Jessica Rivers

"When I first say the word finance or budget, what's the first word that comes to your mind?" When Harpswell resident Sheila Menair, one of the founders of the local nonprofit TogetHER Invested, asks that question, the answers tend to be rooted in anxiety.

When music educator Bob Modr and engineer Daniel Huber were put in charge of entertainment for the Harpswell Summer Festival about 10 years ago, musicians were playing on a concrete slab at George J. Mitchell Field.

On a chilly afternoon in early December, a gray Ford Focus putters down Abner Point Road toward Mackerel Cove, where boats are bobbing in the small waves.