In 2014, NCC’s leadership recognized that traditional counseling services alone weren’t enough. Many students faced hidden barriers like financial insecurity, food instability, housing uncertainty, and mental health challenges that directly affected their ability to persist and graduate.


What started as a small wellness initiative quickly grew into a broader effort to meet students’ basic needs. But the process of identifying and connecting students with benefits was still fragmented and manual. The newly established Blue Love fund provided gas cards, the Student Government Association opened a food pantry, and staff connected students to community resources, but it wasn't scalable or comprehensive.


There was a clear need for a centralized system that could do more. 

In 2015, NCC’s then-president returned from a conference with a folder in hand and an idea: integrate Single Stop into the Student Wellness Center.

With support from the Belk Endowment, Nash became one of the first community colleges in North Carolina to pilot Single Stop. That fall, the team completed its first screening and discovered over $8,500 in unclaimed benefits for a student on the verge of dropping out. She stayed, graduated, and continued accessing both trauma-informed care and financial resources through the center. 

From there, the program grew rapidly, eventually becoming so successful that it required the addition of a new role: a Single Stop Coordinator. By embedding Single Stop into every layer of student services—from orientation, to syllabi, to in-person workshops—NCC created an access model that was proactive, human-centered, and sustainable.