Grief is referred to as “a process.” The idea of grief proceeding neatly through “five stages” initiated with Elizabeth Kubler-Ross. Fifty years ago, she made a noble attempt to detail a progression of emotional states experienced by terminally ill patients after receiving their diagnosis. As a result, this theory gets “inflicted” by well-meaning people on those of us who’ve lost someone we loved deeply.

My purpose isn’t to debate the veracity of Kubler-Ross’s framework. Others have already done that. I will simply say that Mary and I know firsthand that grief doesn’t proceed in an orderly fashion, even if some wish it would. Grieving people will always mourn the loss of someone special and loved, like we loved Mark.

As parents, sometimes we feel like nothing we can do will ever take away the crushing emotional pain and sadness that comes at various times, often unexpectedly. At the same time, we’ve tried to push through the times when the pain of mourning and feelings of hopelessness threaten to overtake us. It’s why we launched the Mark Baumer Sustainability Fund—as a means of memorializing our son. There’s a bonus of sorts, I think, from being engaged in the work of maintaining a foundation in Mark’s memory. The work forces Mary and me to push through merely being sad and focus on doing good for others. It helps infuse us with some hope and creating hope in a world desperate for meaning and purpose counts for something. I believe Mark would have wanted that for us.

In our previous newsletter, I introduced two amazing friends who’ve stepped alongside Mary and me. Not only is their friendship more valuable than gold—both bring skills to bear that we’ve needed to move our vision for building a legacy that matters, for Mark: one committed to raising awareness about the planet, promoting social justice, and engaging with under-served populations directly, with a goal of promoting community renewal.

As we approach the end of another year, I hope you’ll consider making a donation to support our efforts. We’re also pleased to unveil a recurring donation feature that now permits donors to designate a monthly gift amount: whether that amount is $5 or $10, or more each month. Monthly giving like this will help us better plan for the future.

Because we believe in transparency in what we’re doing, please indulge me with this longer-than-usual newsletter, where I share some specificity about our board process. I believe it will enhance your trust in us, and also get enthused about what we’re doing in Mark’s memory.

I encourage you to read to the very end. We’re announcing an exciting fundraising event in the spring of 2019 that you’ll want to learn more about. It’s the kind of event infused with Mark’s physicality: perfect for family, friends, and anyone who admired Mark’s work and who was deeply affected by his death.

The Board Process

In May, our new board met up at the Topsham Park & Ride. We’d decided to carpool. As a team we made the 60-mile drive to the University of Maine at Farmington. As a fledgling foundation, we wanted to be systematic. The full-day, nonprofit boot camp put on by the Maine Association of Nonprofits seemed like it would be a great way to formulate a plan and draw on the experience and resources of Maine’s premiere nonprofit membership organization.

The boot camp was amazing. First, the team-building component was important. We left with the takeaway that this investment of time would deliver returns throughout the remainder of 2018 and beyond. It has.

At our September 30 board meeting, Dave Craig, our vice president, introduced a helpful rubric. By considering our vision statement, he then sought to align it with the following funding goals, relative to organizations we wanted to seek out as possible partners.

They were broken down in the following manner:

• People-centric (empowering people to farm, fish, and sustain unique communities: these might be island, immigrant, rural, etc.)
• Habitat-centric (active in improving the conditions for wildlife and human enjoyment of wildlife)
• Policy-centric (focus on research/education and personal outdoor experience to support environmental policy)
• Property-centric (many of these tend to be larger, well-funded organizations with a focus on preserving specific parcels of land. However, there are also smaller local land trusts, which is where we want to focus)

Two weeks ago, we spent a second Sunday afternoon plugging ideas into our funding rubric. Each member came prepared with three organizations that we thought fit the criteria we’d developed. We then worked through our plan and process, putting information up on the wall via flip charts and discussing the merits of each organization. We talked about funding amounts, too.

Because our board has made a commitment to be intentional in our efforts in 2018, we are pleased by how our newly-developed process has delivered us to this point. We’ve made the following decisions as a team of board collaborators to fund two organizations in a very specific manner.

Supporting New Partners

Mark was a practitioner of yoga. Like meditation, he found the practice centering and restorative. In everything we do, our efforts honor Mark and what he stood for and believed in.

