or connected in some other way. We learned a lot. We actually did a survey of Lewiston-Auburn; this was at the turn of the decade. I think this was in the year 2000, so it’s been a number of years and it was prior to the arrival or the influx of the wonderful diversity that Lewiston-Auburn now have and are very proud of.
What we were trying to determine is what makes Lewiston-Auburn tick and we were generalizing from Lewiston-Auburn to the larger Maine community about what makes Maine community’s tick. Here’s what we discovered that we are a very trusting State. That we are by enlarged connected to our neighbors. It doesn’t mean that we don’t have a long way to go. We do very well in educating people at the high school level. I think our graduation rates are about 85%. We do far less well in post-secondary educational attainment and the reason I mentioned that is because that there is a strong connection or correlation between educational attainment level, citizen involvement, economic status, health status and crime.
At the community foundation, once we had all of these data, we as an organization decided that one way to support community vitality is really focusing on higher educational attainment. For the last several years that is where we have been focused. There are a lot of things that are all tied together and the survey data really did help us understand that in so many areas named us really well in terms of community vibrancy but we’ve got a long way to go.
Lisa: How do you build on what Maine does well all simultaneously trying to boost the long way to go? People don’t like to be criticized so there is this sense that maybe if you were to come in and say, ”Well, we don’t think you do this as well that perhaps you might get some resistance.”
Meredith: Yeah. I don’t know that we would ever walk into a community and say, “Maybe you don’t do this so well.” Our whole philosophy is really think about what’s going well in a community and how do we make it better as opposed to, “Oh my gosh, look at the problems this community is having, and how can we fix them.” I think at the end of the day, the community foundation is not in a position to fix any community. What we are in a position to do is help a community identify those elements that they want to work on and providing them with the support.
Whether it’s grant-making support or just standing behind the good name and reputation of the community foundation, to support those local people to do what they really want to do. Is their vision necessarily what my vision might be? Maybe not, maybe it is, but I think communities know best what their future can be. As I’m talking I’m thinking about the whole concept of leadership and where leadership fits in. I think one of the challenges Maine faces is the fact that we don’t believe in ourselves as much as we should. We have tremendous potential as a state.
The individuals in the State are everybody is capable and smart as people outside the State, but when you look at the economic data there’s a disconnect and I think Angus King probably was the best person we have had in recent times in trying to provide the encouragement and support to help people believe in themselves. That’s really a fundamental part of leadership, so the extent to which the community foundation can help communities and individuals in those communities believe in themselves. I think we all have done an incredible job in supporting the long term success of communities in Maine.
Lisa: What are some ways in which you help people believe in themselves? What are some very concrete things that you’re doing as part of the main community foundation?
Meredith: We make about 3,000 grants in the course of a year and some of those grants are going to individuals as in the form of scholarship support. One of our scholarships is available to support non-traditional students and so after a period of grant-making with these scholarships, we’ve invited these non-traditional students to come in and talk to us about the difference the scholarship has made. The challenges and struggles their facing as non-traditional students. Talk about inspiration, I mean the stories around the table will only brought the students about the student where our financial support provided transportation, so that this individual could get to college, get to the campus to take classes.
One of the stories I will remember forever was an individual who was in her 40’s when she went back to school. She had finished high school and gone into the workforce but her children were now reaching an age when they were in high school and she had always wanted to be an engineer, always wanted to be an engineer but life got in the way and that was not going to be possibility for her until the scholarship support. The story she told was taking classes as a non-traditional 40-something-year-old student in engineering, watching her children watch her, but the coolest thing was having her dad watch her and her dad ended up going back to school because she was such an inspiration.
I mean talk about believing in yourself and what our role was saying we believe in you. Here are some financial supports to help you realize what it is you want to do in the future and “wah lah” she did it. She graduated and as I said, her dad has going back to school and I am sure her two boys will be going to college.
Lisa: Do you think that part of the reason that’s important for the community foundation to support people financially? Is that the donors themselves in many cases have had to work very hard in their lives to actually create the abundance of wealth, that they’re able to give to the community foundation? Do you think that there is the sense of sort of paying it forward?
