Annual Report 2025

Flexibility, Adaptability, Optimism and Creativity in Relief, Recovery & Ultimately Rebuilding

Dear Partners and Friends:

Building steady hope was a consistent theme in the collaborative work of Dogwood Health Trust and our grantee and community partners in 2025. With much of our region still focused on recovery after Hurricane Helene, our community investments ensured stability, offered flexibility, developed capacity, supported creativity and encouraged leaders and organizations to think collaboratively about rebuilding with resilience for our future.

At Dogwood, we focus on community wellbeing and all that it takes to create it. Our integrated strategic priority areas of housing, education, economic development and health & wellness work together to advance place-focused community development across Western North Carolina’s small towns and cities and rural communities.

In the aftermath of Helene, the integrated nature of our funding accelerated. 2025 was the first year of a new five-year strategy (2025-2030) guiding our grantmaking and impact investments – something informed by extensive community listening throughout 2024. We were fortunate that our decisions to invest in strengthening nonprofits’ operations, building organizational capacity, and supporting collaboration and innovation were aligned with and well-timed for what the region needed for relief, recovery and ultimately for rebuilding our communities. We are incredibly grateful to the hundreds of community members for informing our strategy, and we continue to listen and adapt based on your ideas and feedback.

In Dogwood’s new strategy, we are focusing on what we call the 4 Cs: Connections, Capacity, Collaboration and Capital. You’ll find descriptions of each in the section that follows. As a place-based and place-focused foundation, Dogwood is rooted in community. These roots and relationships help us to make connections, to share expertise and knowledge, to build networks for action, to develop leaders and organizations that collaborate and innovate together, and to attract more resources to WNC from across North Carolina and the U.S.

The region benefitted from collaborative investments among philanthropic and public sources. A strong example is the WNC Small Business Initiative, an effort Dogwood launched that provided grants of $25K to $50K to 2,182 small businesses impacted by Hurricane Helene. Dogwood’s $30 million attracted an additional $20 million from the state of North Carolina and $5 million from The Duke Endowment, which helped stabilize our economy and preserve more than 8,000 jobs across the region.

To facilitate long-term support for affordable housing within the region, Dogwood provided an inaugural investment of $40 million to Self-Help Ventures Fund to launch the WNC Affordable Housing Loan Fund, which is providing loans to both nonprofit and for-profit developers to preserve or build affordable housing for families with lower-to-moderate incomes. This investment attracted an additional combined $40 million from Truist, the City of Asheville and Self-Help. Partnerships like this energize us, especially as we collaborate with a strategic partner like Self-Help which has incredible experience and expertise in this area.

Other highlights in 2025 included a special funding opportunity and grantee cohort focused on improving the health and wellbeing of older adults (ages 60+), continued support for our policy and advocacy grantee cohort, and establishing a new Community Engagement team to increase Dogwood’s listening and learning in the region.

Something we hear consistently from regional and state leaders is acknowledgment and gratitude for Dogwood’s presence and the resources it stewards for WNC. Our board of directors and staff take this stewardship responsibility to heart.

Responding to the tremendous community needs in 2024 and 2025, Dogwood increased our annual community investments, including grantmaking and impact investments. This increase was the right thing to do, considering the region’s needs after Helene and the changes in public funding. Over those two years, we invested more than $363 million in the region. And, in 2025, we attracted an additional $80+ million to the region from other funding sources.

We are incredibly grateful to our board and staff for the many ways they listen, care and diligently steward these resources. And we are most grateful to the community leaders and organizations who use these resources to create a Western North Carolina where every generation can live, learn, earn and thrive, with dignity and opportunity for all. Without exception.

It is the people of Western North Carolina that understand what is needed and have the ideas and know-how to create change and increase community wellbeing. It is our honor and responsibility to build steady hope alongside you in the years to come.

In partnership and collaboration,

Dr. Susan Mims
President & CEO

John F A V Cecil
Board Chair