Since the storm devastated the region a year ago, the foundation has issued $70 million in Helene-related grants over three installments in addition to $80 million in other grants and $55 million in program-related investments. The Helene-related grants were in line with Dogwood’s regular mission of improving the health and well-being of the people Western North Carolina. In this case, that money supported organizations deploying resources to affected areas, maintaining critical physical and mental health services and providing greater housing and economic stability during an uncertain time where the state and federal government left gaps in emergency relief.

The first round of grant funding was $30 million on Oct. 4, less than two weeks after the storm, including $10 million to the Emergency Disaster Response Fund. Next was over $20 million on Oct. 28, $20 million on Dec. 18 and $10 million on Jan. 31 of this year. Some specific grants included $2 million for MANNA Food Bank, $3 million for Pisgah Legal Services and about $3.5 million across eight different Smart Start programs across the region, which generally aim to improve parenting and increase involvement.

Unlike most nonprofits that stepped up in the aftermath of Helene, Dogwood is a private foundation that doesn’t accept donations. It was formed in 2019 when the Mission Health system was sold to Hospital Corporation of America (HCA) and went from being a nonprofit to a for-profit entity. The proceeds from the sale were put into an account, creating a nearly $2 billion endowment, which provides grants via Dogwood to nonprofits across the region, about $300 million to date.

In 2024 before Helene, Dogwood began work on a new strategic plan, and it was able to use a lot of feedback solicited from communities and organizations across the region during that process when responding to the disaster. Dogwood’s leaders had already begun shifting their paradigm away from considering what they thought was best for a grantee organization and tying funds to those specific efforts to instead finding strong organizations whose values mirror the foundation’s and giving them money with fewer strings attached.

For example, Dogwood knew right away following Helene that its top priority would be giving money to Federally Qualified Health Centers, which provide care in rural areas regardless of a patient’s ability to pay, to ensure medical assistance remained available during the perilous weeks following the storm.

Related Items

A&E Latest

Haywood Community Band holiday concert

The Haywood Community Band will present its “Tis the Season” holiday concert at 7 p.m.…

A&E Latest

‘The Best Christmas Pageant Ever’

A special production of “The Best Christmas Pageant Ever” will hit the stage at 7:30 p.m.…

A&E Latest

‘Christmas at Lake Junaluska’

A beloved annual tradition, the “Christmas at Lake Junaluska” celebration will be held…

A&E Latest

'Wickhams: Christmas at Pemberly’

A special production of “Wickhams: Christmas at Pemberly” will hit the stage at 7:30 p.m.…

“We just started giving general operating support grants without organizations asking,” said Dogwood CEO Susan Mims. Prioritizing listening and meeting the needs identified by nonprofit partners was crucial after the storm, especially when making the bold decision to do something the foundation had never done before. In the absence of any small business grants coming from the state or federal government, it gave money to local small businesses with no strings attached.

The first meeting

Like everyone else, Dogwood’s employees and board members fought through their own struggles in the aftermath of the storm, with some losing loved ones and others suffering immense property damage. Mims wound up with a large tree through her roof (she still hasn’t been able to move back in), but she said that wasn’t the reason for her anxiety as the rain continued to pelt the region. Mims’ son is a firefighter in Fairview, which includes Garen Creek and Craigtown, areas that were hit particularly hard in the storm. Her son’s battalion chief, Tony Garrison, lost his life while rescuing others. Mims knew her son was out working, putting himself at risk in the dire conditions, and she couldn’t reach him, even as she was helping coordinate Dogwood’s response.

“In that immediate time when our board was meeting, there were days going by when I wasn’t hearing from him … So I couldn’t care less about the hole in my roof,” she said.

As some of Dogwood’s folks were struggling with existential crises, Senior Vice President for Community Investment Mark Constantine was one of three team members blessed with a reliable internet connection. Constantine immediately got to work.

“It was a feverish time,” he recalled.  

After the waters receded, neighbors helped neighbors, and the simplest of mutual aid networks hooked people up with the bare necessities. Dogwood employees and board members began emerging, connecting with one another however they could to determine the path forward. It was during this time that Dogwood Board President Jack Cecil put in the work to “galvanize the board quickly,” according to Constantine.

Meanwhile, Mims, Constantine and others, worked on gaining a sense of where the most critical needs were by reaching out to people connected to specific communities.

Five days after the storm, board members, some of whom had to find public internet access points like grocery stores, assembled for their Zoom call. The meeting began with everyone saying what they’d been through and how they were getting by. Words of encouragement were shared throughout.

