About GrowSmart Maine

GrowSmart Maine's Offices are located in the Sparkhawk Mill building in Yarmouth Village.

GrowSmart Maine is an unusual combination of a ‘think tank’ and an action organization – an ‘Action Tank’. We promote and encourage new ideas and new ways of thinking about the future, including the need for wiser use of limited resources, whether they are taxes, historic buildings, or wildlands.

As sponsors of the landmark 2006 Brookings Institution report, Charting Maine’s Future, we work to expand knowledge, discussion and collaboration between those who work to grow the economy and others who are improving the environment, revitalizing communities, and protecting the character of Maine.

We’re actively bringing together Maine citizens, government, businesses and non-profit organizations to work for a more sustainable prosperity that supports both an improving standard of living and the protection of this state’s unique character.

GrowSmart Maine’s overall “action plan” calls for three initiatives:

• Protect the Maine “brand,” the communities and landscapes that make Maine special and give us a key competitive advantage in recruiting new workers and businesses;
• Invest in new research and development to grow the emergent innovation economy and preserve economic opportunity for all Mainers;
• Reinvent government in order to lower taxes, deliver services more efficiently, and free up resources for other important investments.

Creating and expanding common ground, wherever possible, is a major element of the GrowSmart mission and a key to our success. We can only succeed, as a state, if we develop a new unity and sense of purpose between historic adversaries: business people and environmentalists, conservatives and liberals, Republicans and Democrats. 

Producing understanding, knowledge and action:  We also produce periodic reports, in partnership with world-class researchers and visionary planners, that offer new insights into how Maine is changing and what we can do to shape the future together. But we don’t produce reports to sit on shelves. We also actively help implement change, through broad public education campaigns, organizing and mobilizing people across the state, advertising, generating news coverage and lobbying.