Is your nonprofit planning to relocate or renovate its current facility?

Then you should know about the New Hampshire Community Loan Fund. The Community Loan Fund offers loans for facility projects that help nonprofit organizations strengthen or expand their essential services.

The Community Loan Fund knows that nonprofits throughout New Hampshire contribute to the social, emotional and economic health of our communities by meeting a wide variety of basic human needs.

Its flexible loans help nonprofits buy real estate or renovate facilities in ways that allow them to provide more services or provide services more efficiently. The Community Loan Fund can also provide gap financing to help keep a project on track.

In 2001, the nonprofit Keene Housing Authority wanted a comfortable indoor place for residents of Harper Acres, a housing facility for elderly and disabled persons, to meet and socialize.

“A lot of residents live in single rooms and don’t have space to entertain,” said the housing authority’s Lola Grab. “Our idea was that it would be an extension of their home, like a living room.”

The $150,000 loan from the Community Loan Fund was “the final piece of the jigsaw puzzle” that transformed two pre-Civil War buildings into a spacious and bright indoor recreation area, said housing authority CEO Curtis Hiebert.

To qualify for financing from the Community Loan Fund a project must:

•  Help people with low and moderate incomes, or populations with special needs, as defined by the U.S. Dept. of Health and Human Services or the U.S. Dept. of Housing and Urban Development
• Have a long-term benefit to disadvantaged populations
• Have a demonstrated source of income to repay the loan
• Demonstrate active community support
• Attract other resources to the effort

“We try to help people with low and moderate incomes gain a firm foothold in the mainstream economy by making capital available for housing, jobs and essential services like child care. If people have the right tools, knowledge and capital, they do succeed,” says Community Loan Fund President Juliana Eades.

Established in 1983, the Community Loan Fund was one of the first Community Development Financial Institutions in the nation, and has received industry awards and recognition for social impact, financial strength and performance.

To learn more, visit the Community Loan Fund’s Community Facilities Web page
or contact: Julie McConnell at (603) 224-6669, ext. 215 or jmcconnell@communityloanfund.org.