Neil and Louise Tillotson Fund Large Grants Program 2026: $20,000 to $300,000 Over One to Three Years — Including Unrestricted and Operating Support — for Nonprofits Serving Coös County and Its Bordering Communities, With Final 2026 Submissions Due 15 October

Neil and Louise Tillotson Fund Large Grants Program 2026: $20,000 to $300,000 Over One to Three Years — Including Unrestricted and Operating Support — for Nonprofits Serving Coös County and Its Bordering Communities, With Final 2026 Submissions Due 15 October

Most grant programs of this size come with a thick rulebook about what the money may touch. The Neil and Louise Tillotson Fund’s Large Grants Program does something unusual: it will write a check between $20,000 and $300,000 and let the recipient use it for a project, for capital costs, for general operating support, or for nothing in particular at all. Unrestricted funding is an explicitly listed use. For a small organization in New Hampshire’s North Country — where payroll, a leaking roof, and a program idea often compete for the same dollar — that flexibility is the point.

The Fund is not open to the world. It is deliberately, almost stubbornly, local: Coös County, New Hampshire; the New Hampshire, Vermont, and Maine towns that share a border with it; and the Municipalité régionale de comté de Coaticook just across the line in Québec. If your work reaches those communities, this is one of the most generous and least bureaucratic sources of money available to you. If it does not, no amount of framing will make you eligible.

Applications are accepted on a rolling basis throughout the year. The New Hampshire Charitable Foundation, which administers the Fund, lists Thursday, 15 October 2026 at 5:00 pm ET as the final date for 2026 Large Grant submissions.

Key Details at a Glance

What the Fund Is and Where the Money Comes From

Neil Tillotson was an inventor and manufacturer — latex products, most famously — who built companies that employed thousands of people, and who kept his life anchored in northern New Hampshire even as his business took him abroad. Louise Tillotson was equally tied to the region. The fund that carries both their names was established in 2006 and has since distributed more than $68 million into a corner of the country that is rural, sparsely populated, and historically dependent on industries that have contracted.

Today the Fund awards more than $5 million a year, spread across three grant programmes of different scale, plus scholarships and other philanthropic vehicles connected to places where the Tillotsons lived and worked. It describes itself as a resource for the people of the region rather than a foundation with an agenda to impose — a framing that shows up concretely in how the Large Grants Program is structured.

The Fund’s published principles are worth reading before you write anything, because they are not decoration. They emphasise fostering local potential and self-determination, following the community’s lead rather than an outside funder’s, stewarding natural resources, cultivating belonging, and building relationships grounded in humility and trust. The Fund’s grantmaking materials also organise its interests around themes including well-being and essential needs, workforce and employer capacity, environmental health and climate resilience, and community resilience, equity, and civic participation. An application that reads as though it was designed by people who live in these towns will land differently from one that reads as though it was designed for a funder.

What the Large Grants Program Actually Funds

The Large Grants Program sits at the top of a three-tier structure:

• DASH Grants — $250 to $2,000, rolling, with final 2026 submissions by Thursday, 3 December 2026. Focused on sustainable community and economic development.
• Local Grants — $2,000 to $20,000, with fixed 2026 deadlines of Thursday, 22 January and Thursday, 16 July.
• Large Grants — $20,000 to $300,000, rolling, final 2026 submissions Thursday, 15 October.

That tiering matters for strategy. If your request is under $20,000, you belong in the Local Grants Program, not this one, and asking for $20,000 in order to reach the Large Grant floor is transparent. Ask for what the work costs.

Within the Large Grants Program, four uses are named explicitly:

Project support. A defined initiative with its own budget, timeline, and outcomes.

Operating support. The cost of keeping the organisation running — staff, rent, insurance, the unglamorous infrastructure that makes programmes possible.

Unrestricted funding. Money the organisation directs as its own board and leadership see fit. Funders who offer this are signalling trust; applicants should treat the offer seriously rather than reflexively dressing a request up as a project.

Capital expenses. Buildings, renovations, equipment, vehicles — the kind of one-time cost that a rural nonprofit can rarely absorb from operating revenue.