Meredith: Absolutely, yes, and it always has struck me that … I’m generalizing here, but the profile of the individual who have established funds at the community foundation are individuals who obviously have made money or inherited wealth. There is seems to be a relationship between the source of the wealth and the level of anonymity that donors require some of our quietest most anonymous individuals are those with the greatest capacity. They want no attribution. They don’t want anybody to know who they are but they do definitely want to pay it forward.
You might ask if the part time residence, “Why are they doing their philanthropy in Maine?” The answer I get will be, “We live in Maine communities in the summer.” Our ability to continue to live here depends on community vitality, so we want to give back to that community where we think the need is greatest and the opportunity is greatest and they will say, “Maine is such a wonderful place to give,” because a little go such a long way. In fact we have a donor couple that lives most of the year or most of the month in Los Altos Hills, California.
They grew up in the Philadelphia area. They have a residence in Maine and their philanthropy started as they would say in California and in Philadelphia and a little bit in Maine and having worked here in Maine now for about 13 years, all of their philanthropy is in Maine because they just love it. They work with school, teachers K-12 elementary, public school teachers and their grants are small and their grants are designed to support just creative projects that teachers want to do with their kids that they have no money to do. It’s a great example of a donor couple that said, “Wait a minute. You know, Maine has tremendous need. Maine has tremendous opportunity.” Our little grants go a long way. We want to focus our grant-making in Maine.
Lisa: In addition to the grant-making that you do, you also provide some help with modeling and setting up programs in some ways, is that right?
Meredith: Yup, we do. There are community foundations in every state in the United States and not all of us look alike, but more and more community foundations acknowledge that they have an important role in the whole area of community leadership in tackling issues that might be long term that other groups really are not focusing on. One of them that we are working on here in Maine is a program that focuses on what I call older adults. Other people call them baby boomers but Maine is a graying state, very much like other states in New England. I think we are per capita, one of the oldest, if not the oldest, state in the nation.
Here to far, historically we have thought about older adults in a need based way. The frail elderly, they need medical support, they need social service support. We were approached by a global funder who said, “You know, I think we need to turn this issue upside down,” because there is a growing group of individuals and many of them are retiring here, who are very healthy. They are older but they’re healthy. They are well-educated. They might not need a day job because they’re retired but they want to give back and they probably don’t want to stuff envelopes.
They want to give back in a meaningful way. We in partnership with University of Maine Center on Aging, created a program called the Encore Leadership Core and what we did was recruit baby boomers to learn about how to run a meeting, a group facilitation, how to organize locally, and what we have trained them to do is to go back into their communities and create community based projects under this umbrella called Smart Growth.
They’re creating hiking trails. They are supporting recycling efforts. They are building playgrounds. They are looking at other local economic development issues, so they’re doing things, it’s not that stuffing envelopes isn’t important, but shame on us if we don’t capitalized on these very smart, well-educated people and put them to work because may needs them. If you read Charlie Corgan, you know that in migration of young people is not happening at a rapid enough phase that we need to sustain this economy, so we have to deploy the people we have here.
Lisa: Speaking of young people, you raised your children you said. What kind of an impact has the work that you’ve been doing over the course of your life had on your children and what they have chosen to do with their own lives?
Meredith: I write a blog and I like to say that 12 people read it and most of those 12 people are related to me but once a year, the blog that seems to attract most attention is one about the family philanthropy game and what I have done with my family is impulse upon them. The whole notion that we, who are grateful for what we have need to give back and we’ve made it into the form of a game where it includes the two grand kids who are now seven and ten.
It includes my two children who are raised in [Windtrup 00:49:10] their spouses, and my spouse and we gathered in the season of giving at Christmas time and we sit down and I give them each $50 and say, “Okay, your job is to have the most impact with this $50 by giving it away. Tell me what you have done. I will post what you’ve done on the website and we’ll let the blog readers vote on what the best idea is.” The first year it was okay. The second year was better.
The third they got really competitive and earlier this summer, my grandson started talking to me about where he’s going to give his money and how he’s going to win this game. He is just going to win this game because he’s going to make the most impact with the $50. In spite of what I’ve said earlier about never imposing one’s values or doing two communities, I actually did to my family and they have come along. They’ve been very gracious and it’s now I think part of the culture and it is the best blog I write every year.
Lisa: What are some of their choices?
