LEWISTON, Maine — More than two years after Maine’s deadliest mass shooting, public anger in Lewiston is no longer just about what happened on October 25, 2023. It is now also about what happened after: who got the money, who made the decisions, and why so many survivors and grieving families were left to watch nearly $2 million flow to nonprofits while they were still trying to rebuild their lives.
That anger is now producing results. The Root Cellar has returned the full $65,521.79 it received from the Lewiston-Auburn Area Response Fund’s nonprofit grant pool and redirected that money to VictimsFirst, a national organization that supports survivors and families affected by mass violence. The move came after months of criticism over the fund’s distribution and amid growing demands that other organizations do the same.
At the center of the controversy is the Maine Community Foundation, which created and administered the Lewiston-Auburn Area Response Fund after the shooting that killed 18 people and wounded 13 others at Schemengees Bar & Grille and Just-In-Time Recreation. MaineCF says it created two tracks: one for Victims & Families and another for Broad Recovery & Organizations. Under that second track, roughly $1.9 million was divided equally among 29 nonprofits, with each receiving about $65,522.
Those 29 organizations included AK Collaborative, Boys and Girls Clubs of Southern Maine, Central Maine Medical Center, Community Clinical Services, Community Concepts, Empowered Immigrant Women Unite, Gateway Community Services Maine, Generational Noor, Ifka Community Services, Lewiston-Auburn Area Housing Development Corporation, Lewiston-Auburn Metropolitan Chamber of Commerce Foundation, Lewiston-Auburn Youth Network, Maine Association of the Deaf, Maine Inside Out, Maine MILL, Maine Prisoner Advocacy Coalition, New Beginnings, New Mainers Public Health Initiative, Safe Voices, St. Mary’s Regional Medical Center, Somali Bantu Community Association, Sweetser, The Root Cellar, Tree Street Youth, Tri-County Mental Health Services, Trinity Jubilee Center, United Way of Androscoggin County, United Youth Empowerment Services, and YWCA Central Maine.
MaineCF has defended that structure by arguing that the broader grants were intended to support trauma response, counseling, youth programming, and other community recovery services. But for many in Lewiston, that explanation has only deepened the sense that donor intent was lost and that the people most directly devastated by the massacre were treated as one constituency among many instead of the clear priority.
That frustration has been on full display at recent Lewiston City Council meetings, where survivors, relatives, and residents have delivered emotional public comments demanding accountability and pressing city leaders to confront the ongoing financial and personal burdens families still face. The council has been discussing a needs analysis for survivors and victims’ families, but formal action was delayed while officials wait for a presentation from the Maine Resiliency Center on March 17.
The backlash has now moved beyond City Hall. On Friday, a local business put up an electronic sign outside Maine Immigrant and Refugee Services, or MIERS, publicly calling for the organization to return the money it received. The sign also referenced the Auburn Lewiston Sports Network, which operates out of the same building, adding another layer of public pressure on organizations tied to the disputed grants.
What makes the latest phase of the story especially striking is that while Maine’s legacy media has offered only limited sustained scrutiny of the fund controversy, the issue has drawn national attention through multiple segments on NewsNation and Fox News. Fox News aired at least two segments in January focused on the Lewiston fund dispute, including one featuring victims’ family members and another highlighting questions about the $1.9 million sent to nonprofits. NewsNation also ran multiple reports highlighting survivors’ outrage and the demand that nonprofits return the money.
That national spotlight appears to be changing the political and public dynamics around the issue. For months, survivors and families said they were asking obvious questions with too few answers. Now, with national outlets amplifying the story and with one nonprofit already giving its money back, the pressure on the remaining grant recipients is only growing.
The deeper wound here is not just financial. It is moral. Lewiston buried 18 people after the worst mass shooting in state history. The city’s survivors and bereaved families have spent the years since carrying trauma, medical costs, lost income, and grief that does not expire on a grant cycle. For many of them, the question is painfully simple: when Americans donated in the name of Lewiston’s victims, why did so much of that money end up anywhere else?
