Girls on the Run of Union County has moved out of Weddington after 12 years, opening a new headquarters at 105 South Main St. in downtown Monroe.

The nonprofit held a ribbon-cutting ceremony on Saturday, Aug. 29, coordinated through the Union County Chamber of Commerce. Staff, board members, volunteers and community partners gathered to mark the occasion, the Enquirer Journal reported.

The move had been years in the making. Executive Director Kerry Guley said many of the organization's coaches are teachers who found the Weddington location difficult to reach after a full school day.

"Our office for the last 12 years has been in Weddington, and Weddington is a great location, but a lot of our coaches are teachers and asking a coach that's already been teaching at school all day … to come to Weddington to pick something up from our office if they need to, that's a very far distance," Guley said at the grand opening.

The Monroe office gives the organization a central hub for training coaches in person, meeting with families and building community partnerships. The new space was furnished almost entirely through donations from the Union County Symphony and Green Standards, an Ontario, Canada-based company that redirects surplus corporate office furniture to nonprofits.

The larger space also allows Girls on the Run to run in-person coach certification. Once coaches complete that training, they are assigned curricula and lessons to teach one session at a time.

The local Girls on the Run council, which serves Union and Montgomery counties, is celebrating its 20th anniversary in 2026. It has served more than 20,000 girls, draws support from more than 300 volunteers each year and has provided more than $607,000 in financial assistance to families.

Nationally, Girls on the Run marks 30 years since the program started in Charlotte in 1996 with 13 girls. The organization has since reached more than 2.7 million girls across North America, according to its national website.

The Monroe office is open Monday through Friday, 8:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m., at 105 South Main St.