Home/Regions
Regions served
Five regions, selected for concentration rather than coverage.
The Foundation applies its geographic criteria as strictly as its focus area criteria. A foundation of this size distributed nationally would be marginal in every market it entered. Concentration is the principal structural advantage available to us.
Greater Greenville
Appalachian Highlands
Catawba Region
The Midlands
Rio Grande Valley
Share of fiscal 2025 grant dollars, reflecting $3.6 million distributed across 214 organizations.
Flagship region · Since 2016
Greater Greenville, South Carolina
$1.8 million in 2025 across 96 partner organizations, representing half of total Foundation grantmaking.
Greenville County and the contiguous Upstate constitute the Foundation's flagship region and the only one in which it maintains a continuous local presence. Both founders were raised and educated in the region.
Five directed initiatives and one open rolling fund operate here. The Greenville Commitment, adopted by the Board in 2019, establishes a floor beneath the regional allocation that cannot be reduced without amendment to the Foundation's bylaws.
Active initiatives
- The Completion Fund, postsecondary emergency assistance
- The Housing Stability Fund, eviction prevention
- The Student Nutrition Initiative, school-based nutrition access
- The Upstate Fellows Program, paid civic fellowships
- The Community Spaces Fund, shared public space
- The Open Upstate Fund, rolling and unrestricted
Consultation sessions: first Tuesday of each month, 8am to 11am, in Greenville.
Regional priorities
- Postsecondary persistence and emergency assistance at regional institutions
- Neighborhood stabilization and critical home repair in former mill communities
- River access, trail connection and shared public space
- Immigrant and refugee family services
Fiscal 2025: $470,000 across 28 organizations.
Since 2018 · 13 percent
The Catawba Region
York, Chester and Lancaster counties, South Carolina.
The Foundation's President holds long-standing personal ties to the Catawba region, which informed its selection as the Foundation's second area of operation.
The region has undertaken a substantial and largely successful economic transition following the contraction of its textile industry. The Foundation's work concentrates on the communities least served by that transition, particularly the residential neighborhoods established around the former mills.
The Foundation entered the region in 2018 having observed that postsecondary persistence patterns closely resembled those it had already documented in the Upstate, and that the underlying causes appeared substantially identical.
Since 2019 · 12 percent
Columbia and the Midlands
Richland, Lexington, Fairfield, Kershaw, Newberry, Orangeburg and Calhoun counties, South Carolina.
The Midlands portfolio is the Foundation's most health-weighted, reflecting both the President's clinical background and the specific service conditions across the seven counties in scope. Several of those counties have no obstetric unit in operation, and in two the nearest facility is more than an hour distant under favorable conditions.
The Foundation funds school health capacity, rural clinic operating support, community health worker positions and maternal health navigation through the first eighteen months. Awards in this region are the Foundation's smallest by median value and its longest by commitment term, as organizational thinness and staff turnover constitute the principal risks to continuity.
Regional priorities
- School health positions and associated supply budgets
- Rural and federally qualified health center operating support
- Maternal and infant health navigation across seven counties
- Community health worker positions funded as permanent roles
- Patient transport, which constitutes the binding constraint in several counties
Fiscal 2025: $430,000 across 31 organizations.
Regional priorities
- Volunteer fire, rescue and rural emergency medical capacity
- Flood resilience and floodplain acquisition navigation
- Small-town commercial district organizations
- Broadband access advocacy and community network development
- Nutrition access in communities distant from retail grocery
Fiscal 2025: $540,000 across 34 organizations.
Since 2021 · 15 percent
The Appalachian Highlands
Western North Carolina and the East Tennessee valleys.
Conditions in the Highlands differ materially from those elsewhere in the Foundation's portfolio. Communities are frequently served by a single access route, emergency response is predominantly volunteer, and a single infrastructure failure can isolate several hundred households for an extended period.
The Foundation entered the region in 2021 anticipating that nutrition access would constitute the principal need. Consultation with local organizations established that emergency response capacity and long-horizon flood resilience were the more binding constraints, and the regional strategy was revised accordingly.
This is the only region in which the Foundation will consider capital requests, and the region in which the Rapid Response Fund is most frequently deployed.
Since 2023 · 10 percent
The Rio Grande Valley
Hidalgo, Cameron, Starr and Willacy counties, Texas.
The Rio Grande Valley is the Foundation's only region outside the Carolinas and its most recent addition. The Foundation entered in 2023 with the expectation that its established regional methodology would transfer. That expectation proved substantially incorrect, and the strategy now in place was determined principally by local partner organizations rather than by the Foundation.
Supported activity includes colonia water, drainage and road infrastructure advocacy, community health outreach and navigation, and workforce pathway development through regional postsecondary institutions. The Foundation operates no directed initiative in the region and does not intend to establish one.
The chair of the Foundation's Rio Grande Valley advisory council now holds a seat on the Board of Trustees, providing the region with direct representation in Foundation governance.
Regional priorities
- Colonia water, drainage and road infrastructure advocacy
- Community health outreach and patient navigation
- Postsecondary workforce pathways and completion support
- Immigrant legal services and family reunification
- Heat resilience, the region's fastest growing request category
Fiscal 2025: $360,000 across 25 organizations.
Geographic expansion
Will the Foundation add a sixth region?
Not before 2030. The Foundation's experience indicates that approximately three years elapse between entering a region and becoming genuinely useful within it, and the Rio Grande Valley has not yet reached that point. Any future expansion will be announced eighteen months in advance so that no organization submits an inquiry for a region not yet open.