Meredith: Since some of them live in Massachusetts, some of the choices were … Actually one of the best gifts was my daughter-in-law, Isabel. Isabel is from Rio and what she decided to do with her $50 was buy a pair of Tom’s shoes. She loves shoes and what she was doing with the Tom shoes is that she was going to give her pair to good will and Tom shoes, if you know them at all, for every pair of shoes you buy, Toms is giving a pair of shoes to somebody in a developing country who might not otherwise have shoes. She says, “$50, I’m giving great shoes to somebody,” who shops good will and somebody in a developing country.
She was pretty pumped about that. That was a good gift. The one that my grandson did to the Jimmy fund I think most blog readers that voted for that, it wasn’t because it was the Jimmy fund that was to try to get support for this now very competitive at that time seven-year-old, who wanted to prove that he too could be a part of this game. They have been interesting gifts, $50 isn’t a lot but it’s more the idea behind it that has spawned a lot of creativity.
Lisa: $50 isn’t a lot but it is a lot. I mean, it can really, if you’re someone who, say you’re listening to the show and you have $50 to give out of your Christmas budget, you can do something with it.
Meredith: You can do a lot. You can do a lot and it can leverage a whole host of other cascading things that are all very positive. In fact, earlier this summer I was in Oxford County at an event and this woman I do not know, came up to me and said, “I’ve heard I need to read your blog about the family giving challenge because I want to do something with my grandchildren,” and it has, to your point about the $50, the $50 … The actual project has spawned other people who have others that they want to encourage to give. It has inspired others to create their own little grant-making program with family members, so you’re right.
Lisa: It’s also important to know that the community foundation does have a way of paying attention to the impact that the grants are making. I think in the past, maybe when there was more money to be given out, people weren’t quite as concerned with the outcomes and it seems as though, this is become more important, more important that if you’re going to invest dollars in something, you’d like to see that there is something positive happens with those dollars.
Meredith: I think to that point, Lisa. I think more and more donors as the younger generation becomes philanthropic. These are individuals in their 30’s and 40’s for whom outcomes and data are increasingly important. How do I know that this grant or these grants are going to make a difference? Show me the data, so increasingly, we are employing tools and consulting support to try to better answer that question. At one level, you can look at a smiling face or well-fed kid can say that grant made a difference but more fundamentally, show us the number, show us the data, show us in a quantitative way that this grant will make a difference.
Lisa: What are some suggestions you could offer to people who are now in the holiday season and thinking about how they might want to share their abundance with other people?
Meredith: Let’s start with where you started which was $50 can make a difference. The amount doesn’t matter. There are so many groups for whom $50 means a great deal and for individuals who are eager to give back, there are so many ways of doing it. Part of it is with money. Part of it is with time. There are so many groups out there desperate for volunteers to help at a staff level, volunteers at the board level to help these non-profits build a capacity in the scale they need to continue doing their good work. If it’s less clear about what specific organization I want to give to.
One way to think about it is, “What are my passions? What do I care about most? Is it food security? Is it economic development?” Then, sort of sorting through, one of the groups locally that I know were doing that kind of work, one of the groups statewide that are doing that kind of work. They certainly can always call them in community foundation for support in helping identify groups in their local communities that they might want to think about based on what their passions are. Start with the passions. Start with what means most, what do you care about most and let your heart lead you along with your head.
Lisa: You said that people could call the Maine Community Foundation. How do people find the number for the Maine Community Foundation or other information?
Meredith: They can go to our website, but let me start with a number. It’s toll-free 877-700-6800. It is a toll-free number that puts you in touched with somebody who actually answers the phone and we will direct you to the specific staff person because we are organized in a way that we have staff who pay attention to the different parts of the State.
We do have a very active presence on our website which is mainecf.org. Go to my blog and respond. It comes out every other week and I’m talking about things that I think about as they relate to both community, community health, the main economy, leadership, higher education and I would love to have people comment on that and just to offer their own ideas. We have a Facebook presence also. I don’t think we’re doing Twitter, though, so sorry about that.
Lisa: Sometime in the future perhaps. We’ve been speaking with Meredith Jones, who was the President and CEO of the Maine Community Foundation. We’re very pleased to know that you’re out there in the world sort of throwing pebbles in the pond and to seeing where the ripples are all going in helping other people pay it forward, so thank you for doing that and for spending time with us tonight.
Meredith: Thank you for the opportunity. Great to be here.