Now Accepting Applications for John T. Gorman Fellowship. Learn more. 

Our Work

Foundation grants and initiatives are focused on ensuring all Maine children are resilient and ready to succeed.  And, as research and our own programmatic work has shown, the best way to do that is with comprehensive approaches that strengthen the whole family. Our approach is also designed to test strategies that, if effective, can be taken to greater scale by guiding practice and policy change.

Our Approach

We fund initiatives and test strategies for improving the wellbeing and resiliency of Maine children and their families.

Grants & Giving

  • Invitational grantmaking, which is the bulk of our giving, centers on grantees that have demonstrated a capacity for 2-Gen approaches to prevent Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs) and improve child and family wellbeing.

  • Annual funding opportunities are available through the Foundation’s application-based Direct Services Grant Program for organizations that fulfill immediate and basic needs, such as food, housing, and mental health services.

Featured Initiatives

The intent of our initiatives is to comprehensively integrate strategies so they can be tested, learned from, and taken to scale by leveraging wider practice and policy changes. They offer important lessons for both practitioners and policy makers.

John T. Gorman Fellowship

The John T. Gorman Fellowship program is designed to build the individual and collective capacity of Maine leaders to drive measurable outcomes for children and their families. Through a yearlong program of leadership development, coaching, and peer support, the Fellowship strengthens the ability of leaders to impact systems change at a policy and practice level.