Then, sometimes through tears, they got down to the honest work of determining how much money the nonprofit could allocate at that time, settling unanimously on $30 million, which would be disbursed less than 10 days later.

“One of my proudest moments of our board was having 100% participation in that call,” Mims said.

“I would say it’s the finest example of board governance that I’ve probably ever witnessed,” said Cecil.

That means a lot coming from Cecil, who’s been in the business world over four decades and has served on numerous philanthropic boards over the years. Cecil is the CEO and President of Biltmore Farms, a company his great grandfather George Washington Vanderbilt II founded.

Mims said that among the most vital institutions that received money from that first round of funding were those FQHCs, especially those that had mobile units able to go out and provide care where people needed it.

Constantine said that during a disaster, it’s important to consider who’s particularly disadvantaged, including older adults who are often entirely cut off without electricity or water and people living with intellectual or physical disabilities. Paying more attention to those groups had been something Dogwood has been focusing on leading up to the storm. 

Dogwood Health Trust board members and staff visit a distribution center in Burnsville in October 2024. Dogwood Health Trust photo

As Western North Carolina residents struggled to navigate FEMA procedures, money granted to Pisgah Legal Services enabled people to speak with attorneys for free to understand their rights and entitlements.

Pisgah Legal CEO Jackie Kiger said the money was put toward personnel and payroll, including attorneys navigating complex legal procedures and non-attorney advocates helping people access benefits. Because these folks are used to helping people file taxes and enroll in government programs, they can deal with complex applications and bureaucracy. This was important when dealing with FEMA and other government agencies following Helene.

“We were also helping people navigate emergency unemployment benefits, emergency food stamps or SNAP and then emergency Medicaid,” Kiger said.

This work saved property, livelihoods and even lives, Kiger said. While many organizations and agencies stepped outside of their regular missions in response to Helene, Kiger considers that Pisgah Legal staff did the kind of work they did prior to the storm — Helene just exacerbated those problems. People who were living on the cusp were brought into poverty during that unstable time.

To reach as many people as possible, Pisgah Legal hosted clinics with partner organizations like FEMA while also going out into the community with those partners. While services are typically offered only to low-income individuals, following Helene, anyone who came to them was served, regardless of need.

“I wish that people didn’t need lawyers after a natural disaster, but what I have learned is that they need us more than ever,” Kiger said. “There’s just nothing easy about this recovery process.”

The importance of relationships

Part of what made it easy to determine what resources were most crucial was strong pre-existing relationships with partners. Dogwood determined what needs existed among these partners, from the Community Foundation of Western North Carolina to the AMY Foundation, which serves hard-hit Avery, Mitchell and Yancey counties, to the health foundation in McDowell and Rutherford counties. Mims said she quickly found out just how these organizations were so strongly plugged into the communities they serve.

Strengthening these relationships prior to the storm required work. In 2024, Mims made the decision to visit all the counties Dogwood covers, meeting with potential grantees and other community cornerstones along the way. This proved vital to creating connections that would allow Dogwood to have the greatest possible impact. When things go sideways, the work done over years to develop strong, trusting relationships is “invaluable,” Mims said.

“Communities know what they need, so when we come in to do this work, our job is to listen and learn from our communities,” she added.

Amid all the chaos and strife, the key was to simply listen. Dogwood leaders found that their role was to link these organizations with each other to get the right resources to areas that needed them. For example, there were farmers who had produce that was going to go bad, and plenty of people were struggling to find food, let alone fresh food.

“We linked together WNC communities with MANNA,” Mims said. “MANNA was able get to the farmers market and then link that to our Healthy Opportunities pilot, which had food box deliveries, and they knew who needed food and where they were.”

Constantine has always been a big believer in “philanthropic collaboration,” and that belief was only strengthened after seeing the collaboration in the wake of Helene. While Dogwood is a tremendous source of funding, others may be more suited to respond more nimbly to unexpected events. Constantine specifically mentioned the Community Foundation of Western North Carolina. 

“The Community Foundation’s been in the region a long time,” he said.

At the same time, other large foundations not based in the mountains, such as the Blue Cross NC Foundation, the Duke Endowment, the Z. Smith Reynolds Foundation and the Leon Levine Foundation began asking how they could help, and weekly calls were held with Dogwood to talk about addressing big-picture issues with their considerable collective resources. Constantine said that being on those calls and hearing how much others outside the area cared was “incredibly affirming.” 

