New Hanover Community Endowment officials held their semi-annual public meeting on Thursday night to discuss funding goals for 2026 and the endowment’s “strategic refresh” plan to guide its work through 2030.
Sophie Dagenais, the endowment’s interim CEO and vice president of programs and grants, said the endowment does not yet know the official 2026 grant budget, but estimates it at around $58 million. Of that, a little over $20 million has already been committed to existing multi-year grants and forward commitments, leaving an estimated $30 million available for new awards in 2026.
Among the forward commitments is a $2 million Emergency Recovery Grant Reserve, announced Dec. 9, intended to assist residents of New Hanover County following crises or disasters. The endowment is also launching an enhanced arts and culture grants program for 2026, with $500,000 set aside that won’t affect the budget.
The “strategic refresh” envisioned for the next three years includes focusing on health, education and community development. Dagenais also announced that the endowment is adding workforce development as a new area of focus among its cross-cutting strategies.
The New Hanover Community Endowment was created from the sale of the area’s flagship hospital, New Hanover Regional Medical Center, to Novant Health in 2021. The initial fund has grown from nearly $1.3 billion to over $1.7 billion in five years, and the endowment has since committed $176 million in grants, according to the board.
“I'm proud to say that we have operated for five years. So we have paid rent, salaries, benefits, wages, insurance, all the things that we all know are incredibly expensive. We have also cut checks for well over $100 million, and yet we still have $1.7 billion in our corpus,” said Shannon Winslow, board chair of the endowment.
Winslow publicly thanked the endowment’s investment partners, BlackRock and Baird, for helping the endowment achieve strong returns.
During the public listening session, audience members raised issues about the New Hanover County school system, Novant Health NHRMC, housing, homelessness, environmental concerns and the transparency and fairness of the endowment’s grantmaking process. Additionally, multiple audience members urged the board to install Dagenais as a permanent CEO.
Dagenais stepped into the role of interim CEO after the organization’s former CEO and president, Dan Winslow, resigned in July.
At the Greater Wilmington Business Journal’s Power Breakfast last week, board chair Shannon Winslow (no relation to Dan Winslow) announced that the endowment planned to wait until 2026 to formally begin searching for a permanent leader.
The endowment is currently classified as a public charity because it is still receiving payments from the sale of the NHRMC hospital, which allows it to meet the IRS public-support requirement for public charities. Once those payments end and the endowment begins relying primarily on investment revenue, it will likely become a private foundation under IRS regulations.
"Let me just declare (that) whether we are a public charity as we are today, or a private foundation where we are likely destined to go, we are the same. We are a charitable organization. Our mission will never change, or it will not change, certainly not by us,” said Dagenais.
The endowment is limited under its bylaws to allocate up to 4% of its assets’ fair market value each year. However, when the endowment becomes a private foundation, it will be required to grant at least 5% of its net assets.
"So for our New Hanover County community, that means that when we reach private foundation status,” said Dagenais, “we need to be pouring more resources into New Hanover County by virtue of those requirements."
