Since René Colson started working for Healthy Island Project in Stonington a decade ago, the small nonprofit has grown to do far more social work than anyone expected.

What began as a community health organization 35 years ago has become a multi-pronged social service agency for the bridged island in Penobscot Bay, which also includes the town of Deer Isle. The nonprofit runs three food pantries, sends schoolchildren home with food, delivers meals to seniors, helps people find and apply for resources, visits them in their homes, and tries to meet whatever needs they have.

“We create our own programs here because we have to. No one is coming here to save us,” said Colson, its executive director. “That did not take me long to figure out.”

The needs just keep growing, according to Colson and members of the organization’s board.

Some of that comes from a yearslong decline in other resources on the island, ongoing inflation and rising housing costs. But federal funding cuts under the Trump administration also mean Healthy Island Project and nonprofits like it are seeing larger gaps, less money available to fill them and more demands on their small staff.

In Stonington, other nonprofits build housing for its workforce, conduct research that helps its lobster industry, run its community center, conserve its land and provide arts programming. It’s an example of how much of the responsibility for providing such services is shifting to outside organizations, which are also filling holes in the state’s social safety net. Those gaps are now being stretched by abrupt changes in federal priorities — and locals are trying to patch them back together.

“Our nonprofits funnel revenue into our towns, and services into our towns, that towns and even state government can’t and don’t provide,” said Linda Nelson, Stonington’s economic development director, who is also a consultant for nonprofits. “So, we’re extremely dependent on those nonprofits for both delivery of services [and] actually acting as pipelines to the funding available for those services.”

Since January, nonprofits nationwide have seen funding abruptly cut, grants canceled and research projects terminated by the Trump administration. That’s taken a toll across sectors in Maine, but particularly health, human services and education, according to Jennifer Hutchins, executive director of the Maine Association of Nonprofits.

“Nonprofits are Maine’s invisible backbone, delivering critical services efficiently, contributing to economic growth and strengthening communities,” she said.

In 2023, about 20% of the state’s workforce was employed by nonprofits, which contributed $16 billion to Maine’s economy that year, the group said.

On a recent Wednesday morning, a former church building bought by Healthy Island Project was bustling. A Good Shepherd truck delivered food to supply its pantries, volunteers packed 130 lunches to deliver to seniors, and people arrived for coffee at tables decorated for Christmas. 

“I don’t know, seriously, what seniors would do without HIP,” said Fran Roudebush, 89, as friends stopped to greet her before coffee hour.

There’s a need for its senior programming because resources have been dwindling on the island, particularly for residents over 65, who made up more than 30% of Stonington’s population in 2023. About 20% of its population lives at or below the poverty line, and almost a quarter of households on the island make less than $25,000 a year, according to a local housing report completed this year.

Hancock County’s last skilled nursing home  shut down in neighboring Deer Isle in 2021, meaning people are staying in their homes for longer, according to Colson. Northern Light Health, which runs the nearest hospital and has ongoing fin ancial problems of its own, no longer employs an island social worker or sends visiting health care specialists.

Federal heating assistance funds previously reached towns through Downeast Community Partners, a community action agency that collapsed this year. Its contracts have been taken over by a similar agency based in Aroostook County, which is in the process of forming a new tri-county agency. Even organizations that have resources available in theory often don’t have enough money or staff to make it to the island, Colson said.

At the same time, inflation continues while a worsening shortage of affordable year-round housing threatens the economy and community, according to local officials and residents.

Island Workforce Housing, a nonprofit that creates housing that workers can afford, has built apartments on the island and is building more to help meet that need.

It has never received federal funding, which isn’t available for people in the middle-income range. But its work is an example of how nonprofits fund projects that communities need by attracting donors when public money isn’t available, according to Pamela Dewell, its executive director.

Some of the housing is needed for the town’s lobster industry, the busiest in Maine. A local report earlier this year said lobster dealers often house their own employees in order to keep a workforce.

Other aspects of the industry are researched and supported by the Maine Center for Coastal Fisheries, another local nonprofit that aims to keep fisheries sustainable and economically viable.

Grants it received during the Biden administration were canceled earlier this year, according to Executive Director Alexa Dayton, who declined to say what projects were affected. Some were later reinstated.

The center’s work reaches beyond Stonington, but it runs a free museum there, offers a maritime mentoring and education program for high school students, and conducts research relevant to the town’s fishing community, like opportunities for lobstermen to diversify their income with scallops and a cost survey of lobstering that could help inform new gear rules. Those three initiatives received federal money.

Dayton is less sure what will happen a year from now when current grants come to an end and new ones don’t open up, though she said she sees opportunities to get creative.