“When they come together and formed a unified front, that helps other funders bring resources in and feel comfortable investing in a place,” Constantine said, adding that they’ve also been in serious communication with other large national philanthropic organizations that have requested to be kept abreast of the situation in Western North Carolina.

Constantine said other significant collaborators were governments, or more specifically, the North Carolina Council of Governments, which is made up of 16 regions, each with its own unique traits and functions. Constantine said these councils had been an important partner even pre-Helene, helping guide Dogwood to maximize its philanthropic efforts.  

At the level closest to the community, local mutual aid networks were able to tell foundations and nonprofits what was needed. After the pandemic, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation began putting money into these mutual aid networks, something Constantine said he wished he’d understood the value of earlier on. After a disaster, people take care of their families, their neighbors, those they go to church with. Even fire departments and emergency response networks can be key in coordinating mutual aid.

“Often in philanthropy, we do not pay enough attention to where the natural mutual aid networks are in a community,” Constantine said.

Keeping small businesses afloat

Carolina Native Nursery, just west of Burnsville in Yancey County, lost over 250,000 plants when neighboring Price Creek, normally only a few feet wide and calm, swelled until it looked like the Colorado River, said owner Bill Jones. On the day of the flood, Jones, who lives in North Asheville with his wife, Jill, was able to find a way to his nursery only to discover that 80 hoop houses had been destroyed and empty black plastic pots had been strewn about over several acres.

Some of the hoophouses are still in ruins with knee-high weeds growing where neat rows of plants thrived just a year ago.

The sprawling creekside property features a new, impressive section dedicated to the cultivation of about 100,000 perennials. That area was severely damaged when the road on the ledge above was inundated with rain and slid down.

The nursery is best known as the biggest grower of azaleas in the world. Those azaleas take three years to reach the point they are sold. Because all those azaleas were lost, Jones and crew have had to start at step one, beginning the three-year cycle anew.

“It was heartbreaking,” Jones said. “This was my brainchild. I freaking built all this shit.” Businesses, especially those in the service and hospitality sector, faced uncertainty after Helene as even those not impacted by wind or water damage were left with few customers amid a sudden halt in tourism traffic mere weeks ahead of the busy October leaf season. Over the last year, dozens of beloved businesses closed their doors for good. State and federal governments offered loans for small businesses, but for many that wasn’t enough. Business owners in the service industry operating on tight margins cringed as they considered the prospect of paying back a loan, and some were already facing the burden of paying back loans taken out during the Covid pandemic. To receive government loans would leave many overleveraged.

Bill Jones’ nursery in Yancey County received a $50,000 grant, which he said was crucial to its survival during the hard months following Helene. Kyle Perrotti photo

According to Mountain BizWorks’ 2025 Local Business Impact Survey, which collected insights from 700 business owners across 23 Western North Carolina counties, 96% were affected by the storm, 83% had to temporarily close and 52% sustained some degree of physical damage. Businesses reported $188 million in losses between physical and economic damage, and 86% are still earning below pre-Helene levels. About half are down 20% or more. As such a large portion of small businesses struggle, there’s a trickledown effect that impacts the entire regional economy.

Dogwood’s mission is to support the health and wellbeing of Western North Carolina residents, and a part of that has always been considering the economic strength of the area and how it can be leveraged to help as many people as possible across the region. This is in line with Cecil’s philosophy. Along with health and education, he considers that the other pillar of a strong community is economic strength.

“When those small businesses close their doors, the employees are out of a job; therefore, they can’t pay rent; therefore, they can’t buy food; therefore, they can’t take care of their family,” Cecil said.

On Oct. 23 of last year, then Gov. Roy Cooper proposed a $475 million grant program to the state legislature as part of his $3.9 billion recovery funding proposal. At that time, Cooper estimated that businesses would lose almost $13 billion in revenue due to Helene.  Cooper’s sense of urgency toward small businesses was shared by neither the state nor federal legislatures, and these grants never materialized.

Of Dogwood’s $80 million in Helene grants, $30 million went to small businesses in the region in the form of grants. Initially, Dogwood put $10 million toward these grants, using a community development financial institution in Virginia to vet applicants. CDFIs provide financial services to underserved areas. Initially, the requirement was that businesses have less than $1 million in annual revenue and fewer than 11 employees.

“It was oversubscribed, two, three, four, times,” Cecil said.

