Since the endowment’s creation from the sale of New Hanover Regional Medical Center, advocates for a range of issues have been eagerly waiting to submit grant proposals. More recently, elected officials have been looking to the foundation — particularly for funding on affordable housing. That includes Julia Olson-Boseman, chair of the New Hanover County Board of Commissioners, who has steered the county away from a housing bond and towards alternative funding sources to deal with the issue, including suggesting NHCE will have a role.
Related: The Newsroom: County Chair Julia Olson-Boseman
NHCE Vice Chair Hannah Gage said the community endowment has to consider a broad range of issues – and applications from lots of different organizations.
“I think people have looked or have hoped that there would be some kind of early commitment from us. And because we read about in the paper, you have people will say, 'Well, you know, maybe the endowment will do this, maybe endowment, will do that.' And it's not that we're not interested. But… everyone will apply the same way, whether they're a tiny nonprofit, or whether they are a large governmental agency," she said.
Chair Spence Broadhurst agreed.
“Our board is fully engaged, fully committed to being part of the solution of affordable housing. But we're also committed to our own process," he said.
Broadhurst said the endowment will likely make what he calls ‘reactionary’ grants this year — dealing with surface level issues, and save the larger, more strategic grants dealing with root causes for later years. That’s in part because the endowment won’t be operating at full financial capacity of $40 million dollars a year for a while yet.
“That's where you hear the $40 million number because people say, 'okay, if you spin off 4% of [$1.25 billion] a year, you're $45 million. Well, that's fine —once you get into that long term investment position, but we're not there. We're in a couple months of a bumpy investment world right now that that's going to make a little bit difficult to make a decision this on what we're going to do this year.”
In its second and third year, Broadhurst and Gage said NHCE would be in a better position to make more significant grants, but both said the endowment could not singlehandedly deal with the affordable housing crisis.
Broadhurst noted that NCHE is a funding mechanism, not an organization that can directly tackle issues. To that end, Gage added that she wanted NHCE to find ways to help local non-profits 'ramp up' capacity — that is, the administration, staffing, equipment, or physical space need to handle bigger projects funded by NHCE.
As for the immediate future, Broadhurst said the hire of William Buster as NHCE's first CEO was a 'milestone.' Buster starts work next week, and for the first few months his major challenges will be standing up a team and developing grant criteria, Broadhurst said.
