In honor of International Women’s Day (March 8), we chatted with the many women’s organizations around town. Concord has a growing, vibrant community of women’s groups and we are happy to share them with you!
The Woman’s Club of Concord
The Woman’s Club of Concord is perhaps the longest-standing of all the local groups. Unfortunately, as recently as seven years ago, it showed – membership was dwindling while the average age of the remaining members was spiking, which is a gentle way of saying the group had becoming a small collection of old ladies.
Alas, the group has since “really been morphing,” according to president Lisa Schermerhorn, skewing toward a more balanced roster while rejuvenating membership to much healthier levels. And all while continuing the tradition of advocating for and empowering women that began when the group was formed in 1893.
“What’s interesting about what’s happening with us is we’re really very different than we were a few years ago,” Schermerhorn said of a group that is now 135 members strong. “Seven years ago we almost lost the club, and the demographics were much older, but we’ve been attracting a lot of younger people who want to be more involved.”
One of the more recognizable elements of the group has always been its headquarters, the historic Chamberlin House on Pleasant Street bequeathed to the group in 1919. The building is more than just a pretty facade – it has helped the women fulfill their mission by housing women in transition for below-market rent, whether it be due to homelessness, medical issues or escape from abusive relationships.
The Woman’s Club gives out annual scholarships to girls at local high schools, including three doled out last year, and the group recently received a letter from a women who earned one of those scholarships 10 years ago thanking them for believing in her. She went on to graduate at the top of her class and is pursuing a master’s degree.
“That was a very emotional experience for us, knowing the club has that kind of impact,” Schermerhorn said.
One of the largest annual events is the upcoming St. Patrick’s Day fundraiser party March 15 from 6 to 9 p.m., which is open to the public and raises money for the scholarship fund. Other recent signature events have included a 2012 fashion show fundraiser at Bravo Boutique and a New Year’s Eve Gala to kick off 2013 at the Capitol Center for the Arts. The club also hosts a social and networking event on the first Friday of every month.
“It’s just an event where anyone can come; you don’t have to be a member,” Schermerhorn said. “You can just socialize and find out more about the group.”
The club rents the house out for events, as well, with discounted rates given to members. Membership is $35 per year.
The Woman’s Club is a member of the General Federation of Women’s clubs and is affiliated with the New Hampshire General Foundation of Women’s Clubs, the former partnership having been established in 1894. And thanks to the recent resurgence, the club hopes to continue its efforts to “empower women to enhance lives and community” for the foreseeable future.
For more information, visit womansclubofconcord.org or email president@womansclubofconcord.org.
The Concord Contemporary Club
The Concord Contemporary Club doesn’t have a building to call its home. Not that you’d ever find anyone there if there was one.
“We are doers. People come because they want to get their hands dirty,” Suzanne Carmichael, the group’s former president and current publicity chair, said. “We have such a perse group of really cool ladies and they all have one thing in common, that they want to give back to their community.”
The club is about 25 years old and boasts 33 members, Carmichael said, with a wide range of ages and professions. Originally part of the Concord Woman’s Club, the group has developed its own identity by getting its hands on just about every kind of service project it can in the greater Concord area.
The club has manned food tables for Shared Gifts in Hopkinton, made sandwiches for Red Cross blood drives, worked closely with the American Heart Association, created baskets for residents leaving Shea Farm and generally taken every available opportunity to volunteer. You’d have better luck spotting Bigfoot than you will an idle Contemporary Club member.
“There’s nothing we don’t have our hand in,” Carmichael said.
The group gives out a scholarship every year to a local student – male or female – and contributes in other non-monetary ways, as well. One older member knitted several hundred hats and donated them to the hospital so newborn babies could go home wearing a hand-made beanie.
The group – which is a member of the General Federation of Women’s Clubs – is made up of women and certainly focuses on women’s issues, including a recent book club meeting discussing Half the Sky, which may prompt an upcoming viewing at Red River Theatres – but is an equal opportunity contributor, getting involved in all varieties of service projects.
The persity of the membership, which includes factions still in the workforce and retired members who sit in on house and legislative sessions to report back on critical happenings, opens the door to a wide array of possibilities. Carmichael teaches at John Stark Regional High School in Weare and used a recent training in hand-only CPR to spark a movement to train the students in the same capacity, and she’s also had her ninth-grade advisory students write letters to soldiers after discovering the project through the club.
