Alice Blum Yoakum continues the philanthropic legacy of her father, Robert Blum, who helped found the Maine Community Foundation. Katherine Emery photo
The exact details have blurred over the past four decades. But Maine Community Foundation lore has it that when Ed Kaelber, its founder, told friend Robert Blum about his endeavor to build a better Maine, Blum pulled out his wallet and handed him $10 on the spot.
It may have been a check. Or maybe it was a $10 bill. Either way, the contribution became MaineCF’s first donor-advised fund. Blum’s initial donation may have been small, but his impact on Maine is outsized – and three generations of the Blum family continue his philanthropic legacy.
The businessman and Brooklyn native was a supporter and catalyst for several community foundations and institutions. He helped start the Berkshire-Taconic Foundation in Sheffield, Massachusetts, and the Bahamas National Trust and sat on the board of New York Community Trust. Kaelber, who at the time had just retired as president of College of the Atlantic (COA), asked for Blum’s expertise to start a community foundation in Maine.
“My father believed in the power of community foundations,” said his daughter, Alice Blum Yoakum.
The first community foundation, The Cleveland Foundation, was built on the concept that philanthropic resources could be endowed and managed by the members of a community for the benefit of a community. It embodied the idea that community foundations would be permanent but flexible, democratic in spirit, and committed to solving some of society’s toughest challenges, while focused on a particular place.
MaineCF is building on that vision. Anchored in the love of this beautiful and rugged place, the foundation has brought people, resources, and ideas together so that communities across Maine can thrive.
The Blums were avid mariners who first sailed to Mount Desert Island from Long Island Sound in the early 1930s. They fell in love with 45 acres above the craggy coast in Pretty Marsh and it’s here where Yoakum has spent every summer since 1934.
Ellen Marcher, left, and Elizabeth Yoakum, center, share their mother’s love of Maine. Katherine Emery photo
Yoakum learned to love Maine as her parents did – from the water. She found a passion for sailing and recalls weekend races and a successful navigation around the perimeter of Mount Desert Island. She spent evenings jitterbugging at the Asticou Inn dances in Northeast Harbor, and days hiking in Acadia National Park. Summer trips to the Pretty Marsh home continued throughthe childhoods of her two daughters, Ellen Marcher and Elizabeth Yoakum. A civic leader in Connecticut and former family lawyer, Yoakum believes in the power of community – from neighbors helping neighbors, to philanthropic endeavors.
Yoakum and her husband started their own donor-advised fund at MaineCF in 1984. Through this fund, Yoakum supports organizations and initiatives that
help create healthy communities: from food security, transportation, and medical care for older adults, to housing, education and environmental causes. MaineCF also holds the Alice B. Yoakum Scholarship Fund that supports College of the Atlantic undergrads who plan to work in biodiversity and ocean preservation.
Community foundations are about a common commitment to a place and to each other. “It’s crucial,” Yoakum says, “that people look out for
their neighbors and take part in the systems around them: Connection – that’s the work that community foundations do – they support people and organizations to meet the needs of communities.”
