In order for social capital to grow, it will take daily actions by individuals, organizations and policy-making bodies. In order to encourage more social capital behavior building activities, NHCF and its regional divisions have started awarding grants for programs that take that job seriously. Grant application guidelines

Following are descriptions of some of the best social capital grants awarded among our March-April Project Grants awards (grants up to $5,000 only). In reviewing these proposals, we look for programs that:

• increase ties between people
• increase civic participation
• "bridge" across groups
• strengthen bonds within groups
• build trusting interactions
• encourage reciprocal behavior.

While no project does all of these things, the grants described below scored well on a number of them.

Organization Name: Granite State Senior Games
Grant Amount: $3,000
Grant Purpose: To support outreach activities to encourage participation in the Granite State Senior Games new location in Manchester.
Social Capital Element: This grant supports Bonding Social Capital by encouraging connections between seniors. Bonding Social Capital refers to connections among individuals within a group (people who are "like" each other).

Organization Name: League of Women Voters NH Education Fund
Grant Amount: $3,320
Grant Purpose: To provide training for web-based voter-service information for league members. This grant supports the League in their efforts to use Internet technology to improve voter participation and civic engagement and reaching out to a younger constituency.
Social Capital Element: This grant supports Bridging Social Capital by encouraging diverse individuals toward civic participation. Bridging Social Capital refers to connections between individuals or groups that are different.

Organization Name: Rape & Assault Support Services
Grant Amount: $3,450
Grant Purpose: To support cultural competency assessment and enhancement, to enable the organization's staff to be more responsive to a more diverse constituency.
Social Capital Element: This grant supports Bridging Social Capital by improving the organizations ability to build connections across differences. Bridging Social Capital refers to connections between individuals or groups that are different.

Organization Name: Granite State Youth Mentors
Grant Amount: $15,000
Grant Purpose: To support the organization's efforts to increase the number of mentor adult-youth mentor relationships in New Hampshire.
Social Capital Element: This grant supports Bridging Social Capital by creating connections between youth and adults, and between families with different life experiences. Bridging Social Capital refers to connections between individuals or groups that are different.

Organization Name:Copper Cannon Corporation
Grant Amount: $13,000
Grant Purpose: Copper Cannon is a camp for socially and economically disadvantaged kids, particularly those from inner cities on NH. This grant enables the camp to increase staffing to expand outreach and ongoing services for the kids.
Social Capital Element: This grant supports Bridging Social Capital by creating connections between youth and adults, and between kids with different life experiences. Bridging Social Capital refers to connections between individuals or groups that are different.

Organization Name: Greater Nashua Interfaith Hospitality Network, Inc.
Grant Amount: $20,000
Grant Purpose: To support start-up costs for a volunteer-based homelessness outreach and prevention program, in which church and synagogue members make their homes available to homeless families in need.
Social Capital Element: This grant supports Bridging Social Capital by creating connections between families with different life experiences. Bridging Social Capital refers to connections between individuals or groups that are different.

Organization Name: Milton Free Public Library
Grant Amount: $3,324
Grant Purpose: To support a summer intergenerational pilot program that will bring books to elderly home bound residents as well as encourage literacy in younger children.
Social Capital Element: This project builds Bridging Social Capital by connecting people across generational boundaries. Bridging Social Capital refers to connections between individuals or groups that are different.

Organization Name: Farmington Community Preservation Guild
Grant Amount: $13,700
Grant Purpose: to support the rehabilitation of the old firehouse museum as a social capital building project for the community.
Social Capital Element: This project builds Bridging Social Capital by bringing diverse community groups together, as well as Bonding Social Capital because it helps to build community identity. Bridging Social Capital refers to connections between individuals or groups that are different. Bonding Social Capital refers to connections among individuals within a group.

Organization Name: Homemakers of Strafford County
Grant Amount: $14,950
Grant Purpose: To support the implementation of a volunteer program to provide seniors with meaningful opportunities to contribute to society.
Social Capital Element: This project supports bridging Social Capital by engaging senior volunteers in diverse community projects. Bridging Social Capital refers to connections between individuals or groups that are different.

