An all-star cast staged Concert for Carolina for Helene victims. Where did the money go?
It’s been nearly four months since an all-star lineup including Luke Combs and Eric Church took to Charlotte’s biggest stage promising to donate millions to help victims of Hurricane Helene in North Carolina.
Concert for Carolina, which included appearances from James Taylor, Keith Urban and Sheryl Crow, drew a crowd of more than 80,000 to Bank of America Stadium and raised $24.5 million. While numerous performers put on a show for the fundraiser, Church and Combs split the proceeds evenly among organizations of their choice.
“Every single dollar that is made in this building tonight is going straight up those damn mountains to the people that need it the most,” Combs said at the concert.
So, where did the money go?
Affiliated nonprofits say it went exactly where it was supposed to: helping build homes, make repairs and provide meals to some of the state’s most vulnerable people. Church’s half of the money went to his nonprofit Chief Cares, and Combs’ divided his half among Manna Food Bank, Second Harvest Food Bank of Northwest North Carolina, Samaritan’s Purse and Eblen Charities.
Eric Church’s Chief Cares
Church’s nonprofit, Chief Cares, received half of the pot raised at the show. Its CEO John Blackburn said he considers the concert a huge success. The organization is using the money to build homes for people who lost theirs due to Helene.
Just this month, Blackburn said, the organization bought $850,000 worth of land in Avery County to build 30 to 40 houses. The homes will serve as both temporary and permanent housing and are expected to be complete this summer.
“This is our passion. This is our project. So it means a great deal to us that all those folks came together and put that concert together,” Blackburn said. “I wouldn’t be here today trying to build houses for folks if they had not done the Concert for Carolina.”
The organization received a payment of over $12 million in January after it officially became a certified 501(c)(3), Blackburn said. The money was transferred to Chief Cares through live music promoter Anschutz Entertainment Group.
Blackburn said Chief Cares, which hopes to continue building in counties around Avery, will partner with company Clayton Homes to build the units and expects a mix of two- and three-bedroom homes.
Building new housing is important, Blackburn said, since Helene exacerbated an affordable housing crisis in the area. A 2020 study by the North Carolina Budget and Tax Center found 32% of renters in Avery County spent more than half their income on rent.
“There’s no housing here. We had a shortage of housing before we ever had a hurricane,” he said. “Workforce housing has been an issue for the middle and lower income folks… for years. So this has sort of been brewing for a long time, and the storm brought it to a head.”
One person struggling to find housing is Linda Stiltner, who met Blackburn at the YMCA. Stiltner, 47, lived in Avery County her entire life until Hurricane Helene swept her house away into a creek near Elk River.
“All of a sudden it started moving, and I yelled at my brother, I said, ‘there goes my house...’ as soon as the force of the creek got a hold of it, it was completely gone,” she said. “It crumbled like it was a piece of paper within seconds.”
Stilter received enough financial assistance from FEMA and nonprofits to buy a trailer, but it sits 50 miles from her job, forcing her to drive over an hour to work each day. Blackburn said she is on the list to receive a home once Chief Cares finishes building them in Avery County.
“I’ve never been one to ask for help, like ever. So that killed me in itself, but the outpour of support, I couldn’t have asked for no better,” Stiltner said. “I didn’t want to leave here, I just didn’t have a choice. So the thought of being able to come back and still be at my home would be awesome.”
Manna Food Bank
Luke Combs sent his portion to a few organizations, including Manna Food Bank, which lost its entire facility in the storm, according to Micah Chrisman, the director of marketing and communications.
The food bank received $3.1 million since the concert, and expects another installment of money soon, Chrisman said. The funds allowed the bank to provide 4.5 million meals – or 5.4 million pounds of food – to people in western North Carolina between October and December in addition to covering operational and rebuilding costs for the bank.
“We lost our whole facility, all of our operational equipment, resources, food reserves, all that was destroyed in the flood. So the Concert for Carolina has directly helped us with our operational capacity to do that,” Chrisman said. “We’ve had to start from the ground up.”
Manna is in a network with 220 partner agencies across 16 counties in Western North Carolina that help distribute food. Like Manna, four other pantries in the network lost all of their facilities in the storm. With Concert for Carolina funds, Manna provided generators, coolers and rebuilding grants to impacted food banks.
“We’re just so thankful to (Luke Combs and Eric Church) and we couldn’t be more proud to just share how incredible of a work and feat that they’ve done, and so quickly too,” Chrisman said. “Just think about how desperate our communities have been, and for folks like Luke Combs to help rally around us and to get that national exposure around it, I think, is the most pivotal and amazing part about the whole experience.”
Second Harvest Food Bank
Second Harvest Food Bank of Northwest North Carolina received $2.7 million from the concert and, like Manna, expects a third installment, according to CEO Eric Aft. The bulk of the money came in very quickly after the concert, Aft said.
Second Harvest provided 900,000 meals in the wake of the storm with the help of the concert money, Aft said. It also helped clear land, provided wood for people to burn and began providing propane to those who need it.
Aft said Second Harvest’s work goes beyond providing meals, and includes collaborating with school systems, government agencies and partner organizations to determine the community’s largest needs. Money from Concert for Carolina, he said, allowed them to do just that.
“To see the outpouring of support, the commitment from the community, to say ‘we want to help our neighbors heal,’ it’s humbling, it’s inspiring and motivating,” he said.
This story was originally published February 24, 2025 at 6:00 AM.
CORRECTION: Anschutz Entertainment Group distributed money raised through Concert for Carolina to nonprofits. A previous version of this story incorrectly named another group as distributing money.
