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On Wednesday night, The Endowment held its winter listening session, giving the leaders of the $1.7 billion (yes, that number keeps going up) foundation a chance to offer updates and news — and, more importantly, offering the public an opportunity to weigh in on how The Endowment is doing.
It’s one of two annual meetings, required as part of the legal approval of the sale of the formerly county-owned New Hanover Regional Medical Center to Novant. Over the years, the format has evolved and, while I won’t recap the whole history here, suffice it to say: there have been highs and lows.
For me, and many others in the room I’ve spoken with, this week’s meeting felt much like May’s spring event: again hosted by CFCC, with a chamber-music opener (this time, the Wilmington Symphony players), relatively brisk speeches, and the now-familiar highlights reel. Despite his conspicuous but largely unspoken absence, former CEO Dan Winslow’s “Endowment Roadmap” still made an appearance.
(Notably, if you were watching the meeting online, you had a rather different experience — more on that in a bit.)
Sophie Dagenais, who took over as interim CEO in July after Winslow’s abrupt departure, again handled a lot of the speaking duties. (The topic wasn’t discussed, but the search for a permanent replacement, and likely an internal fight over whether to hire locally, have been pushed off to next year.)
There was a bit of an update following the completion of the board’s “strategic refresh.” Dagenais introduced additional “cross-cutting strategies” — which is an unfortunately jargony way of saying not everything fits neatly in one of The Endowment’s four categories, or pillars, of grant making : education, social and health equity, community development, and community safety. In May, The Endowment announced that food and housing were too complex to be limited to one pillar, and renamed them as cross-cutting strategies. Now, Dagenais said, “we must look at transportation, childcare, mental health as priorities that span all the pillars, and we will add workforce development as a new area of focus among these cross-cutting strategies.”
To me, this seemed a bit like semantics — but at the same time, I suppose it’s good to acknowledge the complexity of the issues at hand.
The only other ‘new’ thing I caught was the announcement that, in January, The Endowment plans to “convene the youth of New Hanover County,” who would “have a voice in our work.” I’ll try to defer my skepticism, but I feel like the kids probably won’t get a firm hand on the helm, even if they do get a photo-op on the deck. Perhaps I’m being too cynical, and The Endowment will prove me wrong.
Other than that, there were a few subtle but notable differences from past meetings. There was a perceptible shift away from the grand (or grandiose, depending on who you ask) aspirations of past meetings. The word “transformative,” once shorthand for The Endowment’s whole project, has been replaced with “impact.” Bold plans to turn New Hanover County into a “social innovation laboratory” that leads the national conversation have been tempered; we’re now hearing about data-driven, actionable grants. And any question about The Endowment’s quasi-independence from the county has been pretty much put to rest.
I want to unpack each of those a little, but first, I want to note that there was a lot of good news during this meeting.
In Chairwoman Shannon Winslow’s opening remarks (which, impressively, she appeared to have delivered from memory, sans notes or teleprompter), she rattled off some key numbers: 362 grants over five years totaling more than $176 million, including future commitments from multi-year grants. This year alone, the Endowment has awarded 168 grants worth more than $59 million.
That work has been powered by the financial return on The Endowment’s significant investments. Winslow thanked The Endowment’s financial investment managers, BlackRock and Baird, for doing what they’re paid handsomely to do — take huge sums of money and make them even larger. To that end, the Endowment has received around $1.4 billion in public money, which has grown to $1.7 billion.
“So we have paid rent, salaries, benefits, wages, insurance [to staff], 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,” Winslow said.
It’s not so often that BlackRock is the ‘good guy’ in a story these days, but in this case, their success is our success, as a community.
