BAR HARBOR, Maine - A College of the Atlantic program that helps students set up sustainable business ventures and receive college credit is getting a $1.5 million grant from a foundation honoring a former Mount Desert Island summer resident.
The grant from the Diana Davis Spencer Foundation will provide the program - called "The Hatchery" - with money for support staff, and seed funding for startups.
Jay Friedlander, who runs The Hatchery, says that's not the best thing about the grant: "The best thing about the grant, and one of the things we're really grateful for, is that it allows us to do this in perpetuity because it endows The Hatchery. So we can do this for generations of students to come."
An endowment is a donation intended for the ongoing support of an organization, rather than to be used as a one-time gift.
Hatchery ventures have a focus on sustainability, and can be for-profit or not-for-profit. Some of The Hatchery's past ventures have focused on turning food waste into biofuel, and creating economic development from ending carbon emissions on Mount Desert Island.
