For more than thirty years, Eleanor Still ran the informal, one-woman charity out of her Bow home, operating a food pantry and giving holiday gifts to the local needy children and teenagers. Before she died, in April 2004, Ms. Still arranged for her friends and supporters at the Concord Moose Lodge to carry on her work.

The lodge offered a rent-free home on North State Street and a ready corps of volunteers, a combination that had allowed Friends of Forgotten Children to flourish. The officers at the Moose Lodge told Friends of Forgotten Children that the charity needed to leave the lodge by January 2006. Local Moose leaders supported the group, but regional and international Moose officers told them that operating a separate nonprofit group on the premises violates Moose International bylaws. By operating a distinct nonprofit at the lodge could jeopardize the Moose organization's tax status as a private fraternal organization, no matter how meaningful Friends of Forgotten Children might be.

Race car driver Rob Finlay was on a plane when a news brief in USA Today caught his eye. The item explained that Friends of Forgotten Children, a food pantry in Concord, needed to leave its home at the downtown Moose Lodge and had nowhere to go. Something about the news struck Finlay, a New Hampshire native, and he decided to research the organization. He looked up the original Concord Monitor article and talked with the group's attorneys. Then he did something out of the ordinary: He bought the group a new building.

In a fairy-tale ending for the Friends of Forgotten Children, the group moved into a former daycare facility at 224 Bog Road that is being renovated and upgraded to serve the community needs. The new building is about fourteen times the size of the Friends of Forgotten Children's old space, allowing the food pantry, which began in a private home in Bow, the opportunity to think big.

The charity is feeling its way between operating informally and formally. The mission is the same, but Friends of Forgotten Children now has a registered logo and officers, as well as fixed hours and expanded food-pantry offerings. Friends of Forgotten Children receive food donations from the U.S. Department of Agriculture and the Capital Region Food Program.