Of course, not all grants have been equally popular or well understood — and that depends a lot on where you’re sitting and what you care about. Take The Endowment’s $3 million grant to Thalian Hall, which I heard toasted as “amazing” and “game-changing” by arts enthusiasts, and decried as “decadent” and “shamefully elitist” by housing and homelessness advocates. But, to the latter, I have to point out that The Endowment also put nearly $6 million into the Wilmington Housing Authority’s Hillcrest redevelopment plan. I’ve been skeptical or critical of some grants, sure, but there are some that seem like unalloyed good: $5 million for MedNorth, $1.4 million for LINC, nearly $1 million for Kids Making It, and almost a half-million dollars for the Diaper Bank of North Carolina.
Because those grants, and many others, have been coming out steadily throughout the year, this week’s meeting wasn’t a big, inflection-point event. It was less Kennedy pointing at the moon or Steve Jobs unveiling the next-gen gizmo — and more a staid but generally positive shareholder meeting.
“Stewardship, engagement, and impact,” are The Endowment’s new watchwords, according to Dagenais.
In other words, The Endowment’s work is underway and continues apace. They are growing their assets, listening to people, and cranking out grants — including over $30 million in new grants, along with over $20 million in previous commitments, planned for next year.
From Transformation to Impact
The Endowment’s goals, while still lofty, have become more quotidian. A year ago, Dan Winslow had been on the job just a few months and was dropping the phrase “transformational change” even more frequently than his predecessor, William Buster.
With an Endowment “bigger than the GDP of 15 nations,” Winslow said he wanted to end generational poverty, rebuild the Black middle class, and create best-in-the-nation schools. He also promised to turn The Endowment into a think tank on social issues, soliciting world-class research and translating that into innovative grants.
“This county, unique in the United States because of this opportunity, can become a social innovation laboratory,” Winslow said, adding the county could lead the way on issues from affordable housing to transportation.
A year later, that attitude has been tempered a bit.
The Endowment is now looking to make New Hanover County the healthiest and best educated in the state — something you can measure with existing state data. It’s also looking to increase economic opportunity and reduce crime – squishier metrics, but still measurable with local data. That’s really what “impact” means, it seems to me: incremental changes that can be tracked and evaluated, allowing The Endowment to judge how successful grants are. (Dagenais said that plans to create a public-facing dashboard to track ‘impact,’ announced under Winslow, are still underway.)
Impact feels like a middle ground between the paradigm shift promised by past CEOs and the endless grind of treating symptoms, in which nonprofits often find themselves stuck. What impact actually looks like will, of course, take time — that’s one thing that hasn’t changed. Whether they’re talking about transformative change or impact, Shannon Winslow and Dagenais have asked the community for patience. That’s wise, and I hope The Endowment takes its own advice, and avoids getting frustrated with grants too early in the process as they’re looking for the data to shift. (Based on my colleague Rachel Keith’s reporting, that appeared to happen with a recent grant to the public school system, though The Endowment denies it.)
With more measured goals, the approach to researching social problems has also pivoted a bit.
While The Endowment has several contracts to study local issues, they are “distinct from the think tank work contemplated by our former CEO Dan Winslow,” according to a spokesperson. The Endowment still promises to share what it learns from these studies but they aren’t part of the same overarching ‘social laboratory’ approach we’d previously heard about.
Along those lines, the Research and Impact Department born earlier this year doesn’t seem to have survived to adulthood – although I need to officially confirm that. I do know the vice president over the department left in October, external consultants brought in to help run the department don’t appear on staff anymore (and weren’t namechecked during Wednesday’s meeting when other staff members got a shoutout), and the full-time hires projected for August never materialized.
A quick aside for transparency hawks: The Endowment won’t say how much they’re spending on research contracts. (One exception, a consulting deal with UNC-Chapel Hill to study the entrepreneurial landscape, will be open to public records requests, so we will ultimately know how much that one cost.) The Endowment claims they want to protect the community and avoid anything that might “distort future pricing or prompt competitive adjustments among vendors.”
It’s kind of a curious explanation. The Endowment is working with public money and, traditionally, when the government enters into contracts using the people’s dollars, it’s transparency, not secrecy, that protects the community
“In alignment with our county, always.”
