With no RNC, Charlotte’s host committee plans to donate $3 million to community groups
What do you do when you’ve raised millions of dollars for a multi-day extravaganza that has shrunk to less than a single day?
If you’re the Republican National Convention’s Charlotte host committee, give some to the community.
The host committee will announce Friday that it’s giving $3.2 million in cash and supplies to a dozen non-profits and other organizations in the region.
“The idea was that we would leave the city better than we found it,” said John Lassiter, the committee’s president and CEO.
Friday morning Lassiter will join other committee members outside an uptown apartment building to announce their donation of more than 900 pieces of furniture to a non-profit called Beds for Kids. Donated by Ashley Furniture and Broad River Retail, the pieces were used to furnish apartments leased by out-of-town convention officials.
Lassiter also will present a check for $45,000 to Purple Heart Homes, an organization that provides services to veterans. It’s part of $339,000 in grants the committee is giving groups such as Habitat for Humanity, TreesCharlotte and the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Foundation.
In addition:
▪ Another $500,000 in grants will go to small businesses in the hospitality industry that would have benefited from the influx of convention-goers. The committee is working with the Charlotte Regional Visitors Authority to come up with an application process. It would start making grants by the end of the year.
▪ A $2 million “economic development challenge grant” for efforts that promote the region’s economic growth. Details will be announced this fall, but the plan is to fund projects that lead to what Lassiter called “significant” job growth and capital investment.
▪ Two hundred thousand dollars of “branding assets” developed by the committee to promote the region to what was expected to be a worldwide convention audience. Material prepared for the #MeetCharlotte campaign will be available to groups promoting economic development.
The host committee “shifted from an event organization to its original purpose — promoting the region,” said co-chair Ned Curran.
Charlotte City Council member Malcolm Graham will be at Friday’s announcement as executive director of Beds for Kids.
“It’s a tremendous gift to the organization that will help families in need,” said Graham, a Democrat. “So many families in our community, believe it or not, are sleeping on the floor. We try to turn a house into a home.”
The host committee once had been expected to raise $70 million. That money would have paid for hundreds of convention-related events as well as renovating Spectrum Arena into a made-for-TV convention hall. Leading the fundraising campaign was Greensboro businessman Louis DeJoy, who left this summer to become U.S. postmaster general.
Lassiter said they’d received $50 million in commitments, including $38 million in donations. Then plans abruptly changed.
On Memorial Day President Donald Trump tweeted that he would look for another convention site after Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper, citing the ongoing pandemic, declined to guarantee that the GOP could fill the Charlotte arena.
“We started retooling that day for the wind-down,” Lassiter said. “That shifted the focus from building up to tearing down. We worked through that in a very methodical way, without our hair catching on fire.”
Lassiter, the former chairman of North Carolina’s Economic Development Partnership board, said that involved settling close to 100 vendor contracts worth “tens of millions” of dollars.
The committee spent about $20 million with vendors. For example, it paid the contracted rent for the Park Expo, which was to be the site of a lavish delegate welcome party. Much of the rest went to insurance and other costs.
Committee officials had hoped the convention would have offered a showcase for the city. They planned an ambitious marketing campaign that included an exposition of locally manufactured products at the Charlotte Convention Center, where they would have been seen by the 15,000 journalists once expected to descend on the city.
Despite the cancellation of an event once expected to draw 50,000 people to Charlotte, committee co-chair Walter Price said the donations and grants would still have a positive if smaller impact on economic development.
One disappointment for Price and the others: the missed chance to take a particular keepsake on what would have been the last night of the convention. They saw themselves hurrying toward the speakers’ platform as balloons fell all around.
“We were going to rush the stage and get the podium,” he said.
This story was originally published August 21, 2020 at 6:00 AM.
