On Monday, Board Chairwoman Shannon Winslow began her remarks by thanking The Endowment’s board members, staff, and community advisory council — noting that new members of the community board would be announced next month.
Winslow also told commissioners that The Endowment’s principal, initially around $1.25 billion dollars from the sale of the county-owned hospital to Novant, had managed recent economic instability just fine.
“Even though we have seen some market volatility, our corpus still stands in excess of $1.7 billion, so we are very thrilled to have that huge asset on behalf of our community,” she said.
Winslow noted that, at the end of last year, The Endowment had granted nearly $180 million dollars, including some future commitments (to date, the total is around $193 million).
CEO Sophie Dagenais, who officially took over the position early this year after serving as interim, added that this year’s budget is $58 million. With grants already made this year and distributions from past multi-year grants, there is still over $20 million left to award.
Dagenais said The Endowment has developed a more concrete approach for measuring the impact of grants
“We have now articulated our overarching theory of change, and we're advancing a disciplined approach to impact measurement at three interconnected levels,” she told commissioners
According to Dagenais, that will mean first whether grants are helping individual organizations advance their own mission, second whether the grants are helping The Endowment’s overall work, and third whether the grants are helping to move the needle at the “population level,” impacting broader measures of social issues.
Regarding the third point, Dagenais announced The Endowment had launched a public-facing dashboard to track some key metrics for The Endowment’s four pillars of community development, community safety, education, and social and health equity.
And she emphasized a focus on collaborative work on issues including workforce development, and the accessibility and affordability of transportation, housing, healthy foods, child care, and mental health support.
“Our county has strong public leadership, committed nonprofits, engaged educators. and active partners across the sectors. The issue is not lack of effort. It is not lack of wealth. The opportunity is alignment, ensuring that these strong assets work more cohesively toward those shared outcomes,” Dagenais said.
Dagenais also noted that several ‘landscape analyses’ are underway, studying challenges and opportunities in addressing behavioral health, early childhood and youth development, and recreation. An additional analysis, looking at entrepreneurial opportunities, was recently shelved, but could be revisited in the future.
The Endowment also offered a reminder that its next public meeting, one of two legally required every year, is slated for Wednesday, June 3.
The meeting will be held at the Minnie Evans Performing Arts Center, located at 555 Halyburton Memorial Parkway, on the Ashley High School campus in southern New Hanover County. Doors open at 5 p.m., and the meeting runs from 5:30 to 7:30 p.m. You can send questions in advance to communications@theendowment.org.
