How We Started

Maine Needs started in January of 2019 in a garage north of Portland and as a Facebook group to create a bridge between those donating things regularly with those who were working with caseworkers, teachers, nurses and street outreach teams and knew what specific, basic items were needed by so many, ie; main needs. Things like baby clothes, diapers, cleaning supplies, toiletries, backpacks, bedding, kitchen items, childrens toys, books and art supplies. The goal was to use social media as an active bulletin board, informing the community of what the community's needs were and learning together. The more we learned about just how many people were going without things that most of us take for granted, like soap, toilet paper, clean underwear, diapers, newborn baby clothes, etc. The more it grew.

That Facebook group grew to 9000+ people who wanted to help and is still full of local providers making requests. In the Spring of 2019, a mini donation center inside of the Root Cellar was set up for caregivers with babies. It was called Maine Baby and it was our first realization of just how many people were willing to give of their time to help. We used our social media following on Facebook and Instagram to fundraise for our own donation center in October of 2020 and moved into our donation center the same month that we were granted our 501c3 status.

Maine Needs has around 40,000 local followers of social media and reaches the needs of people in Maine in all 16 counties. We are committed to keeping our doors wide open to anyone in the community that wants to help and have welcomed in over 1000 volunteers and until recently, we were entirely volunteer run. Thousands of people have also worked to create essential kits like cleaning & toiletry kits, mini warmth kits for our unhoused neighbors, art kits for young children and minute for mom kits for burnt out caregivers.