Advocates for the mentally ill and mentally retarded are trying to defend their state programs while recognizing that legislators have the difficult job of trying to close the budget gap. And while they are looking at programs that didn’t use all of last year’s allotted share, by deferring startup times for new programs, by looking for creative financing of current services, checking behind the cushions of the sofas in the State House. But there is another source of funding that they have yet to explore and perhaps never have even considered.

It’s noteworthy, for instance, that while lawmakers are trying to scrap up an extra few hundred thousand dollars to keep the mentally retarded from losing programs, the Maine Coast Heritage Trust is more than halfway to meeting its $100 million goal to purchase and conserve land along the coast. And it wasn’t very long ago that The Nature Conservancy set a record for funding the largest land conservation purchase with its $35 million effort in northwestern Maine, and it recently announced that its partner General Motors would contribute $10 million to the Brazil Atlantic Rainforest Project. Other environmental groups have impressive, if not as large, conservation projects that required extensive fund-raising.

Meanwhile, NAMI Maine, which looks out for the interests of the mentally ill statewide, lives or dies by $420,000 in funding from the state, right now isn’t feeling too well because the state wants a cash cut of $102,000 and is taking away NAMI’s free office space, forcing it to find new housing. Similarly, day programs that support the mentally retarded, small operations that the state cannot fund sufficiently, would greatly benefit from endowments either for some direct services to reduce waiting lists for services or to create a broader advocacy network that could, in turn, raise funds for the programs.

The assets that the environmental groups hold is not the money raised for their important projects but their expertise and contacts in raising money for worthy causes. Their fund-raisers probably know their worth to their own organizations, but they may not realize how valuable their donated services could be to groups in Maine that are, to put it plainly, too poor to raise money. They don’t have enough time or their grant-writing skills are lacking or they don’t run in the right circles that have the kind of resources to make a difference. Yet the work they do – defending the mentally ill against discrimination, lobbying for services to allow the retarded to live fulfilling lives, fighting the good fight for a part of the population most people would rather not know existed – is essential in a humane and civil society.

Conservation groups are sometimes accused of putting land preservation ahead of human needs. But given the opportunity, their membership and generous donors certainly would rally to help create endowments for specific programs that serve the mentally ill and mentally retarded, meeting basic services in the short term and creating a stable cash flow so that advocacy groups for these Maine residents can be more effective in the long-term.

Such an undertaking would be a generous gift of expertise that would improve Maine’s quality of life just as effectively as protecting a watershed or a priceless stretch of coast.