2009 Governor's Award for Nonprofit Excellence Winners

• Goodwill Industries of Northern New England
• Mabel Wadsworth Women's Health Center
• Maine Farmland Trust

Large Organization Division

1st Place - Goodwill Industries of Northern New England
Goodwill Industries of Northern New England engages the human potential and enriches the quality of life within their communities by eliminating barriers to opportunities and independence.  A leader in Maine’s nonprofit community, their application demonstrates true ingenuity, creativity and sound management practices. 

• In response to their employee’s desire for greater learning opportunities and for career growth, the organization established a model of professional development where emerging leaders are grouped into cohorts.  The program helps the employees gain experience with real leadership challenges and fits seamlessly with their Innovation Starts Here initiative which encourages all employees to offer innovative suggestions to enhance and streamline the organization’s work.  Individuals are recognized for each suggestion they submit and their manager is rewarded for encouraging creative thinking. The leadership cohort plays a role in implementing some of the selected larger-scale projects.

• To be able to communicate to all employees across three states, the organization invested in a technology infrastructure that broadcasts live webcasts of staff meetings.  This opened up communication and transparency throughout the organization. 

• The organization is proactive in their program evaluation. They constantly analyze their programs, financial services, risk management, and retail services.  For example, each program in Human Services goes through an annual internal peer audit process which examines money management, health and safety, and client and personnel record keeping practices.  Program management reviews the results of the audit and makes needed changes or improvements.

2nd Place - Pine Tree Legal Assistance
Pine Tree Legal Assistance is committed to the provision of high quality services, recognizing that low-income Mainers seldom have the ability to secure legal help elsewhere.  Their application for this year’s Awards was thoughtful and clearly demonstrates their dedication to mission.

• In response to the growing percentage of low-income Mainers with limited English proficiency, Pine Tree modified its voicemail system in their Portland office to add greetings in eight other languages besides English.  Pine Tree’s intake staff are notified whenever a message is left in one of the foreign language boxes and can use an interpreting service to return the individual’s call. 

• Pine Tree has utilized the internet to provide detailed legal information that can be used by any Maine resident with a question.  Last year their website was visited over 1 million times and program materials were downloaded over 700,000 times.  Pine Tree’s most popular client education materials (“The Rights of Tenants in Maine” and the “Foreclosure Prevention Tool-Kit”) are also distributed in hard copy to social service agencies around the state.

• To retain experienced staff attorneys, Pine Tree uses an innovative retention incentive contract.  Through this program attorneys receive additional vacation time every three years in return for their agreement to remain with the program for an additional two years. This allows the organization to deliver legal services in a more efficient and effective manner.

• Because of the detailed demographic information that the organization collects on each person that contacts them for assistance, they have been able to proactively reach out to clients.  For example, they were able to reach out to current and former clients they knew that owned homes to warn them against foreclosure scams.

Honorable Mention - Rumford Group Homes

Medium Organization Division

1st Place - Mabel Wadsworth Women’s Health Center
Mabel Wadsworth Women’s Health Center is the only private, independent, nonprofit, free-standing women’s health center in Maine.  They work to empower all women regardless of age, color, sexual orientation or economic resources to take control of their sexual and reproductive lives.  Their application highlighted many innovative practices, including the following:

• Mabel Wadsworth Center board members and staff leadership made a commitment to provide a “livable” wage” to every employee of the Center.  They researched the definition of a livable wage for an individual working in greater Bangor and created a policy that no employee be paid less than $11 per hour.  This standard is reviewed each year based on updated information.

• As an advocate for women’s reproductive rights, the organization works to give voice to women’s concerns and takes an active role in statewide advocacy efforts.  The 2008 Presidential race provided an opportunity for them to increase their advocacy efforts: in addition to displays, articles and printed materials, the organization registered hundreds of women—including many young women—to vote. 

