Nearly 100 Maine social and environmental activists are in the final stages of drafting a strategic plan they hope will bolster their work. The unified plan will be submitted to the Blueprint Project, a program sponsored by the public foundation the Proteus Fund, based in Amherst, Massachusetts. The program is designed to bring chronically independent advocacy groups together to craft a state “blueprint” for social change. According to Meg Gage, president and executive director of Proteus, the foundation could supply from $500,000 to $1 million to the Maine coalition, renewable annually. Maine’s Blueprint plan application will likely be submitted this spring.
In 2005, Proteus selected Maine and Wisconsin to launch Blueprint. Sarah Standiford, executive director of the Maine Women’s Lobby and the Maine spokesperson for Blueprint, is light on details about the nature and cost of state advocates’ developing strategic plan, but says the project, if funded, could make advocacy groups here a lot more effective.
“I think what’s most important for people to understand is that the process itself is unprecedented in the number of people involved and the number of organizations who have put their hats aside and their different constituencies aside to sit down and talk about having a better impact on the state and being more powerful in the work that we do,” she says.
Local activists have met several times over the last four months to hammer out exactly what infrastructure they need to be more effective. Participating groups include Environment Maine, the Maine People’s Alliance, and the Maine League of Young Voters. Advocates clustered into subgroups, according to one participating member, focused on aspects of advocacy work like media outreach and political lobbying. The next step is to join the subgroup suggestions into one plan.
