In the thick of summer, staff at the Boys & Girls Clubs of Southeastern North Carolina help host a flurry of summer camp sessions for 12 hours a day, five days a week, for 10 weeks.
During field trips, students tumble in and out of newly replaced BGCSENC buses – an upgrade from the 40-year-old fleet that CEO Dawn-Michele Blalock said had been breaking down almost daily, disrupting routes and creating “controlled chaos” for staff.
Thanks to a 2023 grant from the New Hanover Community Endowment, which awarded the Wilmington-based nonprofit organization $1.6 million over two years, BGCSENC used part of the funding to purchase buses.
BGCSENC has since received additional endowment funding for facility renovations, including long-planned safety improvements to restrooms, as well as support for trauma-informed care and youth summer camps, according to grant records.
“I don’t think we could have grown or focused on increasing our quality of programming without (the endowment),” Blalock said. “It’s just not possible.”
Created from New Hanover County’s proceeds from the roughly $2 billion sale of the then county-owned New Hanover Regional Medical Center (NHRMC) in 2021, the endowment has promised to be nothing short of transformational.
The endowment’s mission – to improve the health, education, safety and economic opportunity of every person in the community – translates into its four strategic pillars: social and health equity, education, community safety and community development.
The endowment’s initial fund has grown from roughly $1.3 billion to more than $1.7 billion, according to endowment officials, making it one of the largest philanthropic organizations in North Carolina. Since its inception and as of press time, the endowment has committed approximately $323 million in 436 grants.
While the endowment has two funding cycles for smaller, community grants, capped at $15,000 and with a minimum of $5,000, organizations might also be eligible for larger, multi-year grants or “strategic investments” that support the endowment’s four pillars.
Among the endowment’s largest commitments is $116 million for New Hanover County Schools bond projects, contingent on voter approval of the bond referendum in November, plus $22.3 million to create the New Hanover Healthcare Career Partnership.
In a tumultuous federal and state funding environment, nonprofits are feeling the pinch and the looming uncertainty of policy changes, officials have said. Nonprofit leaders cite concerns over losing funding from local government, as well as the endowment’s future role as a funding partner.
“It’s no secret that the funding from other levels of government has kind of changed,” said JC Lyle, Wilmington City Council member and former CEO of nonprofit WARM NC, who is now serving as interim director of Family Promise of the Lower Cape Fear. “Some of them have gone away or changed how they operate. So, there’s a lot of uncertainty; it’s probably the best word to describe it right now.”
Last June, members of the New Hanover County Board of Commissioners opted to cut $1.6 million in funding allocated to nonprofit groups from the county budget. While the endowment stepped in with “one-time” funds to cover the gap, the county dissolved its noncounty agency funding committee, which vetted nonprofit grant requests. At the time, officials indicated the new policy would be permanent until otherwise indicated.
According to a county spokesperson, the county funded 18 nonprofits in its 2026-27 adopted budget through its economic development funding process. The previous 2025-26 budget had included 63 nonprofits, which were funded through a combination of the noncounty agency funding process covered by the one-time endowment grant and its economic development processes.
The endowment’s bylaws state that its funding is intended to “supplement,” rather than replace, government support.
Including in the case of its $116 million commitment to finance New Hanover County Schools bond projects, the endowment has frequently cited its limitations – and potential – as a civic funding partner.
“Yes, we are a charitable foundation, and we will operate in that way,” said endowment CEO and President Sophie Dagenais. “But we’re also a civic institution, and we are an instrument by which we can help accelerate public priorities at minimal or no cost to the residents of New Hanover County.”
To nonprofit leaders like Blalock, uncertainty in local government funding strains organizations seeking diversified funding opportunities. For example, a grant application BGCSENC submitted to the city in October remains in limbo, Blalock said.
“There’s a limited amount of funding sources here in this specific community,” she said, “and we’re all trying to engage with them. So, you have to be very creative about looking for other funding that’s coming up.
“And (the endowment is) not going to fix all the funding problems,” she added.
Isabelle Shepherd, executive director of the Alliance for Cape Fear Trees, said the nonprofit is fortunate to have received funding from the endowment, the county and the city this year, with $125,000 in combined grants from New Hanover County and the city of Wilmington.
At a New Hanover County Board of Commissioners meeting June 16, and in recognition of nonprofit funding needs, Shepherd pushed back against the county’s nonprofit funding policy shift.
“The New Hanover County Endowment was created to fuel innovation and growth, expanding what is possible, not backfilling public disinvestment and shouldering fundamental civic duties,” she said at the meeting.
Some nonprofit advocates, such as Meade Van Pelt, executive director of the nonprofit campus and collaboration hub The Harrelson Center, argue that the endowment still has plenty of room to improve in bringing transformational change to the local nonprofit environment.
“I believe that the nonprofits expected or thought that there would be more of a trust-based philanthropy relationship with the endowment,” Van Pelt said. “(They) probably didn’t expect to see so many of the larger institutions being funded … which may appear as a risk aversion for the endowment.”
She added that funding for operations, beyond programming, is essential for nonprofits to stay afloat.
Dagenais said it might be too soon to tell exactly what kind of impact the endowment has had on the county and the region’s nonprofit landscape. “We don’t want people to only think of us in terms of number of grants and dollars awarded,” she said.
Instead, Dagenais said, the endowment focuses on tracking population-level outcomes tied to each grant that forms the basis for its grantmaking.
“It is very possible that we will not achieve all of our goals. … But there are reasons for that, and you discover why, and then you improve grantmaking,” Dagenais said. “We don’t take that personally. You try things, and sometimes things work, and sometimes they don’t.”
The endowment is currently classified as a public charity. Endowment officials expect it to transition to private foundation status around 2028, when the organization is no longer expected to meet the IRS public-support requirements applicable to public charities.
Endowment officials expect that, as the organization stops receiving payments from the sale of NHRMC and increasingly relies on investment income, it will no longer meet the IRS requirements for its current public-charity classification and will transition to private foundation status.
Private foundations are required to allocate roughly 5% of annual minimum distribution requirements based on investment assets, according to IRS rules, meaning that the endowment’s yearly allocation of up to 4%, as outlined in its bylaws, will increase.
Dagenais said that beyond the increased allocation requirements, little will change at the organization, with yearly allocations likely to exceed $60 million.
“We are talking about purely Internal Revenue Service tax code nomenclature,” she said. “Nothing will change except one very important thing, and that is the amount of money we give away. It will go up.”
Read more on Nonprofits & Fundraising:
Nonprofits Navigate Funding Shifts
Nonprofits Stretch to Meet Food Need
OPINION: A Look at What Nonprofits Need to Succeed
Habitat Chapters Expand, Explore Merger
Pastor Helps Those with Addictions
