The Lyme Foundation has received an unrestricted gift of approximately $500,000 from the estate of Freda and Hank Swan, longtime residents of Lyme who were active in the community and wanted to support the Lyme Foundation.

After careful deliberation, the Lyme Foundation has decided to use this gift to support both its ongoing work as well as special, one-time initiatives that will support its mission, which is to “maintain or enhance the quality of life in Lyme, NH.”

Specifically the Lyme Foundation will target $200,000 of the Swan gift to its general fund to support its annual grant-making program. Each year the Lyme Foundation commits approximately $35,000 - $40,000 for such purposes, with most grants in the range of $1,000 to $5,000. This gift will increase the Foundation’s annual grant-making budget by approximately 25% per year.

In addition, the Lyme Foundation expects to allocate $300,000 in 2019 from the Swan gift for one-time grants that will have a significant impact on the quality of life in Lyme.

A special committee has been formed to encourage, support, consider, and recommend grant proposals for the Swan grants. The committee is comprised of current board members as well as members of the Lyme community. Before issuing application guidelines for these one-time grants, the committee will devote two months to listening and engaging with Lyme residents to get their ideas about what might maintain or enhance the quality of life in Lyme.

“We want to solicit as many interesting ideas as possible from the community before we formally prepare and release application guidelines,” said Peter Glenshaw, Chair of the Lyme Foundation. “We want to be open to new ways that these funds could be used as well as non-traditional recipients of these funds.”

Ultimately all decisions for the Swan grants will be made by the Trustees of the Lyme Foundation. The current timeline calls for the applications guidelines to become available in mid-November 2018, with applications due in January 2019 and awards made by the end of March 2019.

Additional information about the Swan committee and the process for making the special one-time grants are available on the Lyme Foundation website.