Community Foundation Grants at Work

With support from the community foundation's People of Color Fund, the Wabanaki Center at the University of Maine and the Penobscot Nation Cultural and Historic Preservation Center is hosting the Wabanaki Scholars Series. The next presentation, featuring Maria Girouard and Suzanne Greenlaw, will take place Thursday, Feb. 2, at 6 p.m., at Minsky Hall on the University of Maine's Orono campus. Programs are free and open to the public.

Bar Harbor artist and inventor Les Menard established a scholarship in 2008 to help students from Mount Desert Island High School attend community college in Maine. Read his remarkable story here. The L.E. Menard Scholarship is one of more than 400 funds available to Maine students through the community foundation. Image: Menard's pen drawing of the ranger station atop Beech Hill Mountain in Acadia National Park.

In honor of its 25th anniversary, the Piscataquis County Committee awarded $2,500 grants to the Center Theatre and Pine Tree Hospice in Dover-Foxcroft. Here, Dwain Allen (left) and Tim Magee, the Center Theatre’s executive director and board chair, join Cathy Sweetser, Piscataquis County Committee chair, to receive the grant. Over the past quarter century, more than 175 projects have received more than $450,000 in grants from the Piscataquis County Fund.

The MPBN Feed a Family television pledge drive runs November 26-December 11. For each pledge made, Maine Community Foundation donors will make a donation to the Good Shepherd Food-Bank to help feed Mainers. MaineCF President and CEO Meredith Jones talks about the importance of giving with MPBN’s Frank Ferrel. Videos courtesy of MPBN

The new Maine Ties includes a feature profile of Wickham Skinner, a Maine Community Foundation donor advisor who practices an engaged philanthropy and who considers retirement an opportunity to make a difference -- and paint. Image: Wickham Skinner, Museumtown, watercolor, 2006. Courtesy the Farnsworth Art Museum