Organization Name: Antioch New England Institute
Grant Amount: $5,000
Grant Purpose: To support the Selectperson's Institute for Lakes Region communities. The Institute covers issues of municipal leadership and the legal and technical aspects of town government. Attendees are also coached on building citizen involvement.
Social Capital Element: Promotes Bridging Social Capital and civic engagement and improves quality of community leadership. Bridging Social Capital refers to connections between individuals or groups that are different.

Organization Name: Town of Hebron Gazebo Program
Grant Amount: $2,464
Grant Purpose: To support the an expanded season of the Hebron Gazebo community arts and family entertainment series The Hebron Gazebo Program is a series of arts and family entertainment events held over the summer. The gazebo events bring together permanent and summer residents and visitors of all ages for entertainment and a community gathering, including community pot luck and a family fun day.
Social Capital Element: Build Bridging Social Sapital by providing community gatherings for all ages, incomes and interests. Bridging Social Capital refers to connections between individuals or groups that are different.

Organization Name: VSA Arts of NH
Grant Amount: $5,000
Grant Purpose: To support Choice Voices, an inclusive arts program for people with and without disabilities. The program will include five events over the next year that would feature workshops in drumming, creative movement, pottery, bookmaking and writing -- designed to bring together people with and without disabilities in an arts experience. VSA is an energetic group that does great programming and really delivers.
Social Capital Element: Builds Bridging Social Capital through arts participation in projects for people with and without disabilities. Bridging Social Capital refers to connections between individuals or groups that are different.

Organization Name: Yeoman's Fund for the Arts
Grant Amount: $1,500
Grant Purpose: To fund a weeklong choral camp for Tamworth/Sandwich area residents and other, culminating in a free public concert. This is a good proposal for a project that builds on recent successes and fulfills their mission of building community through the arts. It relies on a substantial in-kind contribution of labor and offers the camp program at a very modest cost to participants. The Yeoman's Fund for the Arts was established from memorial funds for much-loved community arts leaders to "strengthen the bonds of community by reaching a broad range of area residents across the generations, exposing them to artistic excellence, involving them in the creative process and leading them to lives of greater creativity, self-expression and joy."
Social Capital Element: Builds bridging and bonding social capital and both strong and weak connections through arts involvement across age and incomes groups, year-round and summer residents and visitors. Bridging Social Capital refers to connections between individuals or groups that are different. Bonding Social Capital refers to connections among individuals within a group (people who are "like" each other).

Organization Name: NH Minority Health Coalition
Grant Amount: $15,000
Grant Purpose: This grant will support NH Minority Health Coalition's cultural competency training for Manchester nonprofits and public servants (e.g. police officers) as part of the Department of Justice "Weed and Seed" project. Weed and Seed is dedicated to "weeding out crime, drugs and violence, while seeding connection, collaboration and community building." A widely representative steering committee has been formed, which selected cultural competency training as a first area of focus to address the needs of the increasingly diverse population of the city of Manchester.
Social Capital Element: This grant supports building of Bridging Social Capital, which refers to connections between individuals or groups that are different. The project will use organizational innovation, which refers to changing practices to use Social Capital as a means to address important issues.

Organization Name: Friends of the Colonial Theater
Grant Amount: $15,000
Grant Purpose: To support staff and operations for the community cultural center.
Social Capital Element: This project is an exciting community partnership that is reviving an important landmark and is a key link in Bethlehem's revitalization plans. Brings together diverse members of community to support arts programming and provide a venue for community groups/ performances builds Bridging Social Capital. Bridging Social Capital refers to connections between individuals or groups that are different.

Organization Name: St. Kieran's Center for the Arts
Grant Amount: $10,000
Grant Purpose: St. Kieran's Center for the Arts has taken the former Berlin Church and developed a community cultural arts and performance center for the community. In the midst of the struggles of the Berlin-Gorham community, the birth of this community resource is both amazing and inspiring. Committed volunteers and the single paid part-time staff person have opened the center, found funds for building improvements, presented a regular schedule of events, and even produced a web site.
Social Capital Element: Provides a community venue for arts performances and arts participation, community-based effort in organizing, developing supporting the organization and the Center. Builds Bridging Social Capital across ethnic, age and socioeconomic groups. Bridging Social Capital refers to connections between individuals or groups that are different.

