State Service Strategy Task Force Meeting 1/29/2026
12:00pm via Zoom

Attendees:

F Celeste Brahham (FCB), Kelsey Preecs (KP), Janet May (JM), William Guindon Jr (WGjr), Brittany Gleixner-Hayat (BGH)

Staff: Maureen Kendzierski (MK)

Not in attendance: Chelsey Fortin-Trimble, Scott Adams, Pamela Proulx-Curry

Meeting begins with a review of the Methodology & Timeline:
Internal Stocktaking & Engagement Plan Development (Jan & FEB)

  • Lookback completed
  • In Lookup & Look Forward – what can we do in 90 minutes?
    • Deliverables – public announcement piece will get pushed until we have a facilitator
    • BGH will circulate the summary notes from the initial lookback stocktaking

Engagement Plan Development - Stakeholder Mapping

BGH Shares leads a discussion of stakeholder mapping that suggests multiple stakeholder groups, including State government, Organization that use volunteers, Service programs, Key constituencies, organizations that promote volunteerism, faith based orgs, and educational institutions.

 

Engagement Plan Development – Next Steps

There is a need to move on operational planning for who will be engaged, when and where they will be engaged, and a definition of what we will be asking in those engagements.

  • We need to book space, invite people, invitations need a month’s notice. What is the task force thinking for this plan?
    • Suggestions include a survey tool to engage the wider stakeholder population of 500+ organizations, and smaller groups of stakeholders invited to in-person meetings with Commissioners and staff.
    • Noted that getting in person in rural communities is key.
    • Ensuring there is staff support for Commissioners as they plan these engagements.
    • Commissioners will engage with groups they are familiar with in their local areas.
    • There should be clear guidance for all of these meetings to ensure that they are productive and supported.
    • For areas where there are no Commissioners locally, we could use staff or tap local leaders (i.e., Luke Dyer in the County).
  • Will be asking commissioners to begin thinking about scheduling these meetings, the Feb meeting should have this info ready and hopefully the facilitator will be onboard
  • Important to note, some commissioners will not be comfortable with this role and that is OK, not every commissioner must do this.
    • Looking at this as more of an ambassadorial role – not a technical role, high level, reintroducing the Commission and getting feedback on VM and the volunteer sector overall. This is more of an outreach exercise to get VM and Commission into the public eye
    • This is an opt-in, that is important to highlight. If people are not comfortable or have bandwidth, that is OK
  • BGH Will begin creating the questions,
  • Immediate creation items: a survey tool, identifying place-based outreach, focus group or individual key stakeholder conversations – who will lead those will be another question.
    • There is a subset of people that we will engage in the final stages to review the final product before it goes to publication – small conference. (Validation Session)

What will we talk about in Business Meeting –

    • 90 minutes
      • Feedback included the need for small group work or turn and talks instead of only large group conversations
      • FCB – it will be difficult to have people on Zoom, BGH notes that they would be their own discussion group and then share out
    • Assumptions need to laid out prior to any forward looking conversations. What assumptions need to be clarified:
      • Our staffing and funding
      • Programmatic Assumptions – like Maine Service Fellows continuation
      • Anything coming forward or being pushed in the legislature
      • The facts as we have them now –
      • Status of MVF
      • Any MOCA related info that the commission needs
      • We will NOT revisit Values, Mission, etc BGH suggests we streamline the language in our values
    • BGH will create slides to guide the conversaton
  • What we are going to talk about:
    • Look Up, Look Forward – the questions from the overall plan may be too many for 90 minutes. 
    • BGH will create a slide to review last meeting

2 vectors of conversation –

  • What we can do better operationally (What can we do better/change)
  • What is bluesky - what is going on in Maine, what should our sector focus on thematically

               BGH – do we want to address both questions?

Determined: We will focus on the second bucket of questions (How can we build on our success, address shortcomings, and prepare to meet the moment? What do we need public input on?) and skip the blueskies/challenges in Maine question