Upcoming Events
Join us on Friday, December 11, 2026 at The Duke Hilton on Hillsborough.
Doors open at six. From 6:30 to 8:30 we gather for dinner and a program built around the people who made five hundred homes possible: the partner families who put in the sweat equity, the volunteers who framed the walls, and the donors and sponsors who made the math work for households this market has priced out. Gala tickets are $125.
Then at eight o’clock, the room changes. Casino Night runs until eleven — blackjack, roulette, craps and poker, a full bar, live music, and a crowd that would rather build houses than talk about it. We call it an evening of games, giving and good fortune. It is also $125, and you do not need a gala ticket to come. Show up at eight, play a few hands, have a drink, and go home knowing you helped build a house.
Most people want both, so we made that easy: $200 for the full evening, fifty dollars less than buying the two tickets apart. Black tie for the first half, good fortune for the second — Full House: From Black Tie to Blackjack.
Whatever you choose, your ticket turns into something specific. Habitat homes cost between $185,000 and $225,000 to build, and we sell them to partner families at a price they can actually carry, with a 30-year mortgage at zero percent interest. Our homebuyers contribute at least 250 hours of sweat equity on their own house and their neighbors’. We insist on strong credit and stable income, and we walk every family through budgeting, financial management, estate planning and home maintenance, because we are building the best homeowners, not just the best homes. It works: across more than 350 homeowner mortgages, our delinquency rate is under one percent.
The arithmetic only holds because Durham shows up. Roughly 2,100 volunteers give about 18,000 hours a year on our sites — corporate crews, weekend women roofers, the senior regulars who have been coming for decades — and that labor saves approximately $85,000 on every home we build. Last year we also completed 76 critical repairs for seniors, veterans and households earning less than half of area median income, so that long-time residents could stay in the homes they already own.
This has been a year of rebuilding for us, and we are proud of what it produced. Volunteers finished our first volunteer-built townhomes, completing the Mount Vernon community in the heart of Hayti. A new monthly orientation brought in more than 125 first-time volunteers. We seated a teen board, so the next generation learns how a house gets built before anyone tells them they cannot afford one. We put laptops in our homeowners’ hands, so the financial education we give families has somewhere to live after the classroom. We added construction staff and can take on more than we could a year ago. And after four decades, a permanent home of our own is finally within reach.
Thirty-eight partner families are in our pipeline right now, waiting on us to keep going. December 11 is how we keep our promise to them.
Reserve your seat at secure.qgiv.com/for/secondannualpresidentsgala
If your company would like its name on a wall that will still be standing in forty years, sponsorships run from $1,000 to $25,000 and include gala tickets, recognition in the printed program, and a team build day on one of our active sites. Casino Night sponsorships start at $300, with game tables at $500 and drink hospitality at $1,500. Tables of ten and eleven are available through the upper levels. To reserve a level or request the full sponsorship book, contact Sean Grier at Development@DurhamHabitat.org.
Can’t make it? Sponsorship does not require attendance, and the ticket page accepts a straight gift. Email us if you would like yours directed to a specific build.
For forty years, Habitat for Humanity of Durham has been in the business of walls. We’ve put up close to 500 of them. That’s homes built and sold at zero-percent interest to Durham families who work here, teach here, care for our sick here, and could not otherwise afford to stay here. We’ve repaired nearly a thousand more so that neighbors could age in the houses they already loved. This fall, we’re asking Durham’s artists to help us put something on those walls and to help us build the next ones.
FRAMED is the first art show fundraiser in Habitat for Humanity of Durham’s history. One evening. Local work on easels throughout the room. Soft music, a bar, hors d’oeuvres, and a room full of people who came out because they believe a home is a foundation for everything else. A portion of every sale goes directly into building and repairing homes in this city.
We are Also inviting Durham-area artists to submit work for consideration. Call For Artist
Artist Pay for Submission Link
Fee Waivers Available upon request.