Goal 2: Building Strong Land Trusts
A trip along Maine’s coastal Route 1 shows landscapes marked with yawning conservation need. While the land trusts driving to meet this need are large in number, they are short on human resources —of the nearly 50 coastal trusts, only 10% have two or more staff, and 60% have no full time staff, with volunteers stretched thin. Given this, the foundation to MCPI is helping these groups reach their full potential.
Capacity Building Grants and Services
MCPI has created two new pockets of funding for organizational capacity building and increasing implementation of the revised land trust standards and practices, to totaling $330,000.
- One program focuses two-year competitive grants of up to $60,000 with technical assistance packages to land trusts for significantly expanding their professional staff, programs, and or collaboration. These grants are targeted for those organizations standing at the point of transformation into leading, professional land trusts. Learn more about the land trusts funded here.
- A separate program focuses $80,000 technical support on discrete capacity building projects such as developing organizational and strategic conservation plans, enhancing their boards, building fundraising skills, and strengthening easement stewardship and land management practices. Learn more here.
GIS Services and Support
Other capacity gaps identified by the Coalition were mapping services and savvy. Starting with a GIS needs assessment in 2005, a grants program then was designed to increase broadly GIS usage and capacity within the coastal land trust community. Grants totaling nearly $70,000 were awarded to three organizations that will serve as GIS Resource Centers across the coast. These Centers will be using the funds to establish and upgrade their GIS capability, enabling them to provide to the land trusts in their service area training, mapping services, and access to equipment. In addition to the grants, MCPI also awarded six copies of Arc View software to four organizations. Learn more about Resource Centers here.
Permanence of Conserved Lands
One final source of need is found in the stewardship of protected lands. MCPI also provided financial and other support to strengthen Maine’s Conserved Lands Registry, coordinated by Maine Coast Heritage Trust, to help local land trusts collect and access the data they need for long-term responsible easement and fee land stewardship and defense. Underlying this registry and all these grant efforts is the theme of collaboration—each effort designed to build strength and efficiency from numbers.
Goal 1 << Goal 2 >> Goal 3
