In 2003 the Maine Community Foundation launched a major higher education initiative in partnership with the Maine Development Foundation.
The Maine Compact for Higher Education has quickly become Maine’s champion for higher education, providing long-term leadership for a coordinated effort to achieve the vision. Read more about the Maine Compact for Higher Education's Action Plan for raising college attainment in PDF format.
The foundation is the recent recipient of two, three-year grant awards from Lumina Foundation for Education and the Ford Foundation for the Employer Initiative which will be led by the Maine Development Foundation.
The Employer Initiative provides Maine's public and private employers with technical assistance, training and statewide recognition for forward-looking workforce education policies. The program is a response to the lagging educational attainment of Maine’s workforce, which represents a major competitive disadvantage for the state's public and private employers.
The Employer Initiative is one of the five action strategies of the Maine Compact for Higher Education, which seeks to increase the number of degree holders in Maine by 40,000 above current projections by the year 2020. MDF administers the Employer Initiative on the behalf of the Compact.
The Compact’s workplan provides details about this and other action strategies.