Land boom | Maine Coast Heritage Trust Interim President David MacDonald on the organization's blockbuster 2007
And while David MacDonald, MCHT's director of land protection and interim president, touts the strategic plan, he can't help but give some of the credit to simple good fortune. "Fate, luck, timing — a lot came together," he says.
But you make your own luck. The land trust protects Maine's coastal areas from development, ensuring that they continue to function as important economic assets for the state. "The Maine brand is about beauty, recreation and quality of place," MacDonald says. "In a worldwide economy, it's our number one competitive advantage."
To better maintain that advantage, MCHT in 2000 shifted from project-specific fundraising to launching its first major capital campaign, Campaign for the Coast, with an ambitious goal of $100 million in five years. It was a bold move, MacDonald says, but it was one that inspired landowners and private donors to be bold as well — especially when the trust continued its efforts after 9/11 and the economic slump that followed. In 2006, the trust surpassed its goal. "That campaign gave us the ability to compete in the marketplace, and not just wait for a donation of land," says MacDonald, who has worked at the land trust for 16 years and assumed the role of interim president last month.
The $104 million in its pocket has has allowed the trust to keep growing, a major initiative set out in the five-year plan it established in 2005. In 2007, the trust added three more positions to its 40-person staff, opened an office in Columbia Falls and created the Conservation Innovation Program, designed to find new sources of funding and further establish community and business partnerships.
MacDonald has spent years watching the organization grow. A native of Mount Desert Island, MacDonald worked as a freelance writer and a land surveyor in Bowdoinham before joining the land trust's staff. He's been director of land protection for eight years, leading a staff of 10 from the organization's Mount Desert Island office that fans out across the state to meet with landowners and coordinate projects in the field.
MacDonald has seen the Maine Coast Heritage Trust transition from solely brokering land transactions to becoming a landowner in its own right. The land trust itself now owns 7,000 acres of land along the entire coast and protects through conservation easements another 14,000 acres — which doesn't include the roughly 150,000 acres the trust has conserved through partnerships with smaller land trusts. A larger part of the trust's work is shifting to managing that property and monitoring easements to ensure landowners are upholding the rules. "It raises a whole host of interesting issues," MacDonald says.
The trust also will have to weather a change in leadership. Last September, the organization's 20-year president, Jay Espy, left to become executive director of the Elmina B. Sewall Foundation in Kennebunk. MacDonald will continue to juggle his responsibilities as director and interim president until the board finds a new president, which likely will happen by mid-year. MacDonald, who says it's "unlikely" that he'll apply to become MCHT's permanent president, sees the transition as a chance for the organization to embrace new opportunities.
"There's never a great time to have someone like Jay leave," he says, "but he did leave the organization in terrific shape."
Most Recent
Most Recent
Comments