Dogwood went back to the drawing board and chose to dedicate another $10 million to small businesses, expanding the field to those with under $2.5 million in annual revenue and fewer than 50 employees, this with the intention to help the service industry. That, too, drove plenty of applicants.

On July 31, Dogwood provided $10 million directly to the Western North Carolina Small Business Initiative II, which was created with a $20 million investment from the state. Those grants were available in 28 counties and the Qualla Boundary to any business making up to $2.5 million in annual revenue. In a press release, Gov. Josh Stein said the grants were necessary to help the businesses get through the “slow winter months.” 

“The Western North Carolina Small Business grant program will help small businesses with their urgent needs and support the region’s economic recovery,” Stein said. “I am proud these state dollars are leveraging additional Dogwood Trust dollars, and I am grateful to Dogwood for its leadership.”

Carolina Native Nursery received a $50,000 grant.

The business had a plan it had executed many times ahead of storms — move the most valuable things to higher ground, secure everything possible, remove any potential hazards.

“We had a whole checklist that we went through on Thursday because we knew it was going to rain a lot,” Jones said. But it wasn’t enough.

Jones, 61, said that perhaps even tougher than the loss of plants and infrastructure, he had 16 people on payroll, including loyal employees who’d worked at the nursery most of its 23 years. Jones provides employees a living wage and health benefits, a rarity in such an industry.

Crucial to the nursery’s recovery was the hard work of others, employees and volunteers alike, who gave time and effort to get a beloved business back up and running.

“Dozens of people showed up,” Jones said. “A landscaping company in Asheville brought their dudes out. We had people bringing equipment and pushing the roads clear again. Two weeks later, we had 100 people here cleaning stuff up. A landscape company came from Durham. One came from Raleigh. The Garden Center in Franklin closed for a day and brought their whole staff out here.”

As of last month, the nursery has brought in 45 loads of gravel, and there may be more. As Jones and his employees have rebuilt hoophouses, re-laid irrigation pipe and potted new plants, they’ve “built back better,” by doing simple things for the first time ever like putting cloth down below everything.

Jones’ wife is an accountant and always keeps her eyes peeled for grants, so when something good comes along, she knows how to get right on the application process. They heard about the Dogwood grant from some fellow entrepreneur friends in the area. Jill filled out the forms, and they were awarded $50,000, or as Jones put it, enough money to make payroll for another month as the cleanup continued.

“$50,000 is a lot of money right now,” Jones said. “It really helped us bridge that first October-to-May.”

Looking to the past

Before Constantine arrived in Western North Carolina, he worked on affordable housing in Mississippi, Louisiana, Arkansas, Florida and Virginia. The issue is ubiquitous in Constantine’s experience, but the solutions are nuanced and often entirely unique to any region. No matter the place or pre-existing challenges, one thing is consistent — a disaster exacerbates all of them.

Constantine has been through a few big ones.

“That is nothing to be proud of,” he said.

In the mid-2000s, Constantine was a senior fellow at the Foundation for the Mid South, which covers Mississippi, Arkansas and Louisiana. It was there that he encountered his first disaster just over 20 years ago — Hurricane Katrina — during which he worked in the earliest phases of disaster response.

But it was when Constantine was with the Jessie Ball duPont Fund in 2011 that he learned perhaps his greatest lessons. From April 25-28 of that year, tornadoes tore through the South, killing 348 people and causing $10.2 billion in damage. He was tasked with working in the state for a year on the recovery effort. Constantine recalled that in some areas, the entire housing stock was destroyed, and he started working with CDFIs.

“What I learned that I think informed part of Dogwood’s response was the importance of legal services and FEMA navigation,” he said, noting that understanding how important and complicated legal processes can be following a storm was valuable insight when deciding to invest $3 million in Pisgah Legal Services right after the storm.

“People are terrified. They don’t know what to do. Navigation is complex, and really good lawyers are necessary on the ground for that kind of work,” Constantine said. 

During the heart of the pandemic — which he noted was a markedly different kind of disaster that necessitated a different kind of response — Constantine was the president and CEO of the Richmond Memorial Health Foundation in Virginia. He said that while the needs and solutions differed, that period was when the importance of responsiveness and the willingness to provide “unrestricted support” became apparent.

Along with leaning on those at Dogwood with disaster recovery experience, the foundation also looked at what nonprofits did during prior hurricane recoveries, such as Hurricane Harvey, which ravaged the gulf coast in August 2017, and Hurricane Sandy, which hit the east coast in October 2012, killing over 100 people and causing $65 billion in damage in the United States.

