Quick warning: this column is going to be a little bit on the dry side. Perhaps a little bit wonky. But from the standpoint of effecting change in our community, important. So please bear with me! In 1930 the Community Chest of Greater Nashua was born out from the ashes of the massive Crown Hill Fire. At the time, leaders came together to determine how to best support residents, many of whom had lost everything in this massive tragedy which burned down a good portion of our town. Their response was to create a fund where people could give when they had the means that would be utilized by all of us to better our community. Back then the process focused mostly on supporting emergency response efforts. But in short order the fund transformed itself to a broader mission, and by 1936 was supporting the nonprofits in Greater Nashua. In that year, the Community Chest supported 10 different organizations with a total of $34,500 in grants. Recipients that year include the Red Cross, the Boy Scouts, the Salvation Army, the Girl Scouts, the YMCA, and the YWCA. The largest recipient that year was the YMCA, with a grant of $8,500 with its 238 members from 13 different nationalities. How the times have changed! By contrast, this past year we invested almost $400K in grants supporting over 30 programs in 20 different organizations.

In the 92 years since the Community Chest transformed itself into the United Way of Greater Nashua several things have changed. Not the least of these changes is that we now focus not just on Nashua proper but are addressing needs throughout all 11 communities of Greater Nashua, including Merrimack, the Souhegan Valley, Hudson, and Litchfield. Every agency we work with must serve all these communities, regardless of where they might be headquartered. In this article I will highlight a few of the other important changes in our overall approach with a special emphasis on how you can get involved this year.

The first thing which has changed is that our grant making process is now based on data through a system which we call the “needs assessment.” Every three years we collect data from a variety of sources, including the schools, the welfare department, the census, the public health department, the regional planning commission, nationally normed data from the Robert Woods Johnson Foundation, as well as through listening sessions directly with the public. This spring and summer we will be collecting all this data, including with public forums for input, and then creating a report for our community which, in essence, tells us where we are doing well, where are we fairing poorly, and in which areas we need to focus our attention in order to improve the health, education, and economic mobility of all our residents. You can get involved with this process by directly contributing to one of our community forums this spring and summer.

The next thing which has changed is in what we call our “community investment” process. This is how we make grants. Our process is unique in that it is volunteer driven, with community volunteer panels evaluating grant proposals and recommending to our board what grants to make and in what amounts. Beyond that, our process is also unique in that the grants we make are for programs and not agencies. Some agencies might only apply for one grant for one of their programs. For example, Nashua PAL, Family Promise, Meals on Wheels, and Marguerite’s Place each have a single grant for one of their programs. Others might apply for and be funded for several. For example, currently Bridges, Home Health and Hospice, Girls Inc., the Adult Learning Center, the Youth Council, the Boys and Girls Club, and others receive multiple grants, each for more than one of their programs. To us, the important thing is that the grants fund a program which is measurable and is held to account for outcomes, and that the outcomes address the critical issues raised in our needs assessment. To the donor, this means that you are assured that your donated dollars are well spent in and accountable, measurable, and systematic fashion. Our volunteers use the needs assessment as a guidebook for deciding how to make grants and how to prioritize funding. You can get involved later this summer and this fall by volunteering to participate in one of our investment panels. I guarantee you that there is no better way to get to know the nonprofits in our community and the amazing work they do by participating in this process.

Something else which is unique to our system is that both our needs assessment as well as our grant making community investment are each on a three-year cycle, meaning that a grant from our United Way will fund a program for three years. Most nonprofits really appreciate the stability this brings to them since they know that they will be able to count on a consistent revenue stream for their work for a longer period and they will have ample time to really make a difference. For us, this is a key piece of our partnership with our agency friends.

One change we are looking at for this new cycle is to incorporate an element of smaller grantmaking to fund programs which are particularly innovative. Many of these programs are either very new or are with agencies which are quite small, so they might not be able to demonstrate a proven track record, or they might not have a lot of data yet to show success. However, we might instinctively know sense that they have a high probability of “moving the needle” in our community. As an example, over the past 18 months we have approved two rounds of grant funding to Stepping Stones to help them get established in their homeless youth drop-in center. We did so knowing that there is a high need but little data. That investment is paying off big dividends for the homeless youth in our community who need a safe space and a hand up. We intend to learn from this experience and earmark a portion of our grantmaking for innovators. At this time, we are thinking to create a pool of up to $50K for this purpose, with the larger pool of approximately $350K being targeted to larger grants in more established and demonstrably effective programs.

The last thing I wanted to highlight was diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI). This past year our board adopted an official policy on DEI for our organization. In part, this policy states that “United Way of Greater Nashua is striving to create community level impact by tackling core issues facing New Hampshire’s underserved populations. At United Way we believe in and will seek to promote the concept of equity. We believe that it is important to recognize that we all have a different starting point in life. We seek equality of opportunity and access to the building blocks with which to create a better life. With a systematic approach to research and evidence-based strategies, we will seek ways to improve health, education, and economic mobility.” Therefore, we are working hard to make sure that we are hearing from diverse audiences in the creation of our needs assessment, and we will be working equally hard to make sure that our community partners which receive funding are focused on serving all the community, in some cases beyond their traditional constituencies. We expect that this will create some very interesting conversations and truly help to move our community forward.

Overall, there a number of ways to get involved with our community assessment and investment process this year. Bring your voice to make sure we are seeing the real needs in the community. Help ensure that we are making grants which address those needs. Advocate with others about the importance of this process. While we get involved with a lot of very satisfying work to move Greater Nashua forward, this particularly approach is at the root of how United Way brings the community together to ensure that GREAT THINGS HAPPEN WHEN WE LIVE UNITED.

Mike Apfelberg is president of United Way of Greater Nashua.