Life Preservers

Our Mission

Stone & Shoal is based on a simple idea: those who share our island culture can help preserve it. We are year-round Martha's Vineyard residents who want to do our part to help sustain our island by sharing the most beautiful parts of our home with you.

We make that possible by giving back to island non-profits and other organizations that help support this island and its year-round community. Each month, a share of our profits go to a featured organization to help in their efforts to keep Martha's Vineyard healthy for generations to come.

Helping Islanders

Despite living and working in the vacation spot of the rich and famous, island residents are anything but. We work in municipal jobs, the schools, the hospital and in blue-collar jobs like fishing, landscaping, and construction. The cost of housing is rising beyond our capacity to earn enough to make ends meet.

This disparity hits home for island residents, quite literally. Each year, thousands of people who call this place home endure the "Vineyard Shuffle," in which they must vacate their lower-cost winter rental so that homeowners can make those accommodations available to summer visitors at higher rates. (Fixed-cost, year-round rentals are white whales that very few Islanders are able to secure). For the summer, those islanders will share rooms, couch-surf, move their family off-island for the summer, or even sleep in their car or under the stars.

MV Commission data paints a very clear picture of the housing struggle on the Vineyard; currently Martha's Vineyard is populated by 16,460 year-round resident, and of the 16,973 housing units available, only 43% are available year-round and only 5% are affordable housing. 22% of homes are assessed at over $1 million. That is why we support efforts to tackle the affordable housing crisis so families can stay together in a stable home.

Islanders also face other struggles that come with island living, among them opioid addiction, access to healthcare and mental health services, and food insecurity. We support organizations that aid islanders in finding otherwise unobtainable solutions to these and many other problems.

Helping the Island

We not only want to help our fellow islanders, but the island itself. We rely on fossil fuels more than most because we need the ferries, which run on oil, to get us and the things we need across the Vineyard Sound. We have made it a goal to offset our reliance on fossil fuels by supporting organizations that provide renewable energy options.

More than half of the Vineyard is a habitat for rare and endangered species, but those rare habitats are being compromised. Some infrastructure, development and landscaping practices impact this habitat, which underscores how important it is for us to advocate for its protection.

Our efforts to properly dispose of waste needs to be improved. Currently, we have no community composting like Nantucket, so food waste contributes to the 40,000 tons of solid waste we have to ship off-island each year. We support efforts to offer more sustainable solutions to reduce, reuse and recycle our waste.

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