This summer, the Highlands Community Fund is inviting friends and neighbors to celebrate a milestone 30 years in the making. The Summer Party, set for 5:00 to 7:00 P.M. Thursday, August 20, at Hudson House at Highlands Country Club, will benefit the Highlands Community Fund, an affiliate fund of The Community Foundation of Western North Carolina. Event chair Colleen Kerrigan said the evening is both a celebration of local philanthropy and an investment in Highlands’ future.
“This summer’s event is to celebrate 30 years of the Highlands Community Fund,” Kerrigan said. “We will have photos and highlights from our three decades of philanthropy serving Highlands.”
Kerrigan said the party also demonstrates how local generosity becomes steady, lasting support for the nonprofits that serve the community year after year. “The beauty of it all is that we never spend the principal,” she said. “It is just the interest and market increase in value that we spend in grants to the nonprofits, so donations and bequests are held in perpetuity.”
She noted that the endowment grows through proceeds from this event, annual gifts, planned gifts, and year‑round sponsorships – a long view that has defined the fund from the beginning.
Founder Moyna Monroe, who spent childhood summers in Highlands, returned full‑time in the mid‑1990s determined to give back to the place she loved. With help from The Community Foundation of Western North Carolina, Monroe launched the fund in 1996 and built a board that reflected the wider community. She envisioned the fund as “a way for people to band together, to pool their resources when special needs or opportunities arise, and to create a perpetual resource for current and future needs.”
What began with an initial gift of $10,000 has grown to more than $3 million. Over the years, the Highlands Community Fund has awarded 226 grants totaling $1,416,686 to 40 nonprofits serving Highlands.
Since fundraising through what was previously called Rise and Shine began in 2015, proceeds have been added to the endowment, strengthening the fund’s ability to give each year. Last year’s Rise and Shine event raised nearly $70,000, and last fall the fund awarded 14 grants totaling $105,605.
For Kerrigan, those numbers reflect something simple and powerful: neighbors investing in neighbors. The August 20 Summer Party offers a chance to celebrate what has been accomplished while helping secure the fund’s next chapter — honoring an idea that has endured for three decades: when a community pools its generosity, the benefits can last for generations.
For more information, Kerrigan can be reached at (615) 400‑5498. To learn more or to donate and buy tickets, please visit highlandscommunityfund.org.
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