“I can teach you to read well and write well, but how do I teach you to just be a good person and give back to the community? If I didn’t belong to this club, that wouldn’t have crossed my mind as much,” Carmichael said.
The Contemporary Club is hosting a recruitment event April 9 at Bravo Boutique beginning at 7 p.m. for those interested in learning more. The evening will feature a fashion show, and attendees will get 10 percent off their purchase, with 10 percent of the purchase going to the club’s fund. Admission to the event is free.
That is in line with most of what the club does, as dues are $32 per year and just about every other penny raised is used in projects.
“We are a nonprofit, so everything we bring in goes back out to the community 10-fold,” Carmichael said.
For more information, search for GFWC Concord Contemporary Club on Facebook or email suzanne03229@aol.com.
The Women’s Fund
The reach of the Women’s Fund of New Hampshire is vast, extending to all corners of the state. The full-time staff, though, could fit inside a compact car.
“We’re small and mighty,” Marianne Jones, the president and executive director, said. “And it’s the nature of the nonprofit world – we are nimble.”
Small, mighty, nimble – the group features three full-time employees – and responsible for doling out more than $1 million in grants over its 14-year existence as it pursues its mission statement to “encourage philanthropy among and for women and girls; to improve the lives of women and girls through research, advocacy, and social change grant making; and to educate the community about the potential of women and girls.”
“We believe the best way to make positive community change is by investing in women and girls first,” Jones said.
A grant-making organization focused on helping agencies and other groups throughout the state that support women’s rights and gender equity, the Women’s Fund has also created a Community Resource Guide for women leaving the justice system, holds free grant-writing workshops around the state and has worked closely on a number of school-based projects.
The Women’s Fund also supports Families in Transition throughout the state as well as all domestic violence and rape centers and community health and reproductive health organizations. And those who think men need not apply are the ones who need not apply.
“We do include men and boys. We don’t discriminate,” Jones said. “To advance women and girls, you need everybody.”
That advancement seems to be working. When the last election produced a state leadership team made up entirely of women, it was tangible fruits of Women’s Fund labor.
“We look at New Hampshire’s first-in-the-nation leadership team,” Jones said. “We’re very proud we helped advance that and feel very strongly that we were a part of that effort.”
The recently published Community Resource Guide is perhaps the latest major accomplishment, giving women who are set to be released from the justice system the tools they need to reacclimate to society. The booklet features important phone numbers like New Hampshire 2-1-1, as well as guidance to help with mundane tasks like getting a photo ID or driver’s license and Social Security card.
“We think it’s a critical piece of information,” Jones said. “People just assume everyone has access to the internet, but people leaving the justice system have no access to the internet and maybe limited access to telephones.”
Just as the resource guide can be adapted, so too is much of the Women’s Fund work. Grants and other contributions are tailored specifically to the demographics being reached, which can be rather perse from one place to another in the state.
“New Hampshire is small geographically, but the needs in different places are really perse,” Lindsay Hanson, the group’s vice president, said. “The services and programs that exist from one place to another are pretty vast in how they’re different.”
What doesn’t change, though, is the purpose. And though the recent election represented a big step forward, there are occasional steps in the other direction – like recent controversial comments by Rep. Mark Warden – that drive the Women’s Fund to charge on.
“On the one hand, we’re very proud of the woman leadership, and on the other hand, there’s a tremendous amount of work to be done,” Jones said. “It’s terribly important that we continue our work around gender equality, because there’s people out there trying to take it away. But we are a force to be reckoned with.”
For more information, visit wfnh.org or call 226-3355.
Zonta Club of Concord
Since 1919, the Zonta Club has been working to improve the legal, political, economic, health and professional status of women the world over. The organization is up to 30,000 members (or “Zontians”) spread over 63 countries. While all the different chapters are working towards the same goals, how they do it varies from group to group.
“We’re part of an international organization,” said Concord Zonta president Susan Lombard, “but each club is very different. If you went to a club in a different city, in a different state or in a different country, it’s going to be different. We get to decide what we do locally within the mission.”