There’s always a fair amount of mutual congratulations at The Endowment meetings (that’s fine, they’ve worked hard), but this time there was also a lot of love for New Hanover County.
In the past, there’s been some debate — pointed, at times — about just how independent the Endowment should be from the county. Some daylight was necessary to prevent The Endowment from being considered a public body, which would be subject to open meetings and records laws, something a majority of its founders did not want. Independence was also needed to look above the fray of daily issues that local governments often have to respond to, in order to see the bigger picture and work on long-range projects. But too much daylight has provoked concern from some county commissioners and administrators, who believe The Endowment needs to operate more tightly within the guidelines of the county’s own strategic plan.
The Endowment seems to have gotten the message, loud and clear. Shannon Winslow and Dagenais repeatedly thanked the county and more than once reminded the audience that The Endowment’s work will be “in alignment with the county, always,” as Dagenais put it.
The interim CEO went further in praising the county.
“We will continue to build strong private partnerships, public-private partnerships, particularly with our county agencies. The county is more than a generous investor. They are essential collaborators. Without the county, we will not achieve our shared goals. Some people wonder sometimes, 'why a grant to the county?' 'Why are you working with the county?' Because the county is our system. They are a partner, and without them, we will not reach those goals,” she said.
(I’ll note quickly, you can call the county a ‘generous investor,’ but it’s still the people’s money that’s being invested, something that gets elided more than I'd like.)
Past CEOs Dan Winslow and William Buster were never this obsequious with the county — but they also weren’t auditioning for their own jobs the way that Dagenais is (at least, not knowingly).
But, at the same time, The Endowment has remained “elusive” — as Port City Daily’s Brenna Flanagan put it — when it comes to how it will respond to the recent pullback of government funding at the federal, state, and especially the local level.
At a brief press session after the meeting, I asked Shannon Winslow and Dagenais if they had a concrete plan to respond to the funding cuts, noting specifically that New Hanover County had explicitly cited The Endowment as the logical alternative to provide funding. The Endowment immediately stepped in to backstop $1.6 million for nonprofits that was cut, but hasn’t stepped in elsewhere — including millions of dollars for pre-K, veteran service organizations, and other programs that have been cut.
Degenais implied The Endowment had been left to react to these decisions.
“I think, Ben, that, you know, some of the decisions that you're describing here and everywhere are simply not ours to control. We are not privy to them. We learn of them,” she said.
But Winslow noted that The Endowment is being more proactive.
“Before, some of these conversations were not happening. So we are meeting with elected officials and others so that we can get out in front and kind of understand what the initiatives are,” she said.
Winslow and Dagenais noted there wasn’t enough money, even with The Endowment’s significant resources, to cover the gap left by every funding cut across all levels of government — and that’s a fair point. The question I had, and still have, is whether there will be a publicly facing plan detailing how they’ll respond – so that service providers, and the public, can get a sense of what’s happening.
The situation remains confusing. The Endowment has made it abundantly clear that it wants whatever the county wants, as defined by the county’s strategic plan. And, as Endowment officials often note, they are not chartered to ‘supplant’ (that is, replace) traditional government funding. That’s well and good, but what happens when the government reduces or ends that traditional funding — then what?
If The Endowment simply steps in and picks up everything the county drops, surely that will provoke some outcry, both from people who think the county is sloughing off its own responsibility, and from those who see it as a severe impingement on The Endowment’s independence. But if The Endowment doesn’t respond to what the county is no longer funding, then people and programs will fall through the cracks, as they did this year. I won’t belabor the point beyond that, except to say I hope Winslow is right about having more conversations, because the kind of shrugging reaction The Endowment has had so far has been fairly disappointing to the nonprofit sector and the general public, at least based on my conversations.
