On this episode of Coffee with Cool People, Chip sits down with Mike Mancuso, president and CEO of the Waccamaw Community Foundation, a servant leader who sees his role as helping the Grand Strand not just grow, but thrive. Originally from Ohio, Mike’s path to the coast was a gradual one. He and his wife, Chris, first came down as regular visitors, then bought a condo in Little River while their kids began migrating south. Eventually, the pull of grandchildren and coastal life made the move permanent about four and a half years ago. Since then, Mike has poured his time into understanding the region, literally putting 20,000 miles on his car in six months without ever leaving Horry and Georgetown Counties.
Today, Mike leads the Waccamaw Community Foundation, a nonprofit that connects people who want to give with the needs and opportunities around them. He describes it as “a reflection of the community it serves” and frames its role as a three-legged stool: philanthropy, service, and leadership. On the philanthropy side, the Foundation helps everyday people become philanthropists, not just the ultra-wealthy. They set up donor-advised funds, scholarships, designated funds, and endowments that allow families, businesses, and organizations to give in a structured, sustainable way. Mike’s message is simple: if you care about a cause, you can be a philanthropist, and the Foundation exists to show you how.
The second “leg” is service to local nonprofits. With more than 400 nonprofits across the Waccamaw region, Mike is quick to point out that they are doing heavy lifting in food security, housing, education, health, and more, often with tiny staffs or all-volunteer teams. The Foundation supports them by helping establish endowments, connecting them with donors, and strengthening their capacity to operate like the businesses they are. One of Mike’s key initiatives is the quarterly Nonprofit Summit, where nonprofit leaders gather to learn, share resources, and build skills in fundraising, governance, and organizational health. For the smallest organizations, the Foundation’s support can be the difference between staying afloat and being able to grow.
Where Mike gets especially animated is in talking about endowments as a tool to flip the math for nonprofits. Right now, most leaders spend 70% of their time just “keeping the lights on” and only 30% actually doing the mission work they care about. An endowment, Mike explains, can steadily generate income year after year, turning a $1 million fund into roughly $40,000 in annual support forever. To make that possible even for small organizations and churches, the Foundation created a “zero-dollar endowment” option: nonprofits can open an endowment fund with no upfront contribution, then work with the Foundation to attract legacy and planned gifts over time. Mike and his team help leaders build a plan, talk with donors, and coordinate with attorneys and advisors so that when wealth transfers occur, their missions have a place for those dollars to land.
The third leg of the stool is regional leadership. Because the Waccamaw Community Foundation works across Horry, Georgetown, and Williamsburg Counties, it has a 30,000-foot view of what’s happening, from Little River to Andrews and everywhere in between. Mike sees the Foundation as a connector and convener: bringing people, nonprofits, and civic leaders together around shared challenges and opportunities. On the donor side, that means helping individuals and families build thoughtful giving strategies through donor-advised funds, vetting nonprofits for financial health and compliance, and even drafting “bequest letters” so that their values and intentions live on after they’re gone. Whether someone wants to tithe from the sale of a business, support a small church over decades, or create a family legacy fund, Mike’s team quietly handles the details so generosity can do its work.
At the heart of it all, Mike still boils his identity down to servant leadership, using his experience, relationships, and platform to make it easier for good people and good organizations to do good work. In a region that stretches long and feels very different from one end to the other, his mission is to show that when everyone brings their piece to the table, donors, nonprofits, and community leaders, the whole Waccamaw area becomes stronger, more resilient, and more generous together.
