Niweskok reaches $3MM campaign goal early and expands its vision and campaign

Learn how Niweskok: From the Stars to Seeds launched its first major capital campaign, secured a 245-acre farm debt-free, reached its full $3MM goal ahead of schedule, and is now raising additional funds to develop the infrastructure for a permanent Wabanaki foodways campus.

Niweskok: From the Stars to Seeds is a Wabanaki-led nonprofit working to rematriate Wabanaki lifeways through traditional foods, healing, ecological stewardship, and cultural education.

Its work serves communities of the Wabanaki Confederacy and focuses on restoring the Penobscot Bay region as a Wabanaki food hub. The name Niweskok translates from Penobscot as “dried seeds for planting,” as well as “essence of life” and “spirit.”

For years, Niweskok carried out its programs on borrowed, leased, and public lands. Its leaders envisioned something different: a permanent land base where Wabanaki people could grow food and medicine, gather, teach, learn, and reconnect with the coastal Penobscot Bay region for generations to come.

The Challenge:

In 2023, Niweskok began seriously exploring the possibility of acquiring its own farm. The organization developed clear criteria for the land it needed, including agricultural and wooded acreage, access to water, proximity to tribal communities, and a clear, unencumbered title that would enable Niweskok to care for and use the land according to its cultural needs.

Then, in May 2024, the team found a 245-acre property in Swanville, Maine, that met nearly everything on its wish list. But the opportunity came with a significant fundraising challenge.

Funding commitments Niweskok had expected from partners changed just as the organization needed to move quickly. Another buyer could make an offer on the farm at any time, and Niweskok’s co-directors suddenly found themselves stepping into new roles as major-gift fundraisers.

None had previously led fundraising at this scale.

Niweskok launched an ambitious $3 million capital campaign to secure the property and begin creating the permanent Wabanaki food and education hub its leaders and community had envisioned.

The Solution:

Capital Campaign Pro paired Niweskok with Advisor Dedee, who worked alongside the organization’s leaders as they built campaign strategy, systems, and fundraising skills.

With advising, tools, and resources from Capital Campaign Pro, the Niweskok team established a practical campaign-management system: a Campaign Donor Tracking Report, gift charts, depth charts, prospect strategy, specific asks, and regular campaign accountability. These structures helped a lean, community-led and volunteer-supported team manage prospect relationships, fundraising decisions, and campaign priorities during an extraordinarily time-sensitive land acquisition.

The team was learning and implementing in real time. Early coaching focused on foundational questions, such as organizing donor lists, setting campaign priorities, and building a shared fundraising practice. As the campaign accelerated, Niweskok’s co-directors applied those lessons quickly, managing major-gift conversations, stewarding early commitments, coordinating with land-trust partners, and keeping the organization moving toward its $3 million goal without a conventional development department.

Rather than handing donor relationships to an outside fundraiser, Niweskok’s leaders took ownership of the campaign themselves. They grounded their fundraising in their own story, their responsibility to the land, and their vision for Wabanaki communities.

Within weeks of building their fundraising knowledge and strategy, they made their first major ask and received a yes. Then the campaign took off…

“We have learned a tremendous amount and we feel confident to continue rocking out this next stage of the capital campaign with these skills and with our passion for what is coming to life. We are grateful to you and the Capital Campaign team, you are forever a part of this journey, this story, this birthing.”

Alivia Moore, Co-Director, Niweskok: From the Stars to Seeds

By late 2024, Niweskok had surpassed its $900,000 December fundraising goal and was closing in on its $1.5 million January target ahead of schedule. In the campaign’s final acquisition phase, a key funder returned with a second major gift of $75,000 and committed to bridge the remaining gap needed for the land purchase.

In just over four months, Niweskok raised nearly $2 million and assembled the support needed to secure the property. The organization closed debt-free on the 245-acre farm on January 31, 2025.

The Impact:

The campaign enabled Niweskok to accomplish its most immediate and consequential goal: secure a permanent Wabanaki land base, debt-free.

The 245-acre property includes agricultural land, approximately 140 acres of forest, wetlands, ponds, and access to the Goose River. For an organization whose programs had previously taken place on borrowed and leased lands, having a permanent home fundamentally changed what was possible.

The campaign’s impact extends well beyond the acquisition itself. It created the foundation for an active Wabanaki community campus that supports cultural learning, food and medicine sovereignty, ecological restoration, gathering, and long-term stewardship.

“What impressed me most about Alivia and the Niweskok co-directors was not only the speed of the fundraising, but the way they built enduring capacity while doing it. They took on a time-sensitive, complex campaign without a conventional development department and quickly established the discipline needed to manage prospects, make courageous asks, steward commitments, and keep their vision at the center. Their success in securing a permanent, debt-free land base is extraordinary, and the systems, confidence, and community momentum they built along the way will continue to serve Niweskok far beyond the campaign.”

Dedee Wilner-Nugent, Capital Campaign Pro Advisor

Niweskok reached the full $3 million campaign goal ahead of its scheduled December 2026 completion date. With that milestone achieved, the organization extended its fundraising goal by an additional $325,000 to support infrastructure development across the campus.

Key outcomes and initiatives include:

• $3 million raised ahead of the campaign deadline
• A 245-acre property acquired debt-free, with a clear and unencumbered title
• A permanent Wabanaki food, education, and cultural hub in the Penobscot Bay region
• A farmhouse serving as a community center, with continued improvements to support active community use
• Renovation of an adjacent barn into a Dance Hall to expand indoor programming and gathering capacity
• New agricultural fields, a high tunnel, a welcome garden, and expanded growing capacity
• The Alihpəwάkanal, “Things to Eat,” program, including cultivation of traditional seeds, rare King Philip corn, and traditional beans
• Continued Soil Builders programming, training community members in traditional agriculture and heirloom seed stewardship
• Food-and-medicine forest restoration and waterway restoration
• Penobscot language study and immersion gatherings
• Wabanaki community gatherings across territories, including birch-bark canoe building projects, clam digs, and other activities that renew relationships with waterways and shorelines
• A 36-by-20-foot timber-framed Outdoor Kitchen Classroom
• Growing organizational capacity to support the work of the expanding campus

The campaign also strengthened Niweskok’s internal fundraising capacity. As the organization moved from volunteer-driven early farm work toward more durable staff, systems, and infrastructure, it built fundraising tools and operating practices that can continue serving the organization well beyond this campaign.

Looking Ahead:

Securing the farm was never simply about purchasing property. It was about creating stable cultural survival.

For the first time, Niweskok has its own land base where Wabanaki foodways, language, ecological knowledge, cultural teachings, and community relationships can grow together in one place. Alivia described the significance of having a permanent home:

“Now, with this land, we have permanency of place, and the ability to continue this work for generations to come.”

Alivia Moore, Co-Director, Niweskok: From the Stars to Seeds

Having reached its original $3 million goal ahead of schedule, Niweskok has now extended the campaign by $325,000 to continue developing the infrastructure needed for the campus.

The organization is also undertaking a comprehensive campus-mapping process with an architectural firm specializing in sustainable campus design. The firm is providing the work pro bono. That process will result in a phased campus infrastructure development plan that will help Niweskok determine future priorities and guide new fundraising goals.

Those plans build on infrastructure already underway and will help shape future needs for spaces such as overnight accommodations, a commercial kitchen, classrooms, employee housing, agricultural infrastructure, and other facilities needed to support a thriving community campus.

The campaign has already transformed what is possible: 245 acres in the Penobscot Bay region, purchased debt-free; the full $3 million goal reached ahead of schedule; and a growing Wabanaki community campus with a clear path for its next phase of development.