By Summerlee Walter
Time. Talent. Treasure. This familiar three-part formula forms the basis for capital campaigns, planned giving seminars, annual appeals and individual financial asks throughout the church. All three types of giving are essential as churches seek to live into Jesus’ call to love our neighbors as ourselves. While we—as a church, as a society and here at the Disciple—are most comfortable talking about time and talent, we also need to talk about the good treasure can do. That good becomes especially obvious when churches leverage their endowments to make major capital investments in their neighbors, both those who live down the street and those who live across the globe.
CHRIST CHURCH, RALEIGH
Christ Church on Capitol Square in downtown Raleigh has long invested in its neighborhood by acquiring and managing property adjacent to or near the church and using it in creative ways that turn real estate into missional spaces. Brad Rice, the church’s former treasurer and the current manager of its most recent real estate project, described how the church has navigated the challenges of limited space in downtown Raleigh while steadily expanding its capacity for outreach through intentional property investments.
About 30 years ago, after several unsuccessful attempts to purchase the State Employees Credit Union building next to the church, Christ Church instead purchased the next building over, Capital Apartments, to use it for moderately priced housing in downtown Raleigh. More recently, the church acquired the 11,000-square-foot building across the street at 4 North Blount Street, which formerly housed the American Legion. The parish had been attempting to buy the building for use as an outreach center for years before finally closing the deal in 2019. Plans were put on hold during the COVID-19 pandemic, during which time the long-term tenants the ALS Association moved out and a different congregation started leasing the building’s first floor. After the church’s lease ended in February, Wake Relief moved in after the city told them to leave St. Saviour’s Center on Tucker Street.
This development proved exciting for parishioners because they can do volunteer work right on the campus, which had not been possible previously. Wake Relief set up the space as a marketplace-style food bank, and parishioners now volunteer there restocking shelves and serving clients. The ALS Association is back as a tenant on the top floor. Christ Church manages the building directly, integrating property management with mission rather than treating real estate as merely an income source.
Buying real estate for mission is not the only way Christ Church supports its community, however. Each year the church’s outreach committee awards grants to agencies that apply. The current outreach foci reflect the current needs of the downtown Raleigh community, including life skills, downtown homelessness and daily needs. This year, Christ Church awarded grants totaling $347,614 to 52 organizations, plus disaster relief and youth outreach projects and mission trips. That forms only a part of the more than $1 million dollars the church has invested in outreach as of October 1 this year.
Christ Church is able to make these impactful investments through a healthy endowment plus a capital campaign 10 years ago that allowed them to retire the church’s debt, expand their building and create a fund for outreach, which makes up 10% of the church’s annual budget. Additionally, individual parishioners were able to make generous donations to retire the debt on the 4 Blount Street property. The church does not take its parishioners’ generosity lightly, carefully managing its investments and following strict spending guidelines. The church also relies on parishioners like Rice, who has a background in commercial real estate, to guide them toward making wise investments and planning for contingencies.
As Rice describes it, “People give so the church will use it. Our parish is extremely generous, and through that we’re able to make a lot of things happen.”
CHRIST CHURCH, CHARLOTTE
Christ Church, Charlotte, has made decades-long investments in some of its community partners, including Habitat for Humanity.
A couple hours away, another Christ Church exemplifies how endowed foundations can create sustained, transformative community impact when guided by clear values and strategic focus. The church’s foundation, established in 1962—roughly two decades after the church itself was founded in the mid-1940s—was created as a trust planned for religious, educational and charitable purposes, with a 501(c)3 corporation formed shortly thereafter. From its outset, the foundation has served as the main vehicle for planned giving outside of the operating budget. Independent funds within the foundation support outreach grants, Habitat for Humanity and academic scholarships.
While the exact dollar amount of the 5% annual draw from the foundation’s investments varies year to year, the trust typically contributes $100,000-$120,000 to the church’s outreach and Habitat for Humanity budgets each year. That is on top of the Outreach Commission’s annual $450,000 budget from the church’s general operating budget.
Each year the Outreach Commission solicits and vets grant applications and makes recommendations to the foundation’s 13 trustees in May. The commission centers its decision-making around its Five Pillars framework, which organizes giving around housing affordability and solutions to homelessness; economic opportunity and stabilization; children, youth and educational equity; reconciliation and restorative social justice; and care and sustainment of God’s creation. This structured approach prevents the foundation from scattering resources across too many causes while remaining responsive to genuine community needs.