That autonomy allows them to let their campaigns evolve as Concord does. As at-risk groups like the homeless, refugees and inmates grow, Zonta responds by tailoring their service projects to support those groups. When funding for the Crisis Center of New Hampshire was cut, for instance, Zonta stepped in to provide some financial support.
Their most public projects are probably the series of scholarships they provide for local students. The Zonta Memorial Scholarship at NHTI provides financial assistance to non-traditional female students (primarily single mothers). The Jane M. Klausman Women in Business Scholarship helps out students pursuing business degrees. There are also several scholarships aimed toward high school students committed to volunteering, leadership and public policy. After all, for Zonta, it’s all about education.
“The way you elevate a country is: start by educating the women,” said Zontian Sue McCoo.
One recent campaign that Zontians are particularly proud of is Career Connect, which helps women prepare themselves to seek jobs. The workshops focus on showing job hunters how to dress, present themselves, build a resume and how to interview. More of these workshops are planned for spring (dates TBD).
Member Donna Raycraft said that Concord’s Zonta chapter is effective by being both tight-knit and widespread.
“We all like each other and work well together,” Raycraft said, “and we have members in many different fields. If there’s an issue in the schools, we can get into the schools. . .We’re not just blindly picking issues out of the air.”
To that end, Lombard told us that they are looking to extend that reach by bringing all of Concord’s women’s groups together (hey, isn’t that what this article is doing?!).
“To the extent that we cover the same issues, we may be more effective if we pool our resources,”said Lombard.
For more information, visit zontadistrict1.org/concord_nh.
Womenade
Delicious citrus beverage or valuable community assistance organization? Womenade of Concord is the latter, and it has been helping people in the greater Concord area with immediate needs since its inception in March of 2010.
According to its website, Womenade “raises money for immediate, short-term financial assistance – up to $500 – for families in need in the greater Concord area.” The requests must come through a third-party “validator,” and after being evaluated and voted on by Womenade’s board, funds are distributed through the validator, as well.
For example, if a guidance counselor at a school saw a student without proper winter clothes, he or she could submit a request via the Womenade website, according to Leslie Walker of Womenade. The group’s eight-member board would vote on the request, and if approved, make a payment to the counselor, perhaps in the form of a gift card to WalMart to purchase clothing.
Womenade has taken requests from doctors for patients that need medication that may not be covered by insurance, employment organizations that need car repairs in order to get people to work and people who need a place to stay for a night or two before moving into a new home.
Modern technology plays a major role, too – with smartphones and instant email access, the organization can vote on a critical case almost immediately.
“We can process a request very quickly, and at times we’ve done that, if it’s been someone leaving a domestic violence situation and had a more permanent situation coming up but that night had nothing and nowhere to stay, we’ve been able to get her into a place that evening,” Walker said.
Womenade is not a long-term solution, Walker said, and can’t involve itself when any kind of criminal or negligent behavior is at play. The group won’t pay legal fees, nor will it give money to someone without a
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long-term plan in place.
“If someone is unable to pay rent and has no job prospects and can’t make ends meet, our $500 is not going to help that person,” Walker said. “So we usually refer them to other organizations or agencies that can provide a more long-term solution.”
All of Womenade’s money comes through fundraising or donations, and 100 percent of the donations support those in need. The group holds a few annual fundraising events but pays for the food itself and often has the facility donated.
That will be the case during an early-May event that has become a popular one – a handbag auction at O Steaks and Seafood. O donates the room, the board pays for the food and the evening includes a silent auction of new and gently used handbags collected during the weeks leading up the event. Local businesses like Constantly Pizza have also donated a portion of proceeds during special promotions.
Though the organization is made up entirely of women, help goes to and comes from anyone in the community.
“We’ve been really well-supported, and I think once people realize their money comes in and not a piece of it goes toward administrative support, that every single dollar you give goes toward someone in need, that’s what’s appealing. People like that direct connection,” Walker said. “Other than seeing someone that needs money and walking up to them on the street and handing it to them, this is as close as you can get to that. They count on us to be good stewards of that money and that it goes to the right purpose. It’s the closest thing to helping your neighbor.”
Visit womenadeconcord.org for more information, or email help@womenadeconcord.org if you have a recipient in mind.
