Volunteer Profile: Building Community
Susan Hammond, Penobscot County Committee chair, MaineCF board member, and an advocate for Maine's tribes
Growing up in an Air Force family opened Susan Hammond’s eyes to the world, from Washington, D.C., to Japan to Alaska. She remembers delivering newspapers in Anchorage at 5 a.m. when she was in middle school. “That’s the kind of thing you did,” she recalls, “even in the dead of winter.”
Hammond’s determination has shaped her life: Today she oversees a $10-million nonprofit organization that has loaned more than $12.5 million to Wabanaki communities, serves as a MaineCF board member, and leads the foundation’s Penobscot County Committee.
After her father retired, Hammond’s family returned to the Northeast and she spent a semester at the University of Maine. But she still had the urge to travel, so she joined the Air Force and saw more of the world before she came back to Orono and earned a BA in business administration.
Hammond, a tribal member, began economic development work for the Penobscot Nation in 1985 and helped launch a vocational education program. She started a family – “I got a little distracted,” she says with a smile – but soon returned to the Penobscot Nation as finance manager for its health department.
Later, as director of the Tribal Housing Authority, Hammond set out to help tribal members renovate their homes and build new ones. She turned to the community development financial institution (CDFI) model that provides credit and financial services to underserved populations, and in 2001 co-founded Four Directions Development Corporation to help improve social and economic conditions of Maine’s tribal people. In addition to its lending practices, she liked the CDFI developmental services component that provides financial education. At that time, fewer than 10 Native-governed CDFIs existed; today there are more than 70.
“It was a great model to use in Indian country,” says Hammond. She credits MaineCF for its help establishing a cohort of Maine CDFIs that led to partnerships with Main Street Finance, Community Concepts, New Ventures Maine, CEI, Eastern Maine Development Corporation, and the Genesis Fund.
Headquartered in a business complex in Orono along with the UpStart Center for Entrepreneurship and several other organizations, Four Directions provides mortgage, home improvement, small business and community development loans, and often partners with lead lenders in the area, including Bangor Savings Bank. In addition to housing units, Four Directions helped with financing for a health wellness center in the Micmac community in Presque Isle. Most recently it worked with the Penobscot Nation to develop 24 housing units for tribal elders on Indian Island.
Hammond joined MaineCF’s Penobscot County Committee at its founding in 2009 and now serves as its chair. She loves the county model “where people who know their counties come together to make grants, and support capacity-building in their communities.” She praises the committee’s grants for both their range – literacy, arts and culture, community centers – and their focus: significant support to address the opioid crisis through the Penobscot Valley Health Association component fund, which the committee oversees.
Penobscot County has one metropolitan area, Bangor, but is largely rural. That presents myriad challenges – from limited resources to out-migration and lack of health care facilities for older residents, says Hammond. She commends the collaborative spirit of county organizations to address those issues: “They work together and utilize the resources to make the biggest difference and positive change they can.” A number of grant applications feature partnerships.
As a member of MaineCF’s Board of Directors, Hammond is excited by continued work on the foundation’s five strategic goals. “They are critical for the state of Maine,” she says. At the same time, goal-related MaineCF summits bring awareness to challenges and opportunities, she says, and underscore the potential of collaboration.
Whether it’s improving the lives of tribal members, addressing the opioid crisis, or moving Maine forward into the 21st century, Hammond believes those collaborative efforts are crucial. “We can’t succeed alone,” she says, with a gleam in her eye and determination in her voice.
Photo: Susan Hammond in the community room at the new housing facility for tribal elders on Indian Island. Photo Ashley L. Conti
