United Way invests in housing, upward mobility initiatives

UNITED WAY OF GREATER CHARLOTTE

Since Unite Charlotte’s launch in 2016, dozens of grassroots organizations addressing economic mobility have received United Way grant funding, capacity-building training and leadership development opportunities to support their missions.

United Way of Greater Charlotte is investing nearly $18 million in community groups across its four-county service area for 2025.

The $17.9 million investment includes $9 million for 134 nonprofits that work to improve economic mobility as well as $5.3 million from the city of Charlotte and Mecklenburg County for A Home For All initiative to address housing instability. The remaining $3.6 million includes additional community investments and donor-directed funding for nonprofits.

“We’ve got an increase of $2 million going into our community, which is significant, and we’re thrilled for that,” said Kathryn Firmin-Sellers, United Way of Greater Charlotte’s interim president and CEO. “The grant process proceeded, just as it always does. We made innovations this year to continue to improve on our process. Everything was smooth, and we haven’t yet received feedback from our customer satisfaction surveys, but I anticipate it will be quite positive.”

Sixty-three residents representing neighborhoods served — a bump compared to 2023 — and 107 community volunteers participated in Unite Charlotte, United Neighborhoods and regional grant panels to determine funding priorities.

UWGC is investing of $4.9 million to its United Neighborhoods program in Charlotte’s six Corridors of Opportunity, North Mecklenburg and United Neighborhoods’ original communities – Grier Heights, Lakeview and Renaissance West. Funding will support 66 nonprofit organizations, some serving multiple geographies, that residents believe can best deliver services needed to help achieve their vision for their neighborhoods.

“United Neighborhoods has grown from an initial $800,000 investment to now $4.9 million investment [and] has grown from two neighborhoods to over 50 neighborhoods through 13 different grant pools,” Firmin-Sellers said, “so that's the evolution of our impact strategy.”

Unite Charlotte, which provides grants and capacity-building support to grassroots organizations whose leadership is reflective of the community they serve. The initiative, which receives funding from Mecklenburg and private foundations, will invest more than $3 million among 55 agencies.

“Fifty-eight percent of the agencies that we are funding this year are considered grassroot agencies,” said Jamese Ivy, UWGC’s interim chief impact officer. “When we are funding grassroot agencies, there are things that they that are required of them. But one thing that I love about United Way and about working for this organization is that we make barriers as low as we possibly can, so that we aren’t just funding those large agencies who have the staff and capacity to be able to accept money in large amounts of money. For our grassroots agencies, specifically Unite Charlotte, we start with 25 agencies that come through with us each year, and we are looking just to really get to know that agency.”

The $5.3 million investment in A Home For All reflects a community-wide commitment to address homelessness and housing instability by centering individuals with lived expertise in the planning and developing of solutions for each initiative.

A Home For All’s funding will support three initiatives:

• Housing Collaborative’s property provider recruitment and retention to expand affordable housing through incentives.

• Upstream Rental Assistance, a pilot program scheduled to launch early next year to prevent evictions and address housing instability for at-risk households; and

• Critical Home Repair, which expand efforts to meet the growing demand of low-income homeowners.

“The most significant source of growth is in A Home For All, which is the effort to ensure that homelessness is rare, brief and non-recurring, and that everyone has access to affordable housing and the needs to sustain it,” Firmin-Sellers said. “That’s the vision for A Home For All, and we’ve been working steadily, chipping away with the community, to design different interventions that we believe will be innovative and impactful. And with the $5.3 million, you’re seeing a couple of those initiatives really take off in either they’re already taking off or they’re going to launch in the next quarter.”

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