FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
February 27, 2026 | Raleigh, N.C.
Dudley Flood Center for Educational Opportunity Announces $525,000 in Grant Funding from Burroughs Wellcome Fund and Conway/Holderness Family Fund
Raleigh, NC — The Dudley Flood Center for Educational Opportunity is proud to announce the receipt of a combined $525,000 in grant funding over three years from the Burroughs Wellcome Fund and the Conway/Holderness Family Fund. This catalytic and sustaining investment represents a powerful vote of confidence in the Center’s continued expansion of racial equity work, its mission, operations, and the students and communities it serves every day.
At a time when education systems and equity-centered work across the country face increasing challenges and constraints, this support ensures the Dudley Flood Center can continue to operate with strength, clarity, and purpose. These multi-year commitments provide not only critical financial resources, but also stability allowing the Center to continue its recovery from funding loss, deepen its programming, sustain its team, and remain focused on long-term impact rather than short-term survival.
“Sustained partnership like this allows us to do more than maintain our work, it allows us to strengthen it,” said Deanna Townsend-Smith, Sr. Director of the Dudley Flood Center. “Because of this support, we can focus on delivering programs with care and consistency, ultimately impacting students and educators across the communities we serve.”
The Dudley Flood Center works to expand educational opportunity through research, professional learning, strategic support, and convening, serving as a hub for leaders and organizations committed to creating more just and effective education systems. The Center’s work is grounded in the legacy of Dr. Dudley Flood, a pioneering civil rights leader, educator, and policy architect whose lifelong commitment to fairness and access continues to guide the organization’s vision.
“In this moment, honoring Dr. Flood’s legacy requires more than reflection, it requires action,” Townsend-Smith added. “This funding allows us to continue that work with integrity and resolve, even as equity-focused efforts like the Flood Center are increasingly threatened, misunderstood, defunded, or not resourced. It affirms that this work matters, and that it must continue.”
The Burroughs Wellcome Fund and the Conway/Holderness Family Fund have been long-standing partners in advancing opportunity, innovation, and community rooted solutions. Their combined investment will support core operations as well as programming that directly serves educators and students across North Carolina and beyond, ensuring the Dudley Flood Center remains responsive, resilient, and impactful over the next three years.
As the Center looks ahead, this partnership reinforces a shared commitment to sustained change, thoughtful leadership, and the belief that students deserve systems designed to support their full potential. The Burroughs Wellcome Fund and the Conway/Holderness Family Fund have demonstrated leadership in exploring and participating in collaborative funding models that prioritize and sustain racial equity initiatives and practitioners while courageously encouraging other funders and philanthropic partners to support equity-focused efforts across NC.
For more information about the Dudley Flood Center for Educational Opportunity and its work, visit https://floodcenter.org/.
For media inquiries, please contact Deanna Townsend-Smith at 919-781-6833 x114 or dtownsend-smith@ncforum.org.
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About the Dudley Flood Center for Educational Equity and Opportunity
The Dudley Flood Center for Educational Equity & Opportunity (Flood Center) serves as a hub to identify and connect organizations, networks, and leaders to address issues of equity, access, and opportunity in education across North Carolina. Leaning on the 70+ years of experience and wisdom of our namesake Dr. Dudley E. Flood, the Flood Center works collaboratively to take action toward addressing issues of systemic racism by advocating for structural changes in policy and practice to build an equitable education system that meets the social, emotional, and academic needs of NC’s diverse student population. Specifically, the Dudley Flood Center exists to create an equitable education system by addressing the systemic inequities plaguing the educational system that limit opportunity and access for PK – 12 students and educators. Follow updates from the Flood Center on LinkedIn, Facebook and online at https://floodcenter.org/.
About the Public School Forum of NC
Since 1986, the Public School Forum of North Carolina has been an indispensable and nonpartisan champion of public schools and the most trusted source in the state for research and analysis on vital education issues. We bring together leaders from business, education and government to study education issues, develop ideas, seek consensus, and ultimately inform and shape education policy. We do that through research, policy work, innovative programs, advocacy, and continuing education for educators and policymakers. Follow us on Twitter @theNCForum and visit our website at www.ncforum.org.
About the Burroughs Wellcome Fund
Based in Research Triangle Park, N.C., the Burroughs Wellcome Fund is an independent private foundation. Its mission is to serve and strengthen society by nurturing a diverse group of leaders in biomedical sciences to improve human health through education and powering discovery in frontiers of greatest need.
About the Conway/Holderness Family Fund
The Conway/Holderness Family Fund was established as a donor-advised fund to rapidly deploy family resources in support of public education, women’s leadership, and racial equity, justice, and repair. Grounded in faith, family history, and a clear-eyed understanding of the South’s complex past, the fund prioritized transparency, action, and responsibility, pairing philanthropy with advocacy and truth-telling. Through investments in education equity, applied history, narrative change, and social entrepreneurship, the fund supported organizations working to build a more just and humane South. While the fund has now concluded, its commitments continue through ongoing general operating support for partners advancing education and justice, including the Dudley Flood Center.