Christ Church is unwaveringly committed to relationship over transaction. As David Kern explains, “The long-term relationships and partnerships that we’ve made in the community are very important to us, and we want to preserve those. That’s what all of this giving is ultimately about: Are you in relationship with somebody? Are you giving power to those people? Are you in community with them?” This question isn’t merely rhetorical; the church maintains a deliberate balance between long-term partnerships and what Kern calls “soon-to-be long-term relationships,” with six new grant recipients added this year.
The church’s involvement with Habitat for Humanity illustrates this relational commitment across decades. Christ Church was one of six founding churches that started Habitat in Charlotte in the early 1980s, with foundation giving beginning at that time. Two individual parishioners also became major donors themselves. Over the years, the church has sponsored at least 37 homes through a hands-on process that goes far beyond check-writing. Kern emphasizes the holistic nature of this engagement: “I couldn’t say more about the importance of community giving. It’s not just the money; it’s the connection, it’s the formation of relationships, the leaning in in a personal way, the return on that investment is phenomenal….
“It’s never a money thing; it’s always a money, people, time and talents thing.”
ST. PETER’S, CHARLOTTE
Elsewhere in Charlotte, St. Peter’s also practices responsive grant-making toward strategic partnership, with an emphasis on the church’s unique position of responsibility within the community. The church’s endowment, which supports the parish primarily through major maintenance repairs, also provides funds for annual Outreach and Social Justice Grants.
The endowment began in the mid-1980s when a beloved parishioner started the church’s first planned giving program and managed investments with the help of a committee and the rector. The fund is now governed by an endowment board and investment board, with funds set aside annually to support outreach.
The approach to grant-making has changed over the years. When the Rev. Robin Sands started at St. Peter’s as an intern in 2017, most funding went to parishioners’ asks on behalf of organizations, but over the years the church has developed a grant application, set application criteria and developed rubrics for evaluating applicants.
As Allison Elrod explained, “The way we think about how we’re going to support organizations comes from our strategic plan to have the greatest impact possible.”
With an annual cap of $10,000 per recipient, St. Peter’s tries to support organizations where the money moves the needle, prioritizing impact at smaller organizations over donations to well-established organizations with more robust budgets. A recent example is For the Struggle, which first applied for a grant three years ago when it was just getting started. Led by a young lawyer, For the Struggle provides resources on the ground, where they are most needed, in the west corridor of Charlotte. St. Peter’s was able to have a significant impact on the organization’s finances in its early stages.
The church also remains in relationship with and provides volunteers for the organizations it supports financially. For the last three years, St. Peter’s has held an annual luncheon for grant applicants. This format serves multiple purposes; it allows the committee to hear directly from organizational leaders, creates networking opportunities among nonprofits and demonstrates the church’s respect for applicants’ work through generous hospitality.
ST. LUKE’S, SALISBURY
Members of the St. Luke’s Foundation (Salisbury) enjoyed fellowship with Bishop Joseph Wandera of the Diocese of Mumias, Kenya, when he visited North Carolina in January. In March, four members of the foundation traveled to Kenya at the bishop’s invitation. Photo courtesy of St. Luke’s
The St. Luke’s Episcopal Church Foundation at St. Luke’s, Salisbury, has also transformed over time. Originally founded in 1973, the foundation received a significant bequest from Frank Marsh, who set up a separate 501(c)3 because he did not trust the rector and vestry to follow his wishes that the proceeds from his gift support foreign mission work. He believed the people of St. Luke’s should support the local Salisbury community, and they did, as a series of smaller gifts through the years formed the basis of the local outreach fund. By 2024, the foundation was awarding more than $250,000 annually through a 5% draw from a fund valued at more than $6 million.
Despite its financial strength, during the foundation’s 50th anniversary year in 2023, trustees made the bold decision to step back from awarding grants for 18 months in order to discern the future of the foundation grants. The Rev. Robert Black, the church’s long-time rector who recently departed for a new cure, explained: “We needed to move away from our patriarchal, paternalistic model and invest more in relationships.”
That shift manifested in practical changes. In 2024 the foundation began operating on themed grant cycles, choosing themes based on what feels right at the time. They limited grants to three global and three local recipients annually and capped the grant amounts. The more focused approach narrowed the annual applicant pool, allowing deeper engagement with fewer partners. Last year’s local grants focused on homelessness and food insecurity; this year the focus narrowed even more to housing insecurity. Globally, the foundation is focusing on replacing lost USAID funding. In March, four people from the St. Luke’s Foundation traveled to Kenya at the invitation of the bishop and saw clinics closing already.
“It’s time for us to be the resistance, and this is a way we can do that,” Black said.
