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Contoocook CarryCommunity Fund

Merrimack County, New Hampshire · Since 2013

When a neighbor’s tank runs dry, we fill it.

The Contoocook Carry Community Fund pays for emergency heating fuel for Merrimack County households that have run out and cannot wait. We work year-round, we answer quickly, and we never ask anyone to prove they deserve to be warm.

DonateRequest assistance

No application fee, no means test, no waiting list.

Are you cold right now?

Call us. You do not need paperwork in hand, you do not need to have run out yet, and you will speak to a person who lives about fifteen minutes from you.

Call(603) 746-2210Emailhelp@contoocookcarry.org

Messages are answered every day, including weekends and holidays.

What the fund does

A small fund with one job, done quickly.

We are not a broad social services agency and we do not try to be. We pay for heat, in Merrimack County, for households who have run out or are about to. That narrowness is what lets us answer within a day.

Fuel, paid straight to the dealer

Heating oil, propane, kerosene, cordwood and pellets. We call your fuel company, settle the invoice in your name, and they deliver. No cash changes hands and you never have to front the money and wait for it back.

Year-round, not only in January

Furnaces fail in July. Hot water goes out in August. Tanks left empty in the spring have to be filled before the first cold night. We answer off-season calls with the same money and the same urgency.

Confidential, and entirely local

Eleven volunteers, a post office box and a bank account. Your name goes on an invoice and nowhere else. We are not a government programme and we do not report to one.

Our mission

The Contoocook Carry Community Fund pays for emergency heating fuel for Merrimack County households that have run out and cannot wait. We work year-round, we answer quickly, and we never ask anyone to prove they deserve to be warm.

Why we are called a carry

The Contoocook Carry is the stretch of riverbank where boats had to come out of the water and be shouldered overland. The river stopped doing the work, and people did it instead, together, because nobody carries a boat alone. That is where our name comes from and it is still the job.

2013

First winter we filled a tank for a neighbor.

11

Volunteers. There is no paid staff and no office.

9

Towns across Merrimack County, New Hampshire.

Our message

Share the Warmth

Share the Warmth is the simplest idea we have. Warmth that reaches you is warmth you can pass along, and in a county this size it usually comes back around.

The people who run out of oil in February are the people who plow your road at five in the morning, teach your children, stock the shelves at the market and sit two rows behind you at town meeting. They are not strangers and they are not statistics. When one house on a road goes cold, the whole road is colder.

So we ask two things of the same community. If this is a winter where you have enough, share some of it. If this is a winter where you do not, let us share ours. There is no separate class of giver and receiver here. Most of the people who fund this have needed it themselves, and a fair number of the households we warm this year will be donors within three.

Keep the heat on, and pass it along when you can.
What we say at the end of every call

Give

A single gift pays for a delivery this week. A monthly gift pays for the August furnace call nobody fundraises for. Both go to a fuel dealer with a neighbor’s name on the invoice.

How to donate

Ask

You do not have to be out of fuel, behind on a bill, or in any programme to call us. If the tank is low and the money is not there, that is the whole test. Nobody is asked to prove they deserve to be warm.

How to request assistance