Celebrating 25 years of expanding opportunity in Greenville

By Tony McDade
Board Chair
Hollingsworth Funds
on behalf of the entire board and staff at Hollingsworth Funds

Twenty-five years ago, Greenville received an extraordinary gift, one that continues to shape our community today.

When John D. Hollingsworth Jr. passed away in 2000, the bulk of his $275 million estate was left to grow Hollingsworth Funds to support Furman University, the YMCA, and other nonprofits benefitting Greenville. Mr. Hollingsworth had built a global textile machinery company headquartered here. By the late 1980s, it was said that “the sun never sets over Hollingsworth.” His equipment operated in 18 countries, and more than 5,000 people worked for the company at its height.

Yet for all his global success, he remained deeply rooted here.

Born in 1917, Mr. Hollingsworth moved to Greenville as a young boy and eventually took over his father’s company in 1942. Known as a mechanical and electrical genius, he held multiple patents, including innovations that transformed how textile fibers were processed and helped revitalize American manufacturing. At the same time, he quietly amassed more than 42,000 acres of land across South Carolina; property that would later become the foundation for one of Greenville’s largest philanthropic institutions.

Unlike most foundations, Hollingsworth Funds did not begin with cash. We inherited land, including timber tracts in the Lowcountry as well as undeveloped acreage and key parcels in and around Greenville. Over time, a volunteer board carefully transformed those holdings into a permanent endowment. Undeveloped land became schools, businesses, research campuses, housing, and the Verdae community.

Today, Hollingsworth Funds stewards $415 million in assets and contributes $12.5 million annually to education, workforce development, housing, and transportation. In 25 years, we have made grants of more than $140 million to organizations working every day to strengthen our community.

But as Greenville grew, we confronted an important question: Who is benefiting from that growth?

Research over the past decade revealed a sobering truth. A child born into a low-income household in Greenville faces long odds of climbing the income ladder as an adult. In other words, where you start in life here can still determine how far you go.

That reality sharpened our focus on economic mobility, the ability for individuals and families to improve their financial circumstances over time.

Economic mobility is not an abstract idea. It is whether a middle school student stays on track to graduate. Whether a young adult earns a postsecondary credential that leads to a stable career. Whether a parent can afford safe housing near work. Whether reliable transportation makes it possible to accept a better job.

Over the past decade, we have aligned our investments around strengthening those pathways.

We have supported efforts like OnTrack Greenville to help students stay engaged in school, and the ASPIRE Scholars initiative at Greenville Technical College to improve retention and completion rates for students facing significant barriers. We have partnered to accelerate LaunchGVL, connecting high school students to paid work opportunities in high-demand fields.

We have also invested in removing critical barriers to those pathways. We helped catalyze the Greenville Housing Fund to expand affordable housing. We supported expanded public transit hours to serve second-shift workers. And through HF Housing, our affiliated housing nonprofit, we are advancing new developments like The Alliance, a 100-unit affordable community along Laurens Road.

As we look to the future, land stewardship remains central to this strategy. The Bolden Street District, a 90-acre redevelopment opportunity along the Laurens Road corridor, represents the next chapter. As Greenville continues to expand, this district offers the potential to create a next-generation mixed-use destination that combines housing, commercial activity, connectivity, and community space, generating economic value while expanding opportunity.

None of this work happens alone. Economic mobility requires collaboration across schools, employers, nonprofits, local government, and philanthropy. Our role is often to convene partners, invest for the long term, and use all forms of capital – financial, relational, and reputational – to help solutions take root.

The sun may have set on the factory floors of Hollingsworth on Wheels. But the legacy of that work lives on, helping ensure that in Greenville, more people have a real chance to get ahead.

We are honored to continue that work for the next 25 years and beyond.