HOULTON, Maine — The Houlton Rotary Club met for its luncheon meeting on April 24 and were visited by three guests. Hosted by Rotarian Lori Weston, Hannah Whalen, Erica Shaw McCrum and Jim Geary representing the Maine Community Foundation based in Portland visited with local Rotarians.
The MCF works with donors and other partners to improve the quality of life for Maine people. Weston has been on the group’s board of directors in Aroostook County for 12 years and is the current chairman of the Aroostook County Board.
Whalen is a senior foundation officer for the MCF and works with current and prospective donors. She lives in Whitefield and graduated from Wiscasset High School and the University of Maine at Orono where she majored in English. She worked for Pine State Trading Company and later got involved with philanthropy at the University of Maine. She and her husband are long distance runners and her husband just completed another marathon in Boston. She is a graduate of the Maine Master Naturalist Program. Her work at MCF covers six counties in central, northern, and Down East Maine.
McCrum is a foundation officer in Aroostook County for programs and grantmaking services. She supports the Aroostook County committee and works with donors and nonprofits in The County.
McCrum is from Mars Hill, where she lives on a potato farm with her husband and two children. She has a degree as a community health specialist and works with the Healthy Maine Partnership. She worked hard for smoke-free restaurants. McCrum is active in her community as a youth group leader at her church where she also plays the piano.
Geary is vice president of MCF and chief financial officer and director of investments. He has been with the MCF for 15 years. He is responsible for the review, analysis and evaluation of investment managers and new investment opportunities. His wife is from Caribou so he frequently visits The County. They now live in Southwest Harbor with their two children. He is a graduate of the University of Southern Maine and has a master’s degree from the University of Maine.
Whalen introduced the work of the Foundation with a slide photo of the town of Houlton by Paul Cyr. The Foundation is 34 years old and has 35 volunteers. It is the only statewide non-profit organization and is second to the Alfond Foundation for giving scholarships. For over 100 years there have been community foundations. MCF is young in age, but has spent $310 million in grants to projects and communities, mostly in Maine. There are more than 1,700 different funds and the foundation has $450 million in assets.
The organization is divided into fund, donor, and finance. The funds are set up in different categories. Four hundred are donor advised, 500 are scholarship and 22 are completion grants. Fourteen counties of the 16 in Maine are involved with MCF, just Kennebec and Sagadahoc are missing. In 1986 came the establishment of the Aroostook County Board of Directors with three Rotarians present on the Board: Lori Weston, John McLaughlin and Jane Torres. The Aroostook County Foundation has $1.2 million in funds available. Since 2002, $450,000 in grants have been awarded in The County.
The year 2017 sees $53,194 available for grants. Feb. 15 is the deadline for the Community Building Program with decisions made in the spring for the recipients. As a steward for the donors Geary was introduced. He is the “money” man as his job is to manage the $475,000,000 in assets.
There are five types of funds — Donor advised funds, Designated Funds, Scholarships in Memoriam, Non-profit Endowment (Houlton Alumni Foundation), and Field of Interest. Discretionary funds are in a category by themselves as the MCF can do what they want with these funds and are only 1 percent of the assets. Values have gone from $100,000,000 to $450,000,000 in 2017 with a dip in value in 2008 but recovering by 2010.
The investment return was seven and one half percent last year. Large corporations US Equity and Non US Equity outperformed by ten percent last year. The goal is to keep up with inflation and cover the costs of running the organization at one percent of the total funds. There is a Sally Stetson Tongren Scholarship Fund that serves students in Aroostook and Washington Counties.
The former Attorney General Steven Rowe is now the president and chief executive officer of the Foundation.
There will be a breakfast May 12 at the Northern Maine Community College to welcome conversation with Steve Rowe about the challenges and visions of the foundation from 7:30 to 9 a.m. To sign up for this informative breakfast event register at www.mainecf.org by May 10 or call McCrum at 227-7678.
To obtain more information for donations and for grants call 1-877-700-6800 or go to grants@mainecf.org. The speakers can be reached at emccrum@mainecf.org, bwhalen@mainecf.org, jgeary@mainecf.org.