ST. PAUL’S WINSTON-SALEM
St. Paul’s, Winston-Salem, is another church that uses its endowment in a focused way. However, instead of a rotating focus, the church’s Stedman Fund provides ongoing support for four long-term partner organizations, smaller annual grants to three additional organizations, and responsive assistance for individuals in crisis. The church’s Outreach Funding Advisory Committee meets several times per year to receive applications, conduct site visits and choose recipients. During the last 10 years, the fund has disbursed approximately $70,000 annually, with about $10,000 per applicant.
St. Paul’s started several ministries in partnership with other larger downtown churches, including Crisis Control Ministry, which serves unhoused neighbors, and Samaritan Ministries, which also addresses food and housing insecurity. The Stedman Fund has consistently supported these two ministries across generations. The fund has also awarded grants to Forsyth Jail & Prison Ministries and the Hawley House, a recovery center for women who are transitioning out of incarceration and the only state-licensed residential recovery center in Forsyth County, for a number of years.
In 2025, the fund also awarded three additional grants to health-focused nonprofits: the Shepherd Center, which helps seniors with medical needs, transportation and accessibility modifications to their homes; the multilingual, low-cost or free Community Care Clinic’s updated colorectal screening process; and ARC NC’s Enrichment Center’s new community health worker, who will help with screening for chronic health conditions by forming relationships with the center’s clients and help staff evaluate long-term health practices to implement.
In addition to its outreach grants, St. Paul’s takes $25,000 annually from the Stedman Fund and puts it into a crisis fund designed to help individuals with rent, avoiding eviction, major medical bills, utilities and food insecurity through referral partners in the community.
“An endowment, over the course of time, when you can really get honed in on what your mission is, what your goals are in impacting the community, that endowment giving really helps you stay aligned to your mission,” said Laura Pallavicini, St. Paul’s director of outreach. “When you find trusted organizations to give that money to, you know you’re really having the loaves and fishes effect of the ripples going out and helping way more people than you could by yourself. And money is an important part of being able to help people.”
ST. PAUL’S, CARY
A preliminary rendering of the Timothy Ash Carr Center for affordable housing and early childhood education.
St. Paul’s, Cary, is also using its financial gifts to support its investment in the community. The church recently announced a gift of more than $300,000 to support The Carr Center, a groundbreaking community development that will expand affordable housing and critical services for working families in Wake County.
The Carr Center, located on land owned by Greenwood Forest Baptist Church, is a $26 million mixed-use project being developed in partnership with The Carying Place, DHIC, the YMCA, Greenwood Forest and the Town of Cary. Once complete, the Carr Center will provide:
- 11 transitional housing units for homeless working families served by The Carying Place;
- 51 affordable rental units for households between 30% and 60% of the area median income managed by DHIC, ensuring long-term housing opportunities for workforce families;
- an increased full-day program at Greenwood Forest Childcare Center, expanding access to affordable childcare and early education;
youth programming provided by the YMCA; and - more than 3,000 square feet of community-use program and office space for The Carying Place, allowing for expanded financial literacy education, workforce development and family support services.
Together, these resources will create a one-of-a-kind campus where families not only access housing but also build financial resilience and long-term stability.
The donation is an extension of St. Paul’s long history of advocating for and supporting affordable housing, including through its leadership in the Episcopal Housing Ministry, which has championed the creation of housing opportunities for families with limited incomes across the Triangle for decades.
“St. Paul’s believes that secure housing is foundational to the health, dignity, and well-being of every person,” said Kim McCombs, chair of St. Paul’s Affordable Housing Ministry. “Greenwood Forest Baptist Church’s generosity inspired us in dedicating its land to this project, and we are proud to stand alongside them and our nonprofit partners in making the Carr Center a reality. This is about building a stronger, more vibrant Cary where families can thrive.”
DIFFERENT CONTEXTS, SIMILAR THEMES
Across the churches featured here, common themes emerge despite different contexts, funding levels and organizational structures. All have moved away from transactional charity toward relational partnerships. All have developed more strategic and focused approaches to grant-making, recognizing that diluted resources produce diluted impact. All employ collaborative vetting processes that involve site visits, committee review and, increasingly, direct engagement with grant recipients. All balance endowment preservation with active deployment of resources. And several have discovered that property and physical space can become extensions of ministry when approached creatively.
Most significantly, these churches articulate a theology of giving that centers on relationships, mutuality and learning. As St. Luke’s Black said, “Money is really just a tool to be in relationship with people.” This represents a profound shift in how churches understand their role in community transformation, not as benefactors bestowing charity from positions of superiority but as partners in shared work.
Summerlee Walter is the communications coordinator for the Diocese of North Carolina.