• Evaluation plays a key role in the operations of the Center.  One example of their investment in evaluation is the process by which they began offering colposcopy services.  Through research they had learned that the average wait time in the Bangor area for a colposcopy was nine months.  For a woman facing a possible cancer diagnosis, nine months was too long to wait.  Mabel Wadsworth invested in the necessary training and supplies and purchased a colposcope.  The waiting time for an appointment for any woman, regardless of her income level, was reduced from nine months to two weeks. 

2nd Place - Sustainable Harvest International
Sustainable Harvest International (SHI) provides farming families in Central America with the training and tools to overcome poverty while restoring our planet’s tropical forests.  Highlights from their application include:

• The organization implemented new methods for securing information from their field program.  Field staff in the villages where they work are now using handheld PDA’s to collect information on the progress of the farm families.  The handhelds provide a useful tool to save time in writing down data on clipboards and then entering data at the office.

While the organization has a global focus, they are dedicated to improving the connections that Mainers have with the land.  SHI has committed to leveraging the award to either help develop a public education component at their community garden or to help subsidize service trips for Maine high school students to one of their Central American programs.

• SHI embraces strategic alliances in their field program.  When they expand their program to a new country they seek out a local NGO to help provide administrative capacity and local ties until their program has matured. 

• The organization recently instituted an “Advisor” position: individuals who come to the organization with some certain skill, are permitted to join a Board committee, but are not voting members of the Board.  They learn about SHI in more detail and the organization learns more about them, their level of commitment, ability to work constructively, and assess if some Advisors might be good candidates to transition to the Board. 

Honorable Mention - Spruce Run Association

Small Organization Division

1st Place - Maine Farmland Trust
Maine Farmland Trust (MFT) is dedicated to permanently preserving and protecting Maine’s agricultural land.  They have grown fairly quickly from a small organization to a complex organization.  Although this growth has been swift, they have been very careful in how they move the organization forward.   Their application highlights creativity and strong collaborative efforts.

• MFT is proud of the high-caliber of its employees, and believe it is a result of their very thorough interview process. All applicants must request an application packet from the organization which contains considerable detail about the position and MFT. The application asks thought-provoking questions that help the applicant assess whether or not they should apply and ensures that those that do apply are better prepared for the interview. 

• The organization is committed to the goal of preserving 100,000 acres of farmland in Maine.  One way they are doing this is by creating strategic alliances with other organizations.  In 2007, MFT partnered with Maine Coast Heritage Trust to preserve 95 acres of Aldermere Farm, and the two organizations collaborated to raise $1.1 million for this project.  This type of cooperation is seldom done because it requires a level of trust and disclosure that is truly rare. 

• One particularly innovative way that MFT has reached out to the community is through their gallery.  They have taken advantage of their downtown Belfast office location to create a gallery that celebrates agriculture in art.  The gallery draws people into their office where they can ask questions about the organization’s work and become more familiar with the organization.  The gallery also allows them to showcase the vitality of Maine farms.

2nd Place - The Telling Room
A writing program dedicated to young writers and storytellers between the ages of 8 and 18, The Telling Room works to meet each student’s passion for writing with equal enthusiasm, provide role models for those looking to further their writing, and to honor the act of storytelling as a vital means of expression and community building. Their application highlighted a strong commitment to their mission and an understanding of their need to build a sustainable future.

• The Telling Room has excelled at creating Strategic Alliances through a highly collaborative model of program delivery.  One example of these partnerships is the relationship they forged with a group of local writers and the Maine College of Art as a part of their Story House Project.  This project helped 15 immigrant and refugee youth living in Portland tell the stories of their journey to America.  Each student was paired with a local professional writer.  These stories are captured in the anthology, I Remember Warm Rain.

• One particularly thoughtful practice that the organization has implemented is their transition process away from their founders.  All three founders still serve as active board members.  Now that their time has come to cycle off the board, the organization has created a succession plan to develop leadership in their current strongest board members.  The plan includes creating an organizational history document that will help shape their next steps as an organization.

• The organization looks to the students they serve to help shape their programs by engaging them in a formal Student Advisory Board and having the students advise the staff on what they do and how they do it.  The direct perspective of the students has been invaluable in shaping their program delivery model. 

 Honorable Mention - Hardy Girls, Healthy Women