Charlotte corporate leaders announce $250 million investment in racial equity pledge
Some of Charlotte’s biggest corporations and government leaders have launched a $250 million initiative for racial equity.
Mayor Vi Lyles last year tapped the Charlotte Executive Leadership Council, made up of prominent chief executives, to tackle issues such as education and economic mobility, to create a corporate response to decades of laws and policies that disadvantaged Black and brown residents.
On Monday they announced the Mayor’s Racial Equity Initiative, the largest investment in Charlotte history intended to address racial disparities, during an event on the campus of Johnson C. Smith University.
Lyles called it “a defining moment” in Charlotte’s history.
“This challenge is going to be with us a very long time,” she said. “These issues that we’re trying to address today are longstanding and deep.” But the donations announced Monday, she said, will tackle them “with accountability and abundance.”
Many of the philanthropic and corporate contributions, which will be paired with taxpayer money, have already come in. About $80 million in the $250 million campaign will come from public funds from the city of Charlotte ($72 million) and library system ($8 million). So far, nearly $97 million has been raised from private philanthropy, including many of Charlotte’s largest businesses.
“The weight of this responsibility of knowing the history and living through the history has long been carried by many of our residents that are Black and brown, by the many grassroots organizations, and often by local government,” Lyles said.
“In my opinion, to address systemic inequity, corporate America has to be at the table,” she said.
An additional $19 million in low-interest debt and equity is being gifted through the campaign for business and other economic development in specific parts of the city.
The Duke Endowment made a $40 million gift, the largest announced Monday, that will specifically go to Charlotte’s only historically-Black college, JCSU. The total fundraising goal for the university is $80 million.
Officials outlined three other broad areas of investment: bridging the digital divide, diversifying leadership of Charlotte’s biggest companies and the city’s six Corridors of Opportunity, historically neglected areas now targeted for public and private money.
The plans cover a five-year period, and could involve things such as grants to small businesses and providing computers and internet to families who lack access to technology. Other specific details have not been released.
The Foundation for the Carolinas is leading fundraising and will host the philanthropic fund. Officials have said they will form two governance boards.
Among the other major donors:
- Bank of America has committed $25 million to the mayor’s initiative, including $10 million to JCSU, as part of the bank’s $1.25 billion racial equity plan.
- Lowe’s will contribute $10 million
- Truist is giving $8 million
- Atrium Health will contribute $6.1 million
- $5.7 million will come from Queens University of Charlotte
- Ally Financial and Ric Elias, CEO of Red Ventures, are each giving $5 million
- Novant Health and Duke Energy have committed $3 million each
Gifts of $1 million were announced from the CLT2020 Host Committee set up for the Republican National Convention held in Charlotte last year; EY (formerly Ernst & Young); the Michael Jordan Family/the Charlotte Hornets Foundation (a combined gift); National Gypsum/CD Spangler Foundation (a combined gift); and Trane Technologies. Additional contributions come from Mary and Mike Lamach ($500,000) and Bloomberg Philanthropies ($220,000).
Together, $196 million of the $250 million goal has been committed.
Where will the money go?
Investments in JCSU from the various donors will create five new programs, including pre-medicine, data analytics and computer science, as well as scholarships and on-campus health services.
“For too long we have approached equity from our various silos, chipping away with fits and starts,” University President Clarence Armbrister said. “This public-private partnership has the potential to transform Charlotte into the “standard bearer” for cities seeking racial equity and upward mobility.
He said his university is ready for the changes ahead.
Officials have said digital divide funding will create a Center for Digital Equity housed at Queens University. Lyles said the pandemic raised awareness of households who lack internet access, recalling stories of students having to seek out Wi-Fi at fast food restaurants to do their homework.
Some 55,000 households lack internet locally, she said.
“Something as fundamental as technology is fundamental to all of us,” said Kieth Cockrell, Charlotte Market President for Bank of America.
Lyles said efforts around diversifying leadership in the city’s corporations includes pushing companies to have their top executives and boards better reflect the racial makeup of Charlotte.
The Corridors of Opportunity program invests in six areas — Beatties Ford/Rozzelles Ferry roads, West Boulevard, Freedom Drive/Wilkinson Boulevard, Central Avenue/Albemarle Road, Sugar Creek/I-85 and Graham/North Tryon streets — aimed at boosting quality of life measures like business investment, housing and improved public safety.
Corridor investments will include loans, grants and land acquisition help for people in those areas.
History of discrimination
This effort has been underway more than a year, Lyles said, following the police killing of George Floyd and protests across the country and in Charlotte.
In August 2020 she read an apology during a City Council meeting, acknowledging city government’s role in destroying Black neighborhoods such as Brooklyn through the urban renewal program in the 1950s and ‘60s.
Along with the apology, leaders announced plans to create a public-private partnership for racial equity.
But the effort has been criticized by members of Restorative Justice CLT, which has called for significant financial investment in communities harmed by urban renewal and other racially discriminatory policies.
Restorative Justice CLT has said that these investments need to specifically go to descendants of displaced Brooklyn residents, as well as the broader Black community.
The group, which called for the city to apologize for razing Brooklyn, seeks investments in housing, education, criminal justice, mental health, employment and faith communities to atone for the destroyed churches, schools, homes and businesses.
But the group’s members previously told the Observer they were shut out of discussions about the mayor’s effort, and raised doubts about the corporate community, which has long benefited from these policies, deciding how to spend millions of dollars to address them.
The Rev. Willie Keaton, of the restorative justice group and pastor at Mt. Olive Presbyterian Church, said Monday he wants to see more accountability and transparency for these public-private partnerships, as well as clear metrics to measure success.
“Just because you’re a business leader, that doesn’t mean you should be an authority on how money is spent to address racial equity,” he said. “That’s my concern.”
Charlotte’s corporate and philanthropic leaders have successfully raised large sums in the past to match public funds, including $20 million for arts earlier this year and more than $50 million for affordable housing to be used with the city’s Housing Trust Fund.
But metrics on how success will be measured with this $250 million effort have not been revealed.
Two oversight boards will be created to decide how to spend the money and track its progress, said Michael Marsicano, Foundation for the Carolinas president and CEO, and will publicly report progress.
Lyles told reporters Friday that she hopes this is a critical moment in Charlotte’s history.
“I hope that I will be able to look back and say, you know, look how we’ve grown and changed just in a very short time; where people in other communities will look at us and say, ‘Look at the work that Charlotte is doing,’” she said.
“It’s meaningful, accessible, and we will have accountability for it. I’m always hopeful.”
This story was originally published November 1, 2021 at 2:02 PM.
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