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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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 donateAsk
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
