CLIENT ALERT
By: Madeline Hutchings
May 22, 2020
On May 15, 2020, Governor Chris Sununu announced an array of new funding commitments for industries affected by the COVID-19 outbreak. Sixty million dollars of the funds committed are dedicated to a nonprofit relief fund.
The New Hampshire Nonprofit Emergency Relief and Recovery Fund is a grant program designed to enable a wide variety of critical nonprofit organizations to continue to serve their communities. Grants will cover direct expenses of delivering services in response to the effects of COVID-19, and they will address lost revenues, to allow organizations to retain key staff. Three organizations—the New Hampshire Center for Nonprofits, the New Hampshire Charitable Foundation, and the Community Development Finance Authority—have partnered to design and administer the grant program.
The program will make grants on the basis of the following three purposes:
- Support individual organizations that mitigate the critical public health and economic impacts of the crisis on residents who rely on nonprofits for critical services (e.g., human service organizations not now receiving significant support from CARES Act funds);
- Support individual organizations that contribute to economic, cultural, and civic vitality (e.g., organizations providing safe outdoor spaces for recreation, arts organizations, economic development organizations); and
- Support coalitions, networks, and collaboratives of nonprofits that maximize cooperation and impact, and that speed the state’s distribution of funds to meet urgent needs.
Details of the fund are still being finalized. The program will not be operated on a first-come, first-served basis, and it will not make grants to organizations that will have access to other programs of the Governor’s Office for Emergency Relief and Recovery (“GOFERR”). GOFERR anticipates that specific guidance for nonprofit organizations interested in submitting applications will be available on its website by June 5, 2020.