Nonprofit notebook: Portland arts spot is crowdfunding; CEI gets $100K gift

Musicians on stage at One Longfellow Square

Photo / Peter Van Allen Unable to hold concerts or other performances because of COVID-19 restrictions, One Longfellow Square in Portland is struggling to stay afloat.

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By Renee Cordes

One Longfellow Square, a nonprofit Portland performing arts venue struggling to survive because of COVID-19, has launched a crowdfunding drive to raise enough money to help pay bills and get by until the middle of 2021.

"In the best of times, the music industry has a hard time making ends meet," the venue says on its crowdfunding site. By late morning Tuesday, it had raised more than $40,000 from 495 contributors in a day, towards a $100,000 goal.

"However, the very feature that makes OLS special — its small size and intimate space — will also make it hard to get back to business as usual in the face of the COVID-19 pandemic. It’s difficult to imagine when it will feel comfortable sitting shoulder to shoulder with fellow music lovers in our small venue."

Even when it is able to open, OLS notes that it faces stringent capacity restrictions because of the pandemic, and that current restrictions limit it to no more than five people in the venue at a time. "Until we can fully reopen with no limits on our audience size, the numbers simply don’t work."

One Longfellow Square, located at 181 State St., began in 2007 as a for-profit business and became a nonprofit in 2011, using members' gifts to cover the gap between show revenues and costs.

To be a viable business, the organization said it needs to sell an average of 100-plus tickets per show and sell out numerous shows during the year.

It's already using money from a federal Payroll Protection Program loan to keep a skeletal staff busy. It has been doing live streams and working on business strategies, and is trying to "stay alive for the duration," the venue said.

One Longfellow Square also said it launched the GoFundMe campaign as a last resort to save the venue. If able to reach its $100,000 goal for a short-term lifeline until mid-2021, it hopes to resume business as usual after that.

"The creative sector of Portland is a true economic driver, and OLS plays a key role in that along with all the music venues in town," Jeff Beam, program director and venue manager for One Longfellow Square, told Mainebiz on Tuesday.

"It's a partnership we have in this community's ecosystem," he added. "People from all over Maine and beyond come to our venue to see their favorite artists, but before the show, they eat dinner at a nearby restaurant. Our shows end early, so our folks grab drinks at the nearby bars afterward, too. To lose OLS would be to lose an important pillar of Portland's creative and economic identity."

Donations can be made here.

$100K donation to CEI

Coastal Enterprises Inc. a Brunswick-based community development financial institution, said Monday that it has received a $100,000 donation towards its efforts in providing services to those affected by COVID-19 in Maine. The donation was made by the TD Charitable Foundation, the charitable giving arm of TD Bank.

"We recognize that COVID-19 has disproportionately impacted vulnerable populations, including small businesses in the community that were forced to alter their operations during government mandated shutdowns," Sheryl McQuade, TD Bank's regional president for the northern New England region, said in a news release.

"Through our work with CEI, TD is focused on providing the tools and technical assistance small businesses hardest hit by the pandemic need to achieve stability and success in this volatile economic environment," added McQuade, who was interviewed by Mainebiz in July 2019 shortly after assuming her current role.

CEI said that more than 70% of people and communities it works with have low incomes.

Last year, the organization provided 100 loans totaling $13.5 million to small businesses and advised 1,484 Maine entrepreneurs.

In the first two and a half months of the COVID-19 pandemic, CEI business advisers held more than 2,000 coaching sessions with owners of small businesses, nearly twice the volume in a typical year.

CEI It said the funds from the TD Charitable Foundation will help it continue to provide individualized technical assistance services Maine small businesses need over the next 12 months.

File photo / Tim Greenway

Betsy Biemann, CEO of Coastal Enterprises Inc., was honored as a Mainebiz Woman to Watch in 2019. The community development financial institution released its 2020 impact report on Wednesday.

“This donation from TD Charitable Foundation will help CEI provide urgently needed advice to Maine entrepreneurs as they navigate through the COVID-19 pandemic,” said CEI CEO Betsy Biemann, a 2019 Mainebiz Woman to Watch, in Monday's announcement.

"Our clients are disproportionately people with low incomes, women, immigrants and refugees, people of color, veterans and people with disabilities – the very people that are most at risk in this public health and economic crisis. Their needs are unprecedented and ongoing. We are simultaneously responding in real time and planning for what will be needed next.”