Awards may be structured across one, two, or three years. A multi-year request is appropriate when the work genuinely takes that long to produce results, and when you can explain what happens in years two and three that could not happen in year one.

Who Can Apply — and Who Cannot

Eligible applicants include U.S. nonprofits holding 501(c)(3) status; Canadian organisations with qualified donee status, which is what makes the Coaticook side of the border real rather than symbolic; and tax-exempt public agencies, schools, and municipalities. Community groups that do not hold tax-exempt status of their own can still apply if an eligible organisation acts as their fiscal sponsor — a provision that matters in small towns where good work often happens through informal committees rather than incorporated entities.

The Fund is also clear about exclusions. It does not fund organisations that promote hate or discriminatory practices. Religious organisations are excluded unless the services being funded are non-sectarian and benefit the broader community. K-12 public schools cannot use these grants for core operations or curriculum, though extracurricular activities may qualify. Municipal, county, and state budgets for routine operations are out; a defined one-time project may still be considered.

The geographic test is the one that ends most conversations. Coös County covers Berlin, Colebrook, Gorham, Lancaster, Pittsburg, Stratford, Whitefield, Milan, Northumberland, Errol, Dixville, Jefferson, Carroll, Stark, Shelburne, Dalton, Columbia, Clarksville, Dummer, Cambridge, Millsfield, Odell, Wentworth’s Location, and the unincorporated grants, purchases, and locations of the White Mountains. Bethlehem and Littleton are included as bordering New Hampshire communities. On the Vermont side: Bloomfield, Brunswick, Canaan, Concord, Guildhall, Lemington, Lunenburg, and Maidstone. In Maine: Gilead, Upton, Lincoln Plantation, Magalloway Plantation, and the surrounding townships including Batchelder’s Grant, Bowmantown, Grafton, Lynchtown, Parmachenee, Parkertown, and Riley. In Québec, the MRC de Coaticook takes in Coaticook, Compton, Dixville, East Hereford, Barnston-Ouest, Martinville, Sainte-Edwidge-de-Clifton, Saint-Herménégilde, Saint-Malo, Saint-Venant-de-Paquette, Stanstead-Est, and Waterville.

An organisation headquartered outside this footprint is not automatically excluded, but the benefit has to land inside it, and you should raise that in the pre-application conversation rather than hoping it goes unnoticed.

The Application Process, Step by Step

The Fund publishes a straightforward sequence, and the order genuinely matters.

1. Read the Grantseeker Guide. The Fund publishes a guide for the current grant year — available in English and French, reflecting the cross-border constituency — covering the programmes, priorities, and expectations. It is the single best preparation document available to you and it is free.

2. Have the pre-application conversation. This is required, not optional, and it is the most valuable part of the process. Christa Hollingsworth serves as the Tillotson Fund Community Partner and can be reached through the New Hampshire Charitable Foundation at 603-225-6641, extension 265. Use the call to confirm eligibility, test whether your request sits in the Large or Local tier, and hear directly what the Fund is already funding in your area. Applicants who skip this step and submit cold are guessing at answers a fifteen-minute conversation would have given them.

3. Create an organisation profile and apply in GrantSource. The Foundation’s application system is at nhcf.smartsimple.com. Building the organisation profile takes time the first time through — financial statements, board list, tax documentation — so start it before the week you intend to submit.

4. Receive a decision. The Fund aims to respond within roughly two months of submission. Because the window is rolling, an application submitted in the spring is decided long before the October cut-off, which is worth knowing if your project has a construction season or a school-year start date attached to it.

5. If funded, share the news. The Fund provides a grantee press kit. Local visibility is part of the deal.

6. Submit a final report. Reporting expectations are set at the time of award.

How to Build a Competitive Request

The Fund’s stated principles point directly at what a strong application looks like.

Show that the community identified the need, not you. “Follow community lead” is a published principle. Evidence — a listening session, a survey, a partner letter from a school or a health centre, a waiting list — is worth more than a paragraph asserting that the need is obvious.

Name partners specifically. Interorganisational partnership is an explicit funding priority. In a region this small, credible collaboration is verifiable, so name the organisations, describe what each contributes, and make sure they know you have named them.

