North Carolina Grants for Nonprofits
Learn more about grants for North Carolina and top North Carolina funders using Inside Philanthropy’s search tool for Grant Finder. Become a member.
Giving Trends in North Carolina
With over 2,100 grantmakers, North Carolina has become a major center for philanthropic giving in the Southeast. Grantmaking has decreased across the board, but since 2014 has held steady with $1.4 billion in grants in 2018 alone.
While a lot of giving in the state concentrates around the Research Triangle, grants for nonprofits in North Carolina exist across the state. Knowledge about giving in North Carolina filters through Philanthropy Southeast and the Southeastern Council of Foundations. Grants for education continue to dominate the North Carolina grantmaking scene — more than any other focus area combined — though human services and economic development are other major areas of giving in North Carolina. In contrast from other Southeastern states, the environment is also an important funding area, especially given the major academic, tech, medical and research institutions concentrated in the Research Triangle between Durham, Chapel Hill and Raleigh.
North Carolina’s top funders include a mix of private, public, corporate and community foundations. Major funders in North Carolina include those which make a handful of grants nationally — like the Duke Endowment — as well as major foundations that keep their funding within North Carolina like the Foundation for the Carolinas, Kate B. Reynolds Charitable Trust, The Winston-Salem Foundation, The Leon Levine Foundation, and the North Carolina Community Foundation, among others. The top funders in North Carolina tend to have much larger assets and giving capabilities than neighboring states, with the exceptions of Florida and Georgia.
