Funding Priorities

The Linden Foundation funds non-profit organizations that strengthen families facing multiple barriers in accessing community resources by helping provide them with the skills and support systems they need to become cohesive, internally supportive, and self-sufficient. Preference is given to comprehensive programs that most directly help those in need, involve multiple family members, provide sustained support to the participants, and are administered by community-based organizations.

The Foundation has three funding strategies:

1. Family Relationships: Support families through programs that nurture, build, and strengthen family relationships. Particular areas of interest include:
- Educational programs that develop: mediation skills, parenting skills, relationship building skills

2. Economic Opportunities: Help families gain economic security through programs that make it feasible for family members to become and remain employed. Areas of interest include:
- Workforce development / Job training / Entrepreneurial assistance
- Family budgeting assistance
- Quality child care, when provided in conjunction with an educational program for parents. (Note: Stand alone child care programs are not eligible.)

3. Housing Opportunities: Help increase and preserve housing opportunitiesĀ for families facing housing instability by providing:
- Operating support for organizations that provide transitional housing, supportive housing with social services, and/or permanently affordable housing for very low income (below 30% of median income)
- Homelessness Prevention: Emergency or short-term financial assistance to enable families to stay in existing housing


  Eligibility and Geographic Focus

All applicants must be non-profit, 501(c)(3) organizations, generally serving communities in need of greater economic investment, in the following areas:

  • Massachusetts: the North Shore area, especially Gloucester, Lynn, and Salem, and the Merrimack Valley area, especially Haverhill, Methuen, Lawrence and Lowell.

  • New Hampshire: the Lakes Region and northern New Hampshire, the Capital region, Greater Manchester, and the Seacoast region.