Ronald Phillips will resign next year from his role as president and CEO of Coastal Enterprises Inc., the nonprofit community development corporation he founded in midcoast Maine in 1977.

CEI, as it’s commonly known, has as its mission to invest in and financially support businesses and residents in low-income communities. Phillips will step down in July 2016.

Phillips confirmed his decision in an email.

“Yes, it’s true,” he wrote. “As CEI’s founder, I’ve been working on this with my board since last December. It’s quite a ways away – July 2016 – and plenty of time to work toward a new CEO.”

Ellen Seidman, chair of CEI’s board, commended Phillips on his tenure in a letter sent to the organization’s partners.

“Needless to say, the board and staff of CEI have mixed views on this announcement,” she wrote. “Ron has devoted a major part of his life to CEI, and to developing and enhancing strategies for investment in people and places at the margins of society in Maine and throughout rural America.”

CEI had net assets of roughly $34.5 million at the end of its fiscal year that ended in September 2013, according to the organization’s most recent Form 990, which it has to file as a 501(c)(3) tax-exempt organization. CEI operates several subsidiaries, including CEI Ventures and CEI Community Ventures, which both administer venture capital funds, and CEI Capital Management, a for-profit subsidiary that invests in low-income businesses as a participant in the federal New Markets Tax Credit program. Phillips earned an annual salary of roughly $120,000, according to CEI’s Form 990.

Phillips didn’t respond immediately to a question about why he’s leaving the organization, but Seidman refers in her letter to it being a personal decision.

“All of us associated with CEI support Ron in his decision to spend more time with his family, and on other pursuits related to social, economic and environmental justice here and internationally,” Seidman wrote. “We also look with enthusiasm to the next generation of leadership at CEI, and to a new CEI leader’s strategies for the future.”

Betsy Biemann, vice chair of CEI’s board and a former president of the Maine Technology Institute, will lead the committee searching for Phillip’s replacement, according to Seidman’s letter.

“The departure of a leader of Ron’s stature affects every aspect of an organization’s work,” she wrote. “The good news is that CEI has never been in a stronger position and is poised for growth.”

She goes on to list CEI’s recent milestones, including that its lending team deployed a record $28 million in financing to 108 businesses in 2014 and that CEI Ventures Inc. has begun raising capital for a new $25 million venture fund.