Community, Giving in Action

The Fund that
Doesn’t Forget

How a quiet employee fund is changing lives—one hardship at a time.

Family of three, with father, mother, and daughter beside each other outdoors, smiling at the camera.

Catalina Brown, RN, with her husband, Eliott, and daughter, Zoe, at the Sun Flower Festival in Lee, N.H., in July 2025.

Published: 
By Jeremy Martin
3 min read

Catalina Brown, RN, faced an impossible choice: pay rent or pay for her medication. After a year of painstaking progress stabilizing a rare autoimmune disorder, she had fallen behind on treatment costs—and her medication was being withheld until the balance was paid.

“It was one of those ‘keep-me-alive or keep-a-roof-over-my-head’ moments,” says Brown, a former intensive care nurse, now a patient services coordinator at the Patient Service Center at Dartmouth Health’s Dartmouth Hitchcock Medical Center (DHMC). 

Then, in March 2025, an email arrived with news Brown hadn’t dared dream of: the Dartmouth Hitchcock Medical Center and Dartmouth Hitchcock Clinics HOPE (Helping Our People in Emergencies) Fund, an employee hardship grant program, had received new donations. Amanda White, the fund’s program coordinator at the time, was reaching out to ask if Brown was still in need. After months of balancing on a financial tightrope, the question alone felt like a lifeline.
Brown’s story is one of eight the HOPE Fund supported in 2025, when the program distributed $26,000 across employees facing hardships ranging from medical debt and lost wages to natural disasters and house fires. Established in 2019, the fund supports eligible employees of DHMC and Dartmouth Hitchcock Clinics with at least 90 days of continuous service. Grants of up to $5,000 per incident are reviewed and approved by a committee of non-management staff—peers helping peers—and are tax-free to recipients. 
Illustration of one hand with a gold coin donating to an employee hand holding a heart.
The Dartmouth Hitchcock Medical Center and Dartmouth Hitchcock Clinics HOPE (Helping Our People in Emergencies) Fund is a hardship grant program designed to help employees in need.
Brown had first applied to the HOPE Fund in November 2023, shortly after her diagnosis forced her onto a six-month medical leave from work. She has central nervous system demyelination alongside an autoimmune disorder, a combination that triggered seizures so severe that it made inpatient nursing impossible, requiring her to reinvent her career while fighting to stabilize her health. Although she was eligible for a HOPE Fund grant then, the fund at that time was depleted. Instead, DHMC offered her an interest-free loan—helpful, but still a debt hanging over an already precarious budget.
More than a year passed. Brown continued to manage her condition, her family, and her finances as best she could. White and the HOPE Fund team hadn’t forgotten her, though, and in March 2025, they came back with that email. 
 
After coming back from medical leave, Brown had taken on two jobs at DHMC to help with costs, caring full-time for her sick mother, and raising two children—all while managing that exacting schedule. Overextended and exhausted, she was making herself sicker trying to stay afloat. 
Within a week of White’s outreach, Brown’s grant was approved. Her medication was paid for. With that one pressure point relieved, she was able to step back from her per diem weekend shifts and finally rest. Her supervisor, she says, was relieved too. “She told me: it’s to keep you alive. At the end of the day, you’re not good for anybody if you’re not.” 
 
Since its founding, the HOPE Fund has operated quietly but intentionally, rooted in a simple idea that colleagues can step in for one another during moments of crisis and dire need.

Another Story of HOPE

How the HOPE Fund Helped Caroline Callery Have Children

Caroline Callery, BSN, RN, CPN, first learned about the HOPE Fund when a colleague, Julie Ebel, MSW, LICSW, told her about the program.

Callery had taken a job at Dartmouth Health in 2020 because the system’s benefits covered fertility treatments like in vitro fertilization (IVF). After two and a half years of trying to conceive naturally, four miscarriages, two egg retrievals, and three embryo transfers, that coverage made the difference between having a family and not. Without it, two rounds of IVF would have cost roughly $50,000 out of pocket.

Even good insurance has limits. And IVF means weeks of near-daily lab draws, ultrasounds, injections, surgical procedures, each with its own bill. Between deductibles, anesthesia, embryo transfers, and two C-sections, the Callery family hit their annual out-of-pocket max by January 2 every year, for four years.

“The only thing worse than not having a baby,” Callery says, “is not having a baby and being broke.”

The HOPE Fund helped the Callery family twice, in back-to-back years. Today she has two children—both conceived through IVF.

“If you feel like your life would benefit from some extra help, definitely apply,” she says. “It’s always worth a try.”

For those who help to manage the program, the HOPE Fund “…has given me the privilege of witnessing both the hardships people face and the resilience they carry,” says a current member of the HOPE Fund Committee. “Hearing these deeply personal stories is often heartbreaking, but playing even a small role in helping others regain their footing is truly meaningful. The HOPE Fund is a powerful reflection of how much DHMC values and cares for its employees—not just professionally, but personally. I sincerely hope this support continues to grow and make a difference for many years to come.” 
 
Brown’s condition is lifelong. But she is stable now, and she is working, which she likes. “The HOPE Fund put me in a position where I can have a safety net,” she says. “I was able to resume being there for my family. I’m very grateful.”

How You Can Help

The HOPE Fund is sustained by contributions from across the Dartmouth Health community. With employees currently on the waiting list, contributions of any size make an immediate difference.

Learn more or donate here.

Related Stories