During the early response to Sandy, mutual aid networks, churches, community organizations and local governments played key roles, and philanthropic organizations that knew which ones were pulling the most weight were able to wisely invest in the recovery. 

Cecil also had his own unique experience that lent itself to the aftermath of Helene, if even just to know the scope of work that was ahead of them. Cecil is also on the board of trustees of the Duke Endowment. In 2018, when Hurricane Florence wreaked havoc off the Carolina coast, the Duke Endowment board formed a task force led by Rob Webb, who had the strongest contacts in those rural areas.

“We learned exactly how a trust endowment could help communities in despair and distraught individuals,” Cecil said. “That was a great learning tool for me; I could help translate that to Dogwood.”

Dogwood’s nonprofit partners were also able to talk about lending expertise based on their own prior experiences, especially considering some, like Mountain Projects in Haywood and Jackson counties, are on the front lines helping families who’ve experienced disasters of all scales, from a hurricane that affects thousands to a house fire that affect one family.

When asked what he’d tell other philanthropy organizations when it comes to disaster recovery, Constantine’s advice was to start researching now and ensure connections with local governments and community cornerstones remain strong. The unthinkable can happen fast, and by then, it’s time to act, not build networks and fill rolodexes. He also recommended knowing the national organizations that will parachute in, what their missions are, which ones can help and which ones can’t.

“These are the coordinating bodies that sort of help address some of the human social needs after a disaster, and I wish I had known a little bit more about that,” he said.

The privilege of service

The Helene recovery has continued, but the attention paid to that recovery has waned, especially outside of North Carolina. Town governments have been confronted with new challenges, and nonprofits have encountered ongoing need in the community. Mims considers that Dogwood is doing work in a “post-Helene environment,” which means balancing Helene recovery with other needs, but it also means acknowledging that many issues existing before the storm are worse than a year ago.

Mims said that when there’s more work to do but fewer resources to do that work with, efficiency and innovation become key.

“We’re giving grants for collaboration and innovation, where folks have come together and have to apply for the funds in a group .... And I think those collaborations are going to be more and more important,” she said.
Although the devastation and trauma people endured is laid across a broad spectrum, Helene is a disaster all of Western North Carolina continues to endure. Everyone has a role going forward, and those interviewed for this story said they were honored to work for Dogwood distributing resources where they’re needed, where they can create bridges between vital services and people.

“I do think all the time of the privilege that I get to have to be a part of something like Dogwood,” Mims said. Simply put, without organizations like Dogwood and the nonprofits they work with, the recovery would be tougher than it already is.

Cecil draws satisfaction from doing the work to determine the best use of Dogwood’s financial resources and figuring out the other types of capital that can be leveraged to better communities. Like Mims, he said helping others who are “distressed” is an obligation but also a joy. Cecil feels a deep connection with the region, and he believes the way to help others boils down to three key pillars — health, education and economic strength. It’s around that ethos that Cecil determines where to spend his time and resources in his commitment to service.

“If they do not fall within those three categories, I was not interested and never served on them,” he said.

Constantine said he’s honored to continue to do the work that has sent him to so many places just at the right time to contribute during their darkest hours, always surrounded by the right people.

“I say I’m like Forrest Gump in the sense that I got lucky my whole career to be in places that I don’t deserve to be with people who are smarter than me,” he said. “This is seriously true for my whole career.” 

The honor Dogwood’s leaders speak of is also an honor more are going to have the bittersweet occasion to experience, considering climate disasters are becoming more common and more severe. Since Helene, the nation has seen serious flooding in the Triangle that caused substantial property damage. Water rose out of its banks in Kansas City and Kentucky and New York. The worst flooding hit Texas on July 4 and killed nearly 140 people. If government aid continues to be less robust and less reliable, it will be up to philanthropic foundations to bridge the gap, as long as that’s sustainable.

These are lessons all will have to learn eventually.

“I want to make sure that we play a role in helping to pull together the lessons learned from Helene, both in what to do in an immediate aftermath, but also in prevention,” Mims said, “so fewer people will be hurt, fewer lives lost and there can be a quicker turnaround to recovery.” 

(This article was reported through a fellowship supported by the Lilly Endowment and administered by the Chronicle of Philanthropy to expand coverage of philanthropy and nonprofits. The Smoky Mountain News is solely responsible for all content.)