Fisheries research matters for Stonington because it needs to stay on the “cutting edge” and be able to help drive policy, according to Nelson.

Still, she and others interviewed for this story noted, federal funding has waxed and waned under different administrations; the island has been through lean times before.

Now, Nelson is encouraging wealthy and seasonal residents to make larger donations. So far, nonprofits said, they have been generous.

“When you say communities have to do it for themselves, we mean that the people that have resources need to take care of the people that don’t,” Nelson said. “It’s really as simple as that.”

As other organizations lose funding, Colson, of Healthy Island Project, expects to see more gaps that her nonprofit and its small staff will try to fill.

Though the group doesn’t receive federal money directly, fruits and vegetables for its ever-expanding food pantries come from Good Shepherd, which was hit by cuts earlier this year. People are still anxious about what’s ahead, what aid they might lose, or if their insurance costs will rise, according to Colson.

“We have grown, and our budget has continued to grow, in response to the needs around us at a time when the federal government has made severe cuts,” she said.

Competition for outside grants has also increased dramatically as other organizations lose federal funding and look to make up the difference. A growing Healthy Island Project is also applying to more of them than ever before.

But some funders are now limiting how much they award and how often, according to Susan Toder, a member of the group’s board. The organization is ready to do the work whenever money becomes available, she added.

Toder spoke with a reporter while packaging biscuits with Edythe Courville, 89, who has lived on the island since she was 3 years old — before a bridge connected it to the mainland. Throughout her life, the island has always been close knit, with residents ready to help each other, Courville said.

Despite the challenges and continued uncertainty, the women love both their work and a community ready to meet whatever needs arise. Spirits seemed high as the coffee hour started.

“What we do should be filled with light and joy and happiness,” Colson said. “We’re not defeated in any sense.”

His comments came Wednesday, a day after the Maine Department of Health and Human Services halted payments to a provider that allegedly overbilled for interpreter services by more than $1 million. The BDN also published a story detailing a never-before-seen report written by a federal agent that raised concerns five years ago about potential widespread fraudulent billing for interpreter services in Maine.

“I think it’s something that we need to take a serious look at,” Timberlake said.

The 2020 report from a federal agent flagged Maine’s expenditures on interpreter services as entering the territory of waste, abuse or fraud. Claims were rising despite a steady or falling number of newly arrived refugees. The report came about a year after the federal government prosecuted three providers along with two interpreters, who fraudulently billed MaineCare for millions of dollars’ worth of interpreter services that didn’t happen or were overinflated.

Data obtained by the BDN shows the levels of spending that were flagged by the reports have continued. A review of claims submitted and dollars spent on interpreters shows that consistently over the last 10 years, a handful of organizations by far have filed and gotten the most of the $41 million the state has spent.

One of them is Gateway Community Services, the Portland-based company that has faced allegations of overbilling from a former employee, first published by The Maine Wire, the media arm of the conservative Maine Policy Institute.

The move by DHHS came a day after U.S. Rep. James Comer of Kentucky, the top Republican on the House oversight committee, sent a letter to the U.S. Treasury that flagged Gateway along with a host of current and former employees as potential targets of a broader welfare fraud investigation being conducted by the panel. Comer’s letter directly tied for the first time Gateway to the committee’s investigation that has largely been focused on Minnesota.

There was no reaction from top elected Democrats on Wednesday. A spokesperson for Gov. Janet Mills, who is running for U.S. Senate in 2026, did not respond to a request for comment. Nor did Sen. Henry Ingwersen of Arundel and Rep. Michele Meyer of Eliot, the co-chairs of the legislative committee overseeing MaineCare.

Several candidates running to succeed the term-limited Mills have put pressure on her administration over the issue this month. One of them, health tech entrepreneur Owen McCarthy, praised The Maine Wire’s reporting and called for an audit of government agencies in a Facebook post.

Assistant Maine Senate Minority Leader Matt Harrington, R-Sanford, has raised concerns since May about Gateway and more broadly about the state’s spending on interpreting services. He said for months now he’s wanted top state officials to open an investigation into the spending.

As the new legislative session approaches, Harrington said he thinks more calls for action and investigation are coming. However, the calls won’t be new, he said. State republicans have been calling on Mills for months now to look into these issues, Harrington said.

“For me, I would just like to see it taken seriously, from [Attorney General Aaron Frey], from the Mills administration,” he said. “The silence is really deafening.”

Over the past year, Bangor Daily News photographers and reporters took hundreds of photos that captured the myriad of people and places that defined Maine.  

These highlights are just a small slice of the many lives and experiences the BDN documented in 2025.