Because of that, we will be awarding a $1,000 grant to Sea Change Yoga. Our donation will be matched, also. This allows us to sponsor a Sea Change instructor for an entire year of weekly classes, ensuring that each week, a dedicated yoga teacher is available to bring their transformative and life-changing practice to neighbors in need.

Sea Change Yoga believes that yoga has the power to heal trauma, and that everyone—especially the most vulnerable—deserve access to the many benefits that yoga offers. Sea Change brings trauma-informed yoga and meditation to correctional facilities, substance use treatment centers, and transitional group homes. Classes are free for Sea Change students. We are excited to be partnering with them in championing yoga as a tool for change and renewal. For more on Sea Change Yoga, please visit their website. Also, they were just featured on WCSH-6’s nightly magazine program, 207.

Growing to Give is a food bank farm project located at Scatter Good Farm in Brunswick. Brunswick is the community where Mary and I have been living since just before Mark was killed. During 2018, the farm produced and donated 17,000 pounds of organic vegetables in the midcoast Maine area and beyond.

We’re excited in announcing a $1,000 award to them that will allow the farm to purchase 30 cubic yards of organic compost. It will be tilled into the soil as part of their annual spring ritual of nourishing the soil. The compost will also allow Growing to Give to add three new growing plots (each one 16 X 50), increasing their capacity to feed those in need in 2019. We plan to be there in the spring when the compost is delivered, and we’ll report out on it.

I see Mark smiling about these two new partnerships, because yoga and nourishing the Earth were central to who he was. These were values he modeled daily for the world to see, particularly in his videos (and via his blog) at the end of his all-too-short lifetime.

In the next few weeks, we’ll finalize details with two additional nonprofits. One is committed to growing sustainable communities by expanding access to healthy, local food, and has an empowerment element to their mission. You can see that empowering others is a theme for us in our first round of coordinated funding. The other partnership we’re seeking to cultivate is with an organization that’s been around for more than a century, with deep community-based roots across the U.S. We want to fund a project that is youth-focused, with a special emphasis on providing a safe space for young people who are often under-served, through a variety of after-school programming. More to come on these funding efforts.

We are also reorienting the Mark Baumer Memorial Scholarship for Young Activists. A board decision was made to direct two awards to graduates of Mark’s alma mater at Greely High School. This will result in two annual scholarships of $1,000 each to a male and female athlete, who are also honor roll students engaged in community service, who will be pursuing a post-secondary program. We will be meeting with school officials soon to finalize details and make sure our application process aligns with their scholarship protocol for graduates.

Another year is coming to a close. As we look beyond the end of 2018 and out into the new year, we are happy to be heralding our first major fundraising event in the spring. We’ll be part of a weekend of activities centered around the 12th annual Providence Rhode Races. Providence was Mark’s home base, and this race weekend has a special significance and meaning for us as his parents. That’s because Mary ran the half marathon back in 2014 with Mark, along with his two cousins, Aja and Joann. I ran the 5K event that year.

To remember Mark and also, as a major fundraising event, we’ve formed the Everymile Yeah team. Board members, as well as family and friends will be running (and walking) together on Sunday, May 5. We hope some of you will join Mary in running the Tufts Health Plan Half Marathon that weekend. Or you can tackle one of the shorter events, too. There might even be a few Everymile Yeah team members wanting to take-on the marathon-length run.

Here is the link to sign-up. If you encounter problems or simply need more information on joining our run team, please contact Mary Baumer via our foundation email at markbaumersustainabilityfund[at]gmail[dot]com. She’ll forward information about the Everymile Yeah registration link and additional details.

As we move through our second season of memories that often threaten to overwhelm: the holidays of Thanksgiving and Christmas, as well as Mark’s birthday on December 19, not to mention the approach of the second anniversary of his death in January, Mary and I, along with our board extend what we hope is something meaningful during the holidays, as well as sending warmth and gratitude to all of you who have remained interested in our work.

Please consider making a contribution to our foundation’s efforts with an end-of-the-year donation, or sign-on to become a monthly giving partner. We’re grateful for your ongoing support of Mark’s work.

As always, feel free to connect with us via email, or by picking up the phone. If you still do the handwritten thing (which is very cool!), a note to P.O. Box 10602 in Portland, Maine 04104 would make us very happy.

Continuing Mark’s memory and mission!

~Jim