Be honest about your finances. The Fund looks for diverse financial support. If you are asking for operating or unrestricted funds because your revenue mix is fragile, say so plainly and explain what you are doing about it. Funders that offer unrestricted money are not surprised by candour; they are put off by a budget that quietly does not add up.

Choose a measurable outcome you can actually track. Small organisations sometimes promise evaluation capacity they do not have. Two or three indicators you will genuinely collect are stronger than a dozen you will not.

Match the request to the term. If you ask for three years, the narrative should describe three distinct years of work. A one-year plan stretched across three is easy for a reviewer to spot.

Common Mistakes

The most frequent error is skipping the pre-application conversation and discovering, after weeks of writing, that the request belonged in the Local Grants Program or fell outside the geography. The second is treating the option of unrestricted support as a trap — writing a heavily specified project when the organisation’s real need is payroll stability. The third is boilerplate: language lifted from a national funder’s application that never mentions a single town by name. The fourth is waiting for the 15 October date as though it were the only opportunity. It is the final 2026 submission date, not the opening of a window, and applying earlier gives you a decision earlier and leaves room to regroup if the answer is no.

One further caution: the Fund’s own materials describe the Large Grants window as rolling across the calendar year, while the New Hampshire Charitable Foundation’s grant listing specifies the 15 October 2026 final date for the year. Confirm the operative date for your submission during the pre-application call rather than relying on any secondary summary, including this one.

Frequently Asked Questions

Can an individual apply? No. The Large Grants Program funds organisations — nonprofits, qualified donees, public agencies, schools, municipalities, and fiscally sponsored groups. Individuals in the region should look at the Fund’s and the Foundation’s scholarship and fellowship programmes instead.

Can a Canadian organisation really receive this money? Yes, if it holds qualified donee status and serves the MRC de Coaticook. The Fund’s grantseeker materials are published in French as well as English for this reason.

Is there a matching requirement? No match is specified as a condition of the grant. The Fund does look favourably on diverse financial support, which is a different thing: it wants to see that your organisation is not dependent on a single source, not that you have raised a formal match.

How competitive is it? The Fund does not publish a success rate. What is known is that it awards more than $5 million annually across all programmes into a region with a relatively small number of eligible organisations — which makes the odds better than most national competitions, provided the fit is real.

What if my request is under $20,000? Apply to the Local Grants Program, which awards $2,000 to $20,000 on fixed deadlines, or the DASH Grants Program for requests between $250 and $2,000.

Can we apply again if we already hold a Tillotson grant? Raise it in the pre-application conversation. Existing grantees are not barred, but staff will tell you how a new request interacts with current commitments.

Official Links and Contacts

• Large Grants Program: https://tillotsonfund.org/apply-for-a-grant/large-grant-program/
• All Tillotson Fund grant programmes: https://tillotsonfund.org/apply-for-a-grant/
• Eligible cities and towns: https://tillotsonfund.org/about-us/geography/
• Application portal (GrantSource): https://nhcf.smartsimple.com/
• New Hampshire Charitable Foundation grant listings: https://www.nhcf.org/how-can-we-help-you/apply-for-a-grant/
• Staff contact: Christa Hollingsworth, Tillotson Fund Community Partner — 603-225-6641 ext. 265
• Foundation address: New Hampshire Charitable Foundation, 37 Pleasant Street, Concord, NH 03301-4005 — 603-225-6641 or 800-464-6641

Next Steps

If you are inside the geography, do three things this month. Download and read the current Grantseeker Guide. Book the pre-application call — it is required anyway, and the earlier you have it, the more useful it is. And start your GrantSource organisation profile, because assembling financials and board documentation is the part that reliably takes longer than people expect.

If you are outside the geography, this is not your grant, and no framing will change that. The more useful takeaway is the model: a place-based fund that offers unrestricted and operating money, requires a conversation before an application, and decides within two months. Look for the equivalent in your own region — community foundations increasingly run programmes on exactly these lines, and they are chronically under-applied to by the organisations that would benefit most.