Cheshire County Grants

Cheshire County’s mission is to be value and service driven and its grants department delivers incredible value by offsetting the costs of various County services and expanding the services in the community by being a fiscal sponsor to area organizations. The greatest asset of the grants department is that it furthers the County’s mission by helping to meet unique and unmet needs of county residents by obtaining and managing grants and projects that would otherwise be unaffordable. Additionally, it connects non-profits to the knowledge and resources they need to support, enhance, or expand on the services they provide.

The grants department is staffed by a full-time grants manager and full-time grants assistant who oversee the fiscal and contractual obligations of all county grants and write and/or coordinate the application process of new grants. The grants department serves as a community resource to assist area non-profits in finding and writing grants. They continually forward funding opportunities to agencies looking to finance specific projects and programs.

When a funding need is presented, we carefully review the source, requirements, internal capacity of the organization to fulfill the programmatic outcomes, evaluation needs, etc., and determine if the goals of the grant align with the goals of the County. As fiscal sponsor, we do not implement the program, but we do manage the funds and adhere to the strict guidelines set forth by the funder.

Please contact the grants manager if your organization is interested in discussing a partnership with us as a fiscal sponsor, or if you would like assistance searching for or applying for grants.

Suzanne Bansley, MBA, GPC
Grants Manager, Cheshire County
603-355-3023 and sbansley@co.cheshire.nh.us

Grants Department Annual Report 2020

Cheshire County’s grants department delivers incredible value by offsetting the costs of county services and by expanding community services as a fiscal sponsor to area organizations. The department managed 41 grant agreements with a total award value of $13.6 million—including $5.7 million in new grant awards. The department produced $2.7 million in revenue—including $147,191 in administrative fees. The department accomplished this with only $122,941 in department expenditures. The return on investment on grant revenue is 2,099%.

During 2020, the grants department wrote 20 grants to various funders; 15 of which were awarded, one denied, and four were pending a notice of award at year-end. New grants awarded for new projects included an Emergency Management Planning Grant for two uninterrupted power sources for the dispatch center, a Homeland Security grant for nine base radio repeaters, a New Hampshire Children’s Foundation grant for a food system planning project, and an expansion grant for the System of Care program through Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration. New grants for continuing projects include funds from U.S. Department of Justice for bulletproof vests, from U.S. Department of Justice for mobile data terminals, from New Hampshire Department of Transportation for transportation for seniors and disabled, from New Hampshire Superior Court for the county drug court, from New Hampshire Charitable Foundation for substance misuse prevention, and two grants from NH Department of Justice for a domestic violence prosecutor and victim/witness coordinator.

2020 presented a unique challenge in grants with a rapid rollout of federal and private funding opportunities for COVID-19 response activities. The grants department worked closely with the finance department to quickly learn about these opportunities, their eligibility criteria, allowable expenses, and to set up complex expense tracking systems. The county received funds from the Governor’s Office for Emergency Relief and Recovery Municipal & County Payments, FEMA Public Assistance Program, and a DOJ Coronavirus Emergency grant, as well as payments from the Department of Health and Human Services.

The System of Care Implementation grant is the county’s largest grant-funded program. In 2017, Substance Abuse and Mental Health Administration awarded the county $4 million to spend over 4 years (extended to 5 years in 2020) to improve the behavioral health outcomes of children and youth with serious emotional disturbance by building and engaging infrastructure capacity to create a comprehensive System of Care approach and implement wraparound. In 2020, Substance Abuse and Mental Health Administration awarded the county another $4 million to expand the Monadnock Region System of Care’s geographic coverage north into parts of Sullivan and Grafton counties and its program services to now include wraparound for children 0-5, Multi-Tiered Systems of Support for Behavioral Health in at least five schools, and expanded coverage for its high-fidelity home-based family therapy program. It also continued a strong regional/state partnership with the Bureau for Children’s Behavioral Health. The program improved its wraparound practice based on evaluation data; it strengthened family engagement; and it increased community collaboration. The greatest challenge with this grant-funded program continues to be collecting backup documentation to support a total of $4 million of in-kind match required between both of the grants.

The county fiscally sponsored 12 grants, most from the New Hampshire Department of Health and Human Services and the National Association of County and City Health Officials. These grants passed through Cheshire County to the Greater Monadnock Public Health Network and the Greater Monadnock Medical Reserve Corps. Cheshire Medical Center/Dartmouth Hitchcock manages both programs through their Center for Population Health. The combined award value was $806,363. Year-end grant revenue was $290,167. These grants provided funding to host a regional public health network and align a range of public health and substance misuse prevention and related health promotion activities, as well as expand capacity of community programs for emergency preparedness and evacuation.

In collaboration with the Monadnock Regional Coordinating Council for Community Transportation and Southwest Region Planning Commission, the county fiscally sponsored a grant from the New Hampshire Department of Transportation that passed through Cheshire County to four community organizations (Community Volunteer Transportation Company, Home Healthcare, Hospice & Community Services, Monadnock Adult Care Center, and Keene Senior Center) to provide accessible transportation to seniors and disabled individuals. The 2-year grant was for $326,666 and ends June 30, 2021. The county is presently writing and intends to submit an application for this program for state fiscal years 2022 and 2023.

New Hampshire Community Development Finance Authority awards the county a Microenterprise Community Development Block Grant on an annual basis through a competitive grant application to provide training and technical assistance services to business development programs. The county sponsored four additional Community Development Block Grants during 2020, three carried forward from 2020 and one was newly awarded in 2020. The total combined award value these grants was $2,694,730 and 2020 revenue was $661,644. Southwest Region Planning Commission writes and administers these grants.

As well as writing and managing grants for the county and for community organizations, the grants manager serves as a community resource to assist area non-profits in finding and writing grants. The grants manager continually forwards funding opportunities to agencies looking to finance operations or specific projects. In 2020, the county provided grant writing or research assistance to Cheshire County Restorative Justice Program, Marlborough Library, Cheshire Fairgrounds, River Valley Community College, Keene Skatepark, and Symonds Elementary School’s ARC collaborative

Respectfully submitted by,

Suzanne Bansley, MBA, GPC

Grants Manager, Cheshire County

603-355-3023

sbansley@co.cheshire.nh.us