January

February

Rep. Laurel Libby, R-Auburn, speaks on the floor of the Maine House of Representatives at the State House in Augusta on Tuesday, Feb. 11, 2025. Libby was a significant figure as Maine battled Trump administration directives to restrict transgender girls from participating on the school team that aligns with their gender, among other policies recognizing transgender people under state law. Credit: Linda Coan O’Kresik / BDN

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March

Caribou captain Madelynn Deprey celebrates toward the crowd after an emotional overtime win in the Class B state basketball championship game on March 1, 2025, at the Cross Insurance Arena in Portland. Credit: Emilyn Smith / BDN 

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U.S. Army Brig. Gen. Diane Dunn, the adjutant general of the Maine National Guard, answers a reporter’s questions in her office at the Maine National Guard headquarters at Camp Chamberlain in Augusta on March 31, 2025. She was one source that the BDN talked to in an investigation into the culture that allowed sexual assault and harassment in the organization to go unchecked. Credit: Sawyer Loftus / BDN

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April

Rebecca Nicolino Parsons and her service dog Otis are photographed on the footbridge in Bangor in April. The Maine Human Rights Commission ruled that there are “reasonable grounds to believe that unlawful discrimination occurred” at Hellas Condominiums by Old Town, Maine, against Rebecca Parsons. Credit: Linda Coan O’Kresik / BDN

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May

More than 300 cattle moved through Jeff Tilton’s auction barn in Corinth on May 10 for the annual spring sale, one of the only places Maine farmers can consistently buy and sell livestock. It takes roughly two weeks to line up trucking, buyers, sellers, vaccinations, ear tags and pens, plus sorting, separating and weighing the animals when they arrive. Credit: Elizabeth Walztoni / BDN

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June

A Sargent truck was the first to travel the new I-395/Route 9 connector following a ribbon-cutting ceremony for the grand opening. The new connector was a point of controversy, especially for residents of Brewer, Holden and Eddington who had their land affected by the construction of the new highway. Credit: Linda Coan O’Kresik / BDN 

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July

The entrance to the Mic Mac Cove Family Campground in Union is sandwiched between a variety store and the public elementary school Sunshine Stewart attended as a child. Stewart’s killing in early July rocked the small town of Tenants Harbor. Credit: Elizabeth Walztoni / BDN 

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University of Maine President Joan Ferrini-Mundy poses for a portrait on the University of Maine’s Mall in Orono, July 21, 2025. The university system faced a number of challenges over the past year due to funding cuts implemented by the Trump administration. Credit: Sawyer Loftus / BDN 

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August

Kristina Ryberg, 62, and Donald Jewett, 71, can’t afford their Bucksport property taxes this year after a hike that local officials have mostly attributed to using up the stored funds that offset the closure of the town’s paper mill a decade ago. “We’re about to lose what we worked so hard for just because we lost the mill and haven’t adjusted to that,” Jewett told town councilors in August. Credit: Elizabeth Walztoni / BDN 

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September

On March 16, 2024, a Maine state trooper repeatedly punched Justin Savage in the face while he lay restrained in the driveway of his Limerick home, leaving him almost unrecognizable. The beating, captured on video, depicts a use of force that policing experts say is rarely justified. The Maine State Police thought differently. Credit: Courtesy Garrick Hoffman 

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Cooper Flagg signs sports cards for kids before the 2025 Maine Sports Hall of Fame at the Gracie Theater on Sunday. Flagg’s mother Kelly Bowman Flagg was one of the inductees for her time as a player and coach at Nokomis High School, where NBA rookie Cooper Flagg would start his soaring basketball career. Credit: Linda Coan O’Kresik / BDN 

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October

Dorie Henning, a nurse practitioner at the Islesboro Health Center, has seen an increase in tick-borne diseases — and fears about them — in her 11 years working on the island. Islesboro had a higher rate of these illnesses than any other Maine town between 2018 and 2022, according to state data. Credit: Elizabeth Walztoni / BDN

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November

Bangor’s new councilors from left Susan Faloon, Daniel Carson and Angela Walker are sworn in to the City Council on Nov. 10 at City Hall. Walker, who has a criminal record, drew criticism from right-wing media after she won a seat in the crowded 2025 Bangor City Council election. Credit: Linda Coan O’Kresik / BDN 

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December

Alex Emery moves his belongings out of the encampment near Penobscot Plaza in Bangor where he was living when a cleanup crew from the railroad company CSX  arrived early on the morning of Dec. 22 with construction machinery to clean up tents, trash and other remnants of the encampment. Credit: Linda Coan O’Kresik / BDN

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