News & Updates

Small Business Initiative Updates

The Western North Carolina Small Business Initaitve has distributed $55 million in funding from the Dogwood Health Trust, the Duke Endowment, and the State of North Carolina to 2,182 North Carolina small businesses. Hear from some of the grants recipients.

June 18, 2025

Pig and Grits Barbecue

"What it did for us here was it allowed us to buy some equipment, to take care of some of our employees that needed some help, and helped us rebuild our inventory and pay for some of the flooring and repairs and stuff that insurance didn't cover completely.”

June 18, 2025

Henry River Farms

“Receiving the grant helped us with our operating cost and our repair cost for some of our infrastructure that was lost during the storm. The main crop that was affected was our strawberry crop, which covers about a third of our income for our farm. So just having access to funds to help us keep, you know going as we're going to have this through the spring where we don't have our normal income has been a huge help.”

June 18, 2025

Carolina Native Nursery

“It allowed us to keep people on payroll. At a height of our season, we have 20 people on payroll, so it aided with that and to achieve the size that we had, it’d taken us a lot. So this $50,000 really goes a long way to jump us forward, to get us back to where we're going to be.”

Helene Recovery in the News