2007 Dirigo Award for Nonprofit Excellence Winners

Friends of Casco Bay - 1st Place
Friends of Casco Bay was founded in 1989 to Improve and Protect the Environmental Health of Casco Bay. For seventeen years, Friends of Casco Bay has been the leading environmental organization working to improve and protect the environmental health of Casco Bay through advocacy, education, collaborative partnerships, and water quality monitoring.

Why did they win a 2007 Dirigo Award for Nonprofit Excellence? Here are a few of the highlights of this mid-sized nonprofit:

• Very dedicated Board of Directors. They have a 100% contribution rate and enhance public standing with lots of events and gatherings, such as the annual Hook and Slice Tournament, and a brand-new annual event honoring Bay keeper Joe Payne. This event marked a bold move for the organization – the replacement of a financially reliable annual auction with a more mission-oriented annual event.
  
  
• Science-based advocacy organization that organizes forums for the public, encourages public participation, and educates the public through many means. For example, they built a lot of public momentum around the cruise ship pollution and in 2006 the US EPA designated the Bay as a No Discharge Area, making it the most protected body of water in the nation with respect to vessel discharges.
  
  
• Innovative and well-managed organization in all of the eleven guiding management principles. They are truly well-rounded, with lots of management practices that can serve as an example to other nonprofits. For instance, the organization’s executive director is a CPA, making financial management, compliance, and separation of duty an integral part of the organizational culture.

Coastal Enterprises Incorporated - 2nd Place
CEI is a private, nonprofit Community Development Corporation (CDC) and Community Development Financial Institution (CDFI) founded in 1977 to develop job-creating natural resources and small business ventures in primarily rural regions of Maine. A pioneer in the CDC/CDFI field, CEI is one of the nation's premiere rural CDC/CDFIs. CEI serves all of Maine, its primary market, and areas of northern New England and upstate New York.

Why did they win a 2007 Dirigo Award for Nonprofit Excellence? Here are a few of the highlights from this large-sized nonprofit:

• CEI keeps mission at the center of all of its many programs and planning, which makes consistency and focus two major strengths of the organization. This occurs despite a very large workforce (84 full-time) and programs that operate over a vast geographical area in Maine, New Hampshire and points beyond.
  
  
• Their planning processes (strategic planning, annual retreat and monthly staff meetings) encourage information sharing and staff camaraderie.
  
  
• They have been entrepreneurial in taking advantage of market opportunities to raise capital for investing in businesses and social ventures that fit the criteria of their mission.
  
  
• They have an excellent employee benefits plan and encourage continuing education through Lifelong Learning Accounts (LiLA), thus contributing to a stable workforce with very turnover.

Schoodic Arts for All - 3rd Place
Schoodic Arts for All was founded in 1999 to bring art and culture to the Schoodic Peninsula area and surrounding communities in Downeast Maine. Since 1999, they have provided music, art, dance, theater, writing, crafts, poetry, sculpture, fiber arts, and jazz in performances and workshops at affordable prices. In order to encourage families to attend events together, children are admitted free to all 90 performances.

Why did they win a 2007 Dirigo Award for Nonprofit Excellence? Here are a few of the highlights from this small-sized nonprofit:

• Volunteers run programs – including the volunteer program – and manage program budgets. This allows management to spend their time elsewhere, which increases management capacity and allows resources that would have been spent on staff to be used in other areas.
  
  
• Thorough consideration of new program ideas. “Darwinian” in nature, the process strictly scrutinizes current, sometimes long-standing programs and compares them to new program ideas with full consideration of relative effectiveness. They have been known to exterminate old programs, even when popular, if the cost out weighs the benefit.
  
  
• Effective use of technology. They have a database that is custom designed to manage and track volunteers and a very efficient donor database. Though they are a small budget organization, they make technology work for them and use their human resources wisely and strategically.