New Report Illustrates Nonprofit Sector’s Social & Economic Impact on Maine

A report just released by the Maine Association of Nonprofits, Partners in Prosperity: The Maine Nonprofit Impact, shows that investing in Maine nonprofits has a strong economic return on that investment. For example:

• It costs almost $1,000 less per person per year to house the chronically homeless than to do nothing.
• Individuals with serious mental illness have a 94% unemployment rate. One nonprofit in Central Maine supported 77 individuals with serious mental illness in working 54,000 hours in a year, earning almost $500,000 in taxable wages.
• Investing in job training for at-risk high school students, at a cost to the state of less than $1,000 per pupil, has the long-term result of increasing wages an average of about 10%. Over a lifetime, that could add up to $100,000 in additional taxable wages.
• By leveraging private funding, one Maine nonprofit organized an advocacy campaign for the passage of new anti-predatory lending legislation, preventing millions in future losses due to predatory lending practices.

Partners in Prosperity: The Maine Nonprofit Impact illustrates ways that Maine’s robust, vibrant nonprofit sector is essential to both maintaining and improving the quality of life in our state. For example, the Maine Technology Institute (MTI) funded 342 Maine businesses that completed 440 technology development projects with the goal of bringing new products and services to the market. This is funding made possible through a nonprofit/government partnership because private funding for such high-risk ventures is hard to come by. MTI funded firms increased employment by 600 jobs during the study period; pay wages that are approximately 20% higher than the average Maine wage; and had employment growth rates that were six times that of the average Maine company.

This is just one example of how the almost 6,000 charitable nonprofit organizations in Maine are impacting the state. Reporting charitable nonprofits are a class of nonprofits that have annual gross receipts of more than $25,000 and are classified as charitable under the IRS code 501(c)(3). Only about 48% of the almost 6,000 nonprofits are reporting charitable nonprofits, yet they contribute $7 billion to the Maine economy through wages paid, supplies purchased, and professional services contracted. This accounts for almost 15% of the State’s gross product, which is the same percentage as the manufacturing and construction industries combined.

The Maine Community Foundation and the Unity Foundation underwrote this report.