Collaborative hires network facilitator

BETHEL — The Bethel Area Nonprofit Collaborative (BANC) achieved a large stride ahead in its development this month by hiring a network facilitator. Jessie Seymour Perkins will serve to enhance and build meaningful connections among Greater Bethel Area nonprofit organizations by facilitating collaboration through activities, communications, fundraising and much more.

Perkins is an alum of Dartmouth College and a Maine native with roots in the Bethel area. She brings to BANC several years of working with nonprofit outreach programs, including traveling thousands of miles back and forth across Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, and New York with the Northern Forest Center’s mobile museum, Ways of the Woods. Most recently, she has organized the Androscoggin River Watershed Council’s Source to the Sea Trek. She also has a background in marketing and communications and enjoys putting it to work for nonprofits. She lives in Bethel with her husband Gabe Perkins, and together they participate in skiing, hiking, gardening, and renovating their old house.

In her capacity as network facilitator, Perkins will create and strengthen links among the Bethel area’s nonprofit community by facilitating and formalizing BANC’s strategic planning; expanding opportunities for collaborative ventures; enhancing existing, and developing new, internal and external communications among the BANC network and other area nonprofits; securing funding to ensure BANC’s sustainability; and engaging the public in BANC’s efforts through public forums, traditional and social media, and volunteerism.

The position is funded by Environmental Funders Network to support Quality of Place goals which will allow BANC to take important steps forward in its mission of helping area nonprofits enhance organizational efficiency, expand fundraising opportunities, strengthen impact in the community, improve ability to meet organizational mission and build trust and capacity in the community.

Among her first priorities is to create a BANC website which will feature BANC member organizations, a community calendar which can be accessed and edited by BANC members, a discussion forum, a new e-mail address for BANC and much more. An announcement will be released when the new site is launched. BANC membership, for annual dues of $25, is open to all area nonprofits; a 501(c)3 designation is not required.

For more information contact Perkins at 754-8158 or write to jessie.s.perkins@gmail.com.