New Hampshire Charitable Foundation Launches 10-year Plan to Help Kids

CONCORD, NH — The New Hampshire Charitable Foundation announced a 10-year, $100-million plan today to help thousands of children and youth achieve greater success. “New Hampshire Tomorrow” is a comprehensive partnership bringing together hundreds of organizations and businesses toward a single goal: increasing opportunities so that young people can reach their potential and be ready to contribute to New Hampshire’s communities and workforce, according to a press statement. The Charitable Foundation made the announcement before more than 100 supporters, partners and stakeholders during a special event today at the NH Institute of Politics in Manchester.

The Foundation will make high-impact strategic grants, build and support multi-sector coalitions, and advance sensible public policy to achieve the goals of New Hampshire Tomorrow. The work is guided by a leadership council of 27 prominent Granite Staters.

“New Hampshire needs all of our kids to have the chance to thrive in career and community,” said Foundation President Richard Ober. “But right now, only some get that chance. New Hampshire Tomorrow will help turn that around.”

Ober said that too many young people in New Hampshire face a stark “opportunity gap” that hinders their ability to reach their full potential. Many kids from low-income families have less access to preschool, sports and other enrichment activities, adult mentors, advanced placement courses, and affordable postsecondary education. As a result, they tend to fare worse academically, are less likely to go to college, and less able to get good jobs.

“That is just unfair,” Ober said. “It also doesn’t make sense economically as our businesses struggle to find qualified young people to fill high-paying jobs. As our population ages and in-migration slows, we have to give more kids the opportunity to thrive. It is both a social obligation and an economic imperative.”

New Hampshire Tomorrow aims to narrow the opportunity gap with strategic investments in four proven focus areas: early childhood development, family and youth supports, preventing and treating alcohol and drug use, and creating affordable pathways from education to careers. Each area of investment aligns with work being done by the public sector, nonprofits, education and business. Grants made by the Charitable Foundation are made possible by the generosity of many donors. The Foundation is working to multiply funds with additional resources from local and national partners.

The Leadership Council also includes John Lynch, former New Hampshire Governor; Sylvia Larsen, former New Hampshire Senate president; Steve Duprey, real estate developer and Republican National Committee member; The Rt. Rev. A. Robert Hirschfeld, Bishop of the Episcopal Church of New Hampshire; Dr. Ross Gittell, Chancellor of the Community College System of New Hampshire; J. Bonnie Newman, former president of the University of New Hampshire, who served as chief of staff for former Congressman Judd Gregg; and Jeremy Hitchcock, founder and board member of Dyn.

“The ‘New Hampshire Advantage’ as we know it is dead,” Hitchcock said. “There are new structural advantages that we must learn to harness for continued economic prosperity over the next 25 to 50 years. New Hampshire Tomorrow is the only comprehensive effort looking at statewide issues with a lens longer than two years.”

The Foundation has long been committed to effective action for the next generation. New Hampshire Tomorrowredoubles those efforts. The Foundation awarded more than $11 million to New Hampshire Tomorrow-related efforts in 2015 and expects to award a similar amount in 2016. Examples of 2015-2016 investments:

• $125,000 to family resource centers to provide parenting classes, home visiting and developmental screening for young children;
• $90,000 to Southern New Hampshire Services to improve the quality of up to 30 early childhood development centers serving low-income kids through training and technical assistance;
• $128,000 to Big Brothers Big Sisters of New Hampshire, which provides kids with adult mentors to help them succeed;
• $295,000 to Families in Transition, which provides transitional housing and a range of other family support services;
• $1.2 million to implement the evidence-based “screening, brief intervention and referral to treatment” protocol to address youth substance use in medical practices;
• $2.8 million to youth substance use prevention programs, including Life of an Athlete, Media Power Youth, Partnership for a Drug Free NH and Youth Leadership Through Adventure;
• $5.5 million in scholarships in 2015, including $1.2 million to students pursuing fields in high demand by New Hampshire employers;
• $235,000 to strengthen education-to-career pathways in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) from high schools to community colleges to four year colleges to high-demand careers in New Hampshire.

“New Hampshire has always enjoyed a high quality of life, but that is based on averages,” Ober said. “Too many families and young people have slipped through the cracks.”

The U.S. Census Bureau reports that 11 percent of kids in New Hampshire (or 28,000) are living in poverty — up from 6 percent in 2000. (Under federal guidelines, a family of four with an income of $24,250 is considered to be in poverty.) And pockets of poverty are growing deeper. Twenty-eight percent of New Hampshire children, or 46,700, are eligible for free and reduced-price school lunch – a reliable measure of poverty. In some New Hampshire cities and districts, more than half of all kids qualify. And our kids face other challenges: New Hampshire’s young people have among the highest rates of substance use in the country and our students graduate with the highest debt load in the nation.

“New Hampshire is such a wonderful state, it is sad to see so many of our young people deprived of the opportunity to develop and utilize their God-given talents, and lead a happy and fulfilling life,” said Paul Montrone, president of Perspecta Trust, former CEO of Wheelabrator and Fisher Scientific and a New Hampshire TomorrowLeadership Council member. “I have no doubt that New Hampshire Tomorrow, bringing together the private sector and nonprofit sector, together with supportive government programs, can defeat this problem and bring more productive individuals into our workforce, benefiting all of our citizens.”

Amanda Grappone Osmer is owner of the Grappone Automotive Group and a New Hampshire TomorrowLeadership Council member and she said she was humbled to be a part of the effort.

“I pledge to make whatever difference I personally can in wrapping New Hampshire's kids in loving support,” Osmer said. “There is a compelling business case, of course, for ensuring that our state's children are well-fed, well-educated, and well-cared for. So for reasons both personal and professional, I wholeheartedly support the New Hampshire Charitable Foundation's efforts to make all our tomorrows more reliably safe and joyful for the kids of our beautiful state.”

More information on New Hampshire Tomorrow is available at nhcf.org/nhtomorrow.

Caption: Richard Ober, president and CEO of the New Hampshire Charitable Foundation, addresses the crowd at the announcement.

Submitted by Kristen Oliveri.