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, at fixed interest rates, 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.
The 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
Other programs
Established in 1983, the Community Loan Fund was one of the first Community Development Financial Institutions in the nation, and has received awards and recognition for its social impact, financial strength and performance.
Its other loan programs include business financing, resident-owned manufactured-home communities, manufactured-home mortgages, child care faciliies and nonprofit housing development.
Most of its lending dollars have been invested in the Community Loan Fund by people and institutions that want to put their money to work in New Hampshire. Investors earn fixed-rate interest, based on their term (number of years) and the investor’s preference.
Donations help the Community Loan Fund in two ways. Donors can put their money either toward the education and the technical expertise that stoke its borrowers’ success, or to deepen its pool of lending capital.
