Community Loan Fund receives 2017 Nonprofit Impact Award

The New Hampshire Community Loan Fund was presented with the New Hampshire Center for Nonprofits’ Nonprofit Impact Award at a ceremony April 4 in Concord.

The Community Loan Fund was honored for its “significant impact leveraging resources that have enabled traditionally underserved people to participate more fully in New Hampshire's economy.”

Alan Cantor of Alan Cantor Consulting, called the Impact Award recipients “exemplars of what’s right and what’s good about the nonprofit world.”

In presenting the Community Loan Fund’s award, Cantor said, “The Community Loan Fund is often credited with being an incredibly innovative organization, and it is, but it’s not as though (they) wake up every morning and say, ‘What can we do today to be innovative?’

“They wake up and say, ‘How can we solve problems? Let’s try this. Yeah, that’s kind of an interesting idea. Let’s try that. Hey, that one’s working—how do we do more of it?’ And it’s through this practical approach to problems that they’ve broken new ground all the time. … I think that’s what the best nonprofits do.”

In accepting the award, Community Loan Fund President Juliana Eades said her nonprofit’s work is about fairness.

“It’s about people wanting the opportunity to be independent. … It’s about invisible people, and people facing stigma. … The free market does not provide opportunity for all because essential community services just are not profitable.”

“A supporter of ours, a lawyer, was thinking about the Community Loan Fund and said, ‘Gee, the New Hampshire Community Loan Fund has relationships and success with people I was trained to avoid.’ ”

New Hampshire Center for Nonprofits awards recognize individuals and nonprofits that have made outstanding contributions to their communities, and who push other nonprofits to work more broadly, to innovate, and to expand the ways they meet the state’s needs.

The Community Loan Fund was nominated by a board member, Betsy McNamara of Full Circle Consulting.