Homestead Campaign – Triple Crown
TRIPLE CROWN
Help us raise the final $30,838 to complete a $200K matching gift!
A donor has stepped forward with a challenge to raise funds needed
for the Homestead’s $3.5M preservation phase of our restoration effort.
Be a Preservation Donor — Click to Triple Your Gift Value Today!
Seeking the Public Good honors the life and legacy of Frances Perkins, a remarkable woman whose work continues to improve the lives of ordinary Americans. Our campaign seeks to expand educational programs and preserve her historic family Homestead – the place that inspired her pioneering achievements for the betterment of all Americans.
We need your help! 
Honorary campaign co-chairs, former US Senator George Mitchell and Lynn Pasquerella, President of the Association of American Colleges and Universities and former President of Mount Holyoke College, join us in asking you to help us create a national educational center and historic site at the Frances Perkins Homestead in Newcastle, Maine. Your campaign support will preserve and promote the values championed by Frances Perkins, ensuring that her legacy will not be lost to future generations.
We’re well on our way! The Frances Perkins Center, in January 2020, acquired this important landmark from Frances Perkins’ sole heir. We are preserving its landscape and historic structures to open the Homestead to the public. Recent grants from the State of Maine and the National Park Service Save America’s Treasures program are helping us achieve our vision. Your financial partnership at any gift level will allow us to protect Frances Perkins’ beloved home and transform it into a national center for learning and discourse dedicated to her stated belief that government should provide all of its people with the best possible life.
A National Historic Landmark
As a National Historic Landmark, the Frances Perkins Homestead is among our nation’s most significant places. Settled by the Perkins family in the mid-eighteenth century, it is a saltwater farm on the tidal Damariscotta River. Its 1837 Brick House and connected barns sit on 57 acres within a protected landscape of fields and forest bounded by 2.8 miles of picturesque stone walls. The buildings, cultural landscape, and collections offer excellent opportunities to interpret the legacy of Frances Perkins as well as the economic and social history of Maine that shaped her commitment to social welfare.
Today
The Frances Perkins Center inspires people to address current challenges as Perkins would through our work in the areas of education, outreach, and historic preservation. Our nonprofit, nonpartisan Center currently offers public programs from a rented office space in downtown Damariscotta, the town adjacent to Newcastle. While programs like our senior college courses, public policy forums, and traveling exhibit are offered off site, our signature offerings – interpreted tours of the Perkins Homestead with participatory discussions can only be offered at the place itself.
Vision
Locating the Center at the Perkins Homestead will achieve two goals – preserving the place as well as making possible a major expansion of programs to reach wider audiences. These will include school field trips, on-site educational forums, publications, expanded internships, opportunities for scholars, and the ability to host gatherings of labor professionals, policy makers, and others working in fields related to the career of Frances Perkins, sharing the results and lessons of her work through programs of learning and civil discourse that address 21st century economic and social issues.
Gift Consideration
Gifts of all sizes will help us achieve our goals.
We gratefully accept gifts pledged over a 3-year period, as well as gifts of securities.
For more information about our plans or making a gift, please contact:
Development Director
(207) 563-3374