About Us

Our Mission

The mission of the Deep Well Project is to help those in need overcome adversity.  Deep Well is a privately funded, volunteer-based, non-profit organization which streamlines a broad range of vital social services for the working poor, disabled, and infirm within the greater Hilton Head environs.  Deep Well provides immediate and non-bureaucratic assistance, particularly when such assistance cannot be fulfilled from other sources, and also serves as a clearing house, working cooperatively with other agencies, both public and private.  Its goal is to provide clients with a “hand up, not a hand out” by establishing shared responsibility, ultimately encouraging self-reliance and independence.

Deep Well strives to operate within the highest ethical standards and efficiency while also recognizing the fiduciary accountability to those who provide support to the organization.

Deep Well is a member of the Hilton Head Island-Bluffton Chamber of Commerce and the United Way

Our History

The Deep Well Project was founded in 1973 by Charlotte Heinrichs, a former New York State public health nurse.  Mrs. Heinrichs realized that widespread infestation of parasites in local school children were the result of too shallow water wells, which water was contaminated by ground sewage which leeched into them. 

Brushing aside bureaucratic interference at every level, Mrs. Heinrichs developed the program which brought deep water wells — parasite-free water — to native Islanders, a fifteen year undertaking which brought recognition from President Ronald Reagan, South Carolina Governors Richard Riley and Carroll Campbell, and Newsweek and Modern Maturity Magazines. Her bold, humanitarian initiatives have made a vast contribution to Hilton Head Island, and to a multitude of Islanders.