Morris Farm is going 21st century on its fundraising, after a pandemic-induced, $30,000 budget shortfall, board chair Madelyn Hennessey said in a phone interview Friday night. A press release hours earlier said the Gardiner Road, Wiscasset nonprofit “is facing an uncertain future.” The release’s headline read: “Your help is needed to keep Morris Farm in the Wiscasset and Midcoast communities.”

Wiscasset Newspaper asked Hennessey a lot of questions to understand where Morris Farm stands. Hennessey answered them all.

Asked if Morris Farm was saying it might cease to exist, Hennessey said: “The current board of directors is quite determined that we will not cease to be. But we’re also looking at the financial reality” of having spent about half the endowment, for lack of programming that “makes friends as well as generates income. So we looked at the end of year figures and said, ‘Huh. Holy cow.’

“If we are conservative and careful and probably defer some more maintenance, then we can go another year.”

She said Morris Farm has for years been “squeaking by” and making budget, but the pandemic took away the ways it has raised money.

If Morris Farm Trust ceased, its assets would have to go to another 501(c)(3), Hennessey said. “How that would be managed, whether by sale or we found another 501(c)(3), we’re avoiding that discussion, because nobody wants to go there.” Morris Farm pays three part-time workers and, “by the skin of our teeth,” the trust’s share of a full-time Vista member’s stipend, Hennessey said. Everything else that needs doing, the dedicated board members do as volunteers, she said. They believe in what the farm is known for – education and trails and preserving a working farm, she said. “Who doesn’t like to see the heifers out in the field in the spring? Those kinds of things are really important to many people.”

“If we thought this was hopeless, we would have just called it, because you don’t work as hard as people have been working, for something that’s a hopeless cause,” Hennessey said in the interview. The release notes the farm store and the stand of free food continue.

Hennessey told Wiscasset Newspaper, “The board has been really hard at work carrying the farm though this ... fallow season (because Morris Farm is) such a valuable resource,” close by, for taking a walk in a field and listening to the trees or hearing a cow moo. “And I know that people want to maintain that.”

Morris Farm hopes to offer a children’s February farm camp, which will be revenue, Hennessey said. And a mostly electronic fundraising campaign is starting. Hennessey said word is going out on Facebook, Instagram and Morris Farm’s e-mail list. “So all of our friends and many of our acquaintances will be tapped.” If $10,000 is raised, the farm gets an anonymous, $5,000 donation, she said. 

Besides the social media and email fundraising campaign, revenue from kitchen, facility and farmland use, and the plan to bring back children’s camps, Hennessey said, by the end of February or early March if conditions permit, the farm is considering doing pre-ordered bean meals. And an outdoor daycare may be coming. A Facebook post on it had 80 responses, Hennessey said. “Clearly, there’s a need.”

She said the pandemic has hurt small nonprofits just like it has hurt people financially. Donations of any size will help, she said. Hennessey has pledged her new $600 stimulus check and, if there is another, at least a good chunk of that will also go to the nonprofit, she said. “And I’m one of those proverbial little old ladies on a fixed income,” she added, laughing. The trust is seeking CARES Act funds. Foundations the trust might have sought help from are instead funding COVID-19 relief it cannot tap because “our activities are not particularly COVID-related,” she explained.

The West Bath selectman shares the rest of the Morris Farm Trust board’s determination the fundraising campaign and other efforts will succeed. “And we have the heart to do it.”

Send any donations to Morris Farm Trust, 156 Gardiner Road, Wiscasset, ME 04578.

Small nonprofits are dealing with an unpredictable time for the events and programs they rely on for revenue, Lincoln County Regional Planning Commission Executive Director Mary Ellen Barnes said.

In a phone interview Monday afternoon, Barnes said organizations like Maine Association of Nonprofits at nonprofitmaine.org can counsel small nonprofits. And she said nonprofits can apply to the Paycheck Protection Program. “It is definitely a lot of work” to apply, and the program is only helping fill a hole short-term, but that and virtual events can help keep groups going while they watch to see when conditions improve, she said.

“They’re all trying to do their best to survive.”