Communication Breakdown
Again, The Endowment is doing some great work — but if it’s struggled anywhere, historically, it’s been communication. That’s not without reason. For one, the board works in private, meaning conversations that might be illuminating never get heard publicly. For another, there’s been considerable leadership turnover, bringing several different communication styles. And, to be fair, The Endowment is a complicated organization with complex goals that are hard to translate to quick-hit TV news stories.
Still, some of The Endowment’s choices are harder to understand.
Consider the failed livestream of this week’s meeting. After some technical difficulties with the audio stream following the highlight reel, the sound cut out entirely about five minutes into the Q&A session that made up most of the two-hour meeting. It came in and out for a while, and then the stream was shut down entirely. Definitely not the best live stream experience $1.7 billion can buy.
While the meeting was hosted on the county’s YouTube channel, The Endowment was responsible for recording and sending the stream (I imagine the county got some collateral flak, and is probably not thrilled about that.)
According to an Endowment spokesperson, the hardwired internet at CFCC went out. That’s frustrating, and it could happen to anyone, but I’ve heard some harsh criticism of how The Endowment handled it. No one responded to frustrated comments (now deleted) on the YouTube channel, asking what was going on. And I haven’t seen any public acknowledgement of the streaming snafu by The Endowment. The public recap, available here, includes some gorgeous photography, the slide deck and highlights reel from the meeting, and the abortive livestream video — but no mention that anything went wrong.
Now, I’m not just being petty here. The whole point of the meeting was to be a listening session — for the board, but also the public, to hear what people have to say about The Endowment. And that is the part of the livestream that got cut out. That not only means that people couldn’t watch it online but that there’s no documentation of it. (I’m told it was recorded by a staff member, but I haven’t seen the audio posted.)
I’m not saying the meeting failed to meet the legal requirements for a listening session, but it felt like it fell short in spirit. Ask anyone working in PR or communications, and they’ll tell you this is a blunder. And The Endowment had not only its own in-house communications people but a consulting PR firm helping with the event.
For another example, take The Endowment’s handling of its cancelled grant for The Northside Food Co-op.
Back in early 2024, The Endowment announced a $6.8 million grant to build a grocery store in Wilmington's Northside neighborhood. The press release, still available online as of today, explicitly identifies the Northside Food Co-op as the recipient, quoting officials from the Endowment, the co-op, and New Hanover County.
Then, at the end of last year, a potential grocery store project was announced downtown. A company closely tied to Cape Fear Development was reportedly planning a Publix, which changed the market landscape. The Northside Food Co-op’s consulting team told them their project would no longer be viable unless they significantly reimagined where and how they pursued it.
Not long afterward, The Endowment cancelled the grant — and subsequently New Hanover County pulled its own funding, leaving the co-op with essentially no financial support. Those decisions have been back in the news because the Publix deal recently fell through.
But when asked about this, The Endowment insisted that the initial Publix announcement last year had nothing to do with its decision to end the co-op grant.
During Wednesday’s press huddle after the meeting, I told Winslow and Dagenais that I don’t think the public buys that, and asked if they could give a better answer.
Winslow reiterated that, “there was no relationship,” and Dagenais tried to deflect, arguing the grant was made to the county.
“Well, the grant is made to the county. To help the county explore grocery solutions and food access in the north side neighborhood,” she said.
That might be technically true, but I reminded them that it directly contradicted how The Endowment had represented the grant in their own press release.
Dagenais then argued that The Endowment backed away because the co-op’s “vision” had changed too much. When I pushed her on why that was, she acknowledged I “had a good point” and that the change in the vision “did have something to do with Publix,” but at the same time doubled down on the argument that it was somehow immaterial to The Endowment’s decision..
It struck me as a bizarre exercise in semantics, at best, to pretend the announcement of the Publix deal played no role when it so obviously did: a potential downtown grocery store forced the co-op to pivot, which shifted it out of The Endowment’s comfort zone.
After the press huddle ended, I tried one more time with Winslow, explaining how gaslit the public, and the Black community in the Northside in particular, must feel by The Endowment’s stance on what caused the co-op grant to fall apart. She said she understood how people might see things, but reiterated, for a final time, that the downtown grocery store proposal had played no role.
