MCVEF-2009-2010 | Environmental Funders Network

Maine Conservation Voters Education Fund

Purpose: To bring Maine’s environmental community together to develop a five year vision, policy framework, and implementation plan for addressing Maine’s most pressing environmental challenges (2009); and to expand and strengthen the Environmental Priorities Coalition and work to ensure policymakers give priority to good health, good jobs, and quality of place (2010).

Partners: Healthy Community Coalition, The Center for Community GIS, and the Mountain Counties Heritage Council.

2011 Award: $31,000

2010 Award: $30,000

2009 Award: $50,000 Read the 2009 Proposal (PDF)

MCVEF - energy self-sustainability - Stetson Mountain windfarm.

Year One: EFN’s generous support enabled the Maine Conservation Voters Education Fund (MCVEF), together with our partners in the Environmental Priorities Coalition (EPC), to produce and distribute Investing in Maine’s Environment: A Trail Map to Prosperity 2010 – 2015, a shared five-year vision and action plan for protecting Maine’s environment and quality of place.

Representing 25 organizations and a combined membership of over 100,000 people, the EPC has been working effectively together since 2004. The composition of the EPC spans the state, bringing smaller organizations like the Bicycle Coalition of Maine together with sizeable state-wide groups like Maine Audubon. MCVEF facilitated multi-organizational work teams, conducted polling, and reached out to new constituencies to produce a vision that reflects a strong consensus within Maine’s diverse environmental community.

The Trail Map was used as the centerpiece of the EPC’s non-partisan education campaign to illustrate the interdependence between our economy, environment and healthy sustainable communities. It also advanced EPC’s broader communications goal of demonstrating that environmental stewardship goes hand in hand with economic prosperity.

Year Two: EFN’s support brought the EPC to an exciting new place of shared vision for protecting Maine’s quality of place in Year One. It also exposed some areas that need to be addressed within the coalition. The coalition realized that it needed an organizational development Trail Map too – one that allows the EPC to reach its potential and flourish.

Working with an outside consultant in Year Two, the EPC has embarked on a strategic planning process that focuses on strengthening and expanding our coalition. This process is addressing issues related to the EPC’s infrastructure: how to promote shared stewardship of the coalition, welcome new partners to the table, and create opportunities for leadership development.

As the Environmental Priorities Coalition develops its internal structure, its outward attention is focused on ensuring that Maine’s new policymakers prioritize our environment and quality of place. Putting recommendations down on paper in the Trail Map was the first step. Now, employing shared communications, education and advocacy strategies, the EPC is using the Trail Map as a guide to defend the progress Maine has made while identifying key areas to promote our quality of place.

Advancing Maine’s Quality of Place: MCVEF is leading a dynamic, long term process to protect the clean air, clean water and the quality of life that Maine’s environment provides for everyone. As MCVEF and its EPC partners navigate the new political landscape in Augusta, they are working together in new ways to coordinate citizen outreach, education and communications efforts to ensure that the programs and policies that protect the environment and quality of place are maintained and expanded.