Organization Name: Rumney Reads 2002, Byron G. Merrill Library
Grant Amount: $8,847
Grant Purpose: Supports a community-wide summer literacy program. This year's program will coordinate efforts of the School, Library, Town Parks and Recreation and the volunteer group to offer family literacy programs for all ages, including story hours, a summer reading program, teen literacy nights, a family puppet show, and reading incentives. The program will use the summer program of the Children's Librarians of NH and the services of America Reads volunteers.
Social Capital Element: Supports Bridging Social Capital by providing community events across incomes, ages. Bridging Social Capital refers to connections between individuals or groups that are different.

Organization Name: Upper Connecticut Valley Community Coalition
Grant Amount: $15,000
Grant Purpose: To provide capital campaign staffing and support for the Community Recreation Center/ Pool project. The Upper Connecticut Valley Community Coalition is the formal organization that has grown out of years of work in the Colebrook community to develop community-based efforts that would enhance the health, wellness, and quality of life of area residents. A major focus for the group has been to develop a community recreation/ wellness center with a pool that could be used for year-round recreation and exercise by residents of all ages.
Social Capital Element: Builds Bridging Social Capital through providing a community facility for health and recreation and through the civic processes required to develop and fund the facility. Bridging Social Capital refers to connections between individuals or groups that are different.

Organization Name: Colonel Town Recreation
Grant Amount: $3,625
Grant Purpose: To support a community-wide meeting to develop a vision for the future of the community recreation facilities.
Social Capital Element: Project builds Bridging Social Capital by bringing together a cross -section of the community to work on a common concern. Bridging Social Capital refers to connections between individuals or groups that are different.

Organization Name: Court Appointed Special Advocates (CASA)
Grant Amount: $5,000
Grant Purpose: To recruit and train volunteers for northern New Hampshire.
Social Capital Element: Builds Bridging Social Capital through volunteerism. Bridging Social Capital refers to connections between individuals or groups that are different.

Organization Name: Friends of the Conway Public Library
Grant Amount: $5,000
Grant Purpose: To support a technology study of original and planned addition to offer improved public access to technology.
Social Capital Element: This project builds Bridging Social Capital through expanded public access to information and community resources. Public library expansions are considered to be a strong indicator of growing Social Capital in a community. Bridging Social Capital refers to connections between individuals or groups that are different.

Organization Name: Hospice of the Littleton Area
Grant Amount: $4,000
Grant Purpose: To support board development and communications consulting.
Social Capital Element: This all-volunteer hospice develops Bridging Social Capital through volunteerism and community relationships.

Organization Name: North Country United Way
Grant Amount: $2,400
Grant Purpose: For board development.
Social Capital Element: Build social capital through developing skills of volunteer board of community leaders. Bridging Social Capital refers to connections between individuals or groups that are different.

Organization Name: Pemi-Baker Literacy Task Force
Grant Amount: $2,000
Grant Purpose: To develop adult literacy program using volunteer tutors.
Social Capital Element: This community coalition is developing Bridging Social Capital through a new local adult literacy program that will recruit and train volunteer tutors and provide tutoring at local homeless shelter for families and at work places. Bridging Social Capital refers to connections between individuals or groups that are different.

Organization Name: NAMI New Hampshire
Grant Amount: $25,000
Grant Purpose: To strengthen NAMI's work on the local level through family led network of affiliate programs. The family networks enable families to support each other in living with a loved one with mental illness, and empower each other to participate at the local and state level to make change.
Social Capital Element: This grant supports Bonding Social Capital by strengthening connections between families of individuals with mental illness. Bonding Social Capital refers to connections among individuals within a group (people who are "like" each other).

Organization Name: Southern New Hampshire HIV-AIDS Task Force
Grant Amount: $15,365
Grant Purpose: to support Futuro Saludable, a bilingual HIV prevention program for Latina women which educates and empowers local women to make healthy choices.
Social Capital Element: This grant supports Bonding Social Capital by strengthening connections among Latina women who are at high risk of HIV infection, improving their ability to make and support good choices. Bonding Social Capital refers to connections among individuals within a group (people who are "like" each other).