Don’t need your stimulus check? MDI program encourages sharing
Courtesy / Share Our Stimulus MDI
Share Our Stimulus MDI is a website encouraging people who don’t need at least part of their stimulus checks to donate it to nonprofits that help others.
A $1,200 stimulus check may be an extra windfall for some. But for others facing unemployment or loss of business, it falls far short of paying the bills.
That’s where an innovative initiative on Mount Desert Island comes in.
Share Our Stimulus MDI encourages people to share their stimulus checks with island neighbors who need it most.
“If you can afford to donate all or part of your check, you will help someone feed their family, avoid eviction, buy much needed medication or pay for childcare so they can continue working at the hospital or grocery store,” the website says.
The site was created and is being maintained by Gary Friedmann & Associates, a nonprofit consultancy in Bar Harbor.
The site is hosted by the Mount Desert Island Nonprofit Alliance, an informal group of nonprofit professionals that meets monthly to discuss trends in nonprofit management and fundraising and talk about issues facing the profession.
Share Our Stimulus MDI, or SOS MDI, has been getting a couple dozen hits per day and has raised thousands of dollars for local organizations helping those most impacted by the current crisis, Friedmann told Mainebiz.
The site went live April 16. Click here to visit.
Similar programs in Maine and around the country, he explained, create pooled funds that need to be administered. By contrast, Share Our Stimulus MDI provides a vehicle that allows people to donate directly to organizations.
That makes it difficult to track how much money has been raised through the program. But data analytics on the site’s administrative side show it’s getting almost 200 visits per week. Just over one-third click on one of the listed organization's “donate” buttons.
The biggest number of clicks is going to the Bar Harbor Food Pantry and to the Westside Food Pantry and Common Good Soup Kitchen in Southwest Harbor.
Friedmann founded Gary Friedmann & Associates in 1992. Since then, he and his associates have helped dozens of Maine nonprofits raise almost $100 million over the last 35 years.
The idea for SOS MDI, he said, came about through discussions with his colleagues, who wanted to help local families, and with input from nonprofit leaders across MDI.
“When we were setting this up, we figured MDI might receive as much as $6 million in stimulus funds,” he said.
Of that, the group thought that perhaps 10% to 20% of recipients wouldn’t need at least part of what they received.
“We figured there’s probably $1 million of stimulus checks that could be shared,” he continued. “When we started contemplating those numbers, we thought, ‘This is something really worth doing.’”
The idea was further inspired by other helper websites or Facebook pages that had sprung up in response to the pandemic, such as sites that make it possible for people to offer transportation or do errands for local residents in need.
“But there wasn’t a clearinghouse for funding,” he said.
SOS MDI lists nonprofits that assist with things like food, housing, transportation, health and childcare. There’s a brief description of each nonprofit’s increased activity since the start of the pandemic, a link to its website, and a “donate now” button.
The Bar Harbor Food Pantry, for example, has seen as much as a 60% increase in expenditures for food distribution since the COVID-19 crisis began. Common Good Soup Kitchen has seen a 40% increase at a time when its sources of reduced-cost and gleaned provisions are dwindling, forcing it to buy food on the open market.
“We’ll keep going with it as long as there’s a need, and there clearly is a need,” Friedmann said.
Friedmann, a Bar Harbor town councilor, said he hears from local small businesses, which are heavily dependent on tourism to Acadia National Park. Small business owners, he said, are wondering if there will be a tourism season at all this year.
“People are struggling right now and some of them are really scared,” he said.
Most Recent
Most Recent
0 Comments