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Annual Donors
In 1979, Tom and Patience Chamberlin pulled up stakes in New Jersey and moved to New Hampshire.
Since then, they’ve restored a 250-year-old farmhouse in Exeter, where they raised their two children, now 19 and 23. Annual donors to the Loan Fund, they’ve also become deeply involved in community issues like affordable housing.
“A healthy community depends on having connectedness and diversity, which means having affordable homes for families who work in the community,” said 47-year-old Patience. “The Loan Fund is a leader in this area, one of the few organizations in New Hampshire that has a statewide presence and impact on affordable housing.”
Tom, 50, says the Loan Fund’s mechanism for supporting people—loans—creates self-sufficiency and sustainability for both borrowers and the lender. “These loans help recipients take off on their own,” he said. “Then the borrowers pay the loans back so the Loan Fund can lend the money to someone else. The money isn’t used once. It’s used over and over again.”
“We spend considerable time and thought around our charitable giving,” said Patience. “We think our loans and gifts to the Loan Fund are used extremely effectively. That’s why we support it to the extent that we do.”
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Lenders
Jayme and Laura Simoes place a high value on putting their beliefs into action. That’s one reason why they’ve made a loan of $10,000 to the Loan Fund.
“The Loan Fund gives us a way to model good behavior for Marcus,” said Laura, 35, referring to their two-year-old son. “We’re showing him how, through our investments, we can give back to our community.”
Participation is a family tradition. Grandparents from Portugal to Chicago have held elected office, established a volunteer ambulance department, and committed themselves to all sorts of community projects, among other activities.
“They demonstrated every day that the rewards of giving back were big. We can’t wait to see what our own parents do with their retirement years,” said Laura.
The rewards are not a one-way street.
“The Loan Fund can use our money and we make interest,” said Jayme, 38, who is a partner with Laura in Louis Karno & Company, a strategic communications firm in Concord. The Simoes plan to use the interest earned on their loan for Marcus’s college tuition.
“Our money at the Loan Fund is invested in a manufactured housing park or in a start-up business—any number of community projects at the Loan Fund. It feels good, too. This is a proposal where no one loses.”
Learn more about making a loan to the Loan Fund
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Established Permanent Fund
Penny Pitou, owner of a travel business and a two-time winner of the Olympic Silver Medal in skiing, established The Penny Pitou and Milo Pike Fund for the MicroCredit-NH program.
“The Loan Fund gives people without access to capital the ability to borrow money and leverage it,” said Pitou of Gilford, whose business bearing her name celebrates 30 years.. “I have always been impressed by the Loan Fund’s impact on people. Now it’s my turn to leverage my good fortune into good fortune for others. It’s a privilege to help.”
Learn more about establishing a Permanent Fund at the Loan Fund.
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Established Permanent Fund
 In the parlance of today, Harold Janeway tries to keep it real. In a quiet way.
In 1978, Janeway, now 68, and his family moved away from suburban New York and 18 years of working on Wall Street, to what he describes as “a marvelous old farm” in Webster, New Hampshire.
Mindful of resort sprawl in his native Vermont, the couple Janeway and his wife, Betsy, sought a rural setting where they could raise the youngest two of their five children and indulge their interests in the outdoors. He hoped to set up his own business as an investment financial advisor that was not far from a major financial center, in this case, Boston, “in case I couldn’t make a go of the business,” he said.
The enterprise, White Mountain Investment in Concord, thrived and is today a division of Cambridge Trust Company. The Janeways immersed themselves in a wide range of community efforts.
“Once you’ve met your own needs, it’s gratifying to support organizations like the Loan Fund, which can achieve things a sole donor couldn’t possibly accomplish alone,” he said.
Janeway recently has established The Founders Fund, a permanent fund at the Loan Fund to provide long-term lending capital and support for Loan Fund programs. The money capital in The Founders Fund will be loaned out to borrowers for housing, jobs, and community facilities in the community, and the interest earned from those loans will help support the operations of programs.
“What the Loan Fund does is so real,” said Janeway. “By expanding the Loan Fund’s base of capital, my contribution expands its capacity. It’s good to know you can make a difference.”
Learn more about establishing a Permanent Fund at the Loan Fund.
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Life Income Gift
Timing is everything. Here are two examples:
In 1941, Arline Fitch’s boyfriend and later-husband, Edward, saw empty seats in the first balcony at the Boston Symphony from their second balcony perch. He inquired at the box office and snapped up subscription tickets; Mrs. Fitch has the same seats today.
“First balcony over the orchestra, row one, seats two and three,” said Mrs. Fitch, whose husband died in 1994. “You can practically read the music and watch the face of the conductor.”
In 2003, the 86-year-old Nashua resident read an article in the AARP magazine and heard retired Episcopal Bishop Douglas Theuner talk in her church about “putting faith into action in New Hampshire.”
“I decided I wanted to do more for the Loan Fund, though I wasn’t sure what form that would take,” said Mrs. Fitch, who had been a lender for several years.
As luck would have it, soon after she received a mailing from the Loan Fund about a Charitable Gift Annuities.
“As have many other retired people, I have been dependent, along with Social Security, on income from investment assets that have had declined considerably in the past two or three years,” said Mrs. Fitch. “I had found the perfect solution to my situation. I could combine making a gift with the inviting offer of interest for life at a very attractive rate for my age group of 85 and over.”
She added, “It all kind of fell into place.”
Learn how to make a Life Income Gift to the Loan Fund
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Bequest
Since this story was written, Jean Hennessey passed
away. In her memory, we have combined a special New Hampshire
Charitable Foundation grant with other memorial gifts
to create the Jean Hennessey Fund. To read about Jean's
contribution to the Loan Fund included in our Annual
Report of 2004, click
here (PDF).
John and Jean Hennessey are the embodiment of long-term
dedication—in marriage (55 years); in the Upper Valley (47 years); and in the Loan Fund (20 years), which they’ve
named a beneficiary of a life insurance policy.
“The Loan Fund has been extraordinarily innovative,” said Jean, 77, the first executive director of the New Hampshire Charitable Foundation and a longtime political and environmental activist. “I don’t know of another organization that has managed to discover a mechanism for people to find decent housing, build assets, create jobs and childcare, and nurture entrepreneurs. The Loan Fund has enabled and trained people without access to credit to join the mainstream.”
John, 78, a professor emeritus and former dean of Tuck Business School at Dartmouth College, said that when they were doing their estate planning, “it was a natural” to think of the Loan Fund. “Jean and I were thinking not just what we might leave behind but what it would do, and this was a marriage of our interests.”
He added, “The Loan Fund has set a model that enables people to do things for their family and community, to build personal, psychological assets to a wider benefit within society.”
Learn how to make a bequest to the Loan Fund.
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