Two nonprofit organizations are making their bids to run summer programs at the Chilmark Community Center after years of turmoil at the town hub. 

The recently created Chilmark Community Center Trust announced late last month that it will submit a proposal to the town to operate the center for the 2026 season. The trust will be competing against the Chilmark Town Affairs Council (CTAC), the current leaseholder that has been running programs at the center since 1959 and also plans to apply. CTAC is the only organization that has ever run the center in the summer, having an agreement with the town since its inception. 

The new group is made up of both year-round and seasonal Chilmark residents who have been involved with the center in various ways as attendees, counselors and advocates, according to Chilmark Community Center Trust co-chair Nathaniel Scott, who grew up going to the center and is a former camp director.

“It is a new group but it’s a group of people that have a lot of experience and background with the community center. It’s not a group that’s unfamiliar in the Chilmark community or the center,” he said.  

The organization hopes to win the bid to expand on current programming while introducing new ideas. 

“We want to propose a very robust summer camp that goes back to the way the things were but also looking at new programming and potential new partnerships to build,” he said. “[We’re] looking at [the center] to be a hub of different activities that can go on around the town.” 

The town is in the process of putting out a request for proposals in order to pick an organization to run the community center on State Road. In years past, the Chilmark Town Affairs Council has held summer camps, tennis programs, sailing programs and the Martha’s Vineyard Book Festival. 

Questions over management of the town-owned building bubbled up in recent years, and in 2024, town meeting voters decided to put together a committee to examine how the center is run. In February, that review committee recommended the town put out a call to interested organizations, opening up the possibility of a new organization running the center. 

Despite the emerging competitor, CTAC chair Michelle O’Connor said the RFP process has been an opportunity that her nonprofit has embraced. 

“It’s been a really good exercise for our organization to audit ourselves, what we did really well, what we can do better, why we choose to do things the way we do,” she said.  

When summer camp executive director Susan Andrien took helm, she wanted to implement a consistent evaluation process. She hopes to continue doing that if the RFP is awarded to CTAC.  

“Through that [process], we have evaluations from families and staff, feedback and community engagement, which has really been the foundation of the programming response of seeing what folks want,” she said. 

The town has been working on a draft of the RFP since October and town officials hope to put it out later this month. Select board member Matt Poole said he hoped to have a Jan. 5 deadline for proposals to be sent back to the town, but that had not been officially set yet.