NET WORTH: Unknown
SOURCE OF WEALTH: Hypertherm
FUNDING AREAS: Early Childhood, Community Research
OVERVIEW: Dick and Barbara Couch move philanthropy through the Couch Family Foundation, which focuses its grantmaking on supporting organizations and programs that serve communities in the Upper Valley of New Hampshire and Vermont, and Martha’s Vineyard.
BACKGROUND: Dick Couch graduated from Dartmouth College. In 1968, he and Robert Dean co-founded Hypertherm to apply ultra-high temperature technology to industrial problems.
ISSUES:
EARLY CHILDHOOD: The foundation works in early learning, children’s health, and family strengthening. Grantees have included Big Brothers and Big Sisters of Cape Cod and Islands; Center for School Success; Children’s Center of the Upper Valley; Dartmouth College; Green Mountain Children’s Center; Hanover Nursery School; and Zack’s Place Enrichment Center.
COMMUNITY CENTER: The Foundation is also “committed to using data and direct community engagement to inform our philanthropic decision making.” In 2017, the Couch Foundation partnered with the Carsey School of Public Policy at the University of New Hampshire to better understand how families and their children fare in general, and “specifically within the early childhood education and care landscape in the Upper Valley.”
The foundation supports organizations that work within the community like WISE, which “leads the Upper Valley to end gender-based violence through survivor-centered advocacy, prevention, education and mobilization for social change”; Vineyard Committee on Hunger; and Society for the Protection of New Hampshire Forests.
LOOKING FORWARD: The Couch Family Foundation is still new and evolving.
LINK: Contact Page