I try to admit when a horse is dead, but I might have kicked this one a few extra times. I do appreciate Dagenais and Winslow for sticking around to answer my question.
I lay all of this out because it would be perfectly sane, reasonable, and fiscally responsible for The Endowment to say, “the proposal of a downtown grocery store changed things, and we had to reevaluate. Now the proposal has fallen through, but it’s also been two years since we made the grant, and some things look different, so we’re going back to the drawing board. We remain committed to fighting food insecurity, and we hope the Northside Food Co-op can be a part of that strategic goal.”
In the absence of an honest answer, the public is left to speculate, dreaming up whatever craven or embarrassing reasons they want.
I’m editorializing here, but my opinion is based on a lot of conversations with people across the socio-economic and political spectrum: The Endowment needs at least enough independence to call a spade a spade, to be honest and direct with the public, admit when things go south, and acknowledge when they change their minds. And I don’t think that’s always The Endowment we get.
That also extends to The Endowment’s reflexive citing of its bylaws when it gets questions about changing its priorities, spending money outside of New Hanover County, or making grants in ways that aren’t currently allowed. A supermajority of board members can change The Endowment’s rules — or choose not to. A more honest answer to questions that test the limits of The Endowment’s current bylaws isn’t a pat on the head and a “rules are rules,” it’s saying, “these are the rules, and we stand by them.” Or, even more honest in some cases, “not everyone agrees, but this is our consensus as a board right now.”
The Moonshot or the Mundane?
A final thought here: a friend of mine who was watching the meeting (until the livestream failed) told me how bored they were. And I thought — is that necessarily a bad thing?
I’ve spoken with several experts on philanthropy who have told me the goal of major foundations is to essentially disappear into the background. Your name might appear at the bottom of an article, a passing mention from a grantee, a blip in a public meeting. The high-profile turnovers and departures that have marked the first few years of The Endowment have prevented that, but perhaps The Endowment will enter a new phase.
I have heard plenty of praise for Dagenais’s behind-the-scenes leadership, and during the meeting, several speakers specifically called out her hard work, including Pastor Robert Campbell, a grant recipient who works in affordable housing and other areas, who told Winslow and Vice-Chair Chris Boney, “I hope we keep Sophie!”
But, if you’ve watched the last two meetings, it’s no secret that Dagenais is a less bouncy Tigger than Dan Winslow. She gets bogged down in numbers, data, and jargon (see also: “cross-cutting strategies”). She’s unlikely to tell me — or anyone else — to ‘hold her beer.’ But, so what? But, so what?
For years, the talk of transformative change, social innovation, “philanthropy plus,” and all that has left people frustrated because none of that materialized, while an endless host of day-to-day problems persisted.
I’ve always been a fan of the swing-for-the-fences spirit that Dan Winslow and William Buster projected. But in my conversations with local nonprofits, I’ve heard a lot of criticism, which has sharpened up after a year of funding freezes and budget cuts.
“It’s hard to get excited about a moonshot when you’re behind on rent and the roof is leaking,” one nonprofit administrator told me. Many others I’ve talked to are tired of Ted Talks. They want operational funding, multi-year guarantees, blended financing that includes low- or no-interest loans, and larger, more consistent community and capacity-building grants.
Perhaps the public might be better served, at least for now, by a lower-profile, higher-output Endowment. Critics will say they’ve abandoned their mission and become an ATM – but there are a lot of local organizations that very badly need cash, right now. An ATM could help with that.
I still hope that, in the long run, The Endowment finds its way to delivering true transformational change, but I concede, maybe first we need to shore up the fundamentals. Mundane, unsexy, but important work.
Next year, The Endowment will search for a new CEO. There’s a battle brewing over whether to hire locally or look further afield, but there will also be a crucial debate over management style: Will The Endowment pick a showhorse or a workhorse?
