Four years ago, Charlotte Mayor Vi Lyles launched the Mayor’s Racial Equity Initiative, an effort to raise $150 million from the private sector to help the city in four different areas, including bolstering Johnson C. Smith University and bridging the digital divide.
The program is now winding down, and hasn’t received much attention in the last three years. The website for the initiative doesn’t appear to have been updated recently, and the contact email is no longer working and bounces back.
But recipients of the funds say they are doing important work, even if there aren’t headlines about their efforts.
Lyles, who is focused on getting voters to approve the transportation sales tax increase, said the businesses that donated have taken the lead.
“Our corporate partners have leaned in and done even more of this without having to say: ‘This is an initiative that we must write and we must do all of this,” said Lyles when asked about the lack of attention the MREI has received. “I think people have taken it and made it their own.”
The initiative focuses on four areas: The two biggest two are the six so-called "Corridors of Opportunity" in low-income parts of the city and bolstering JCSU. There are also two much smaller areas: workforce development and bridging the digital divide, a program that is being run from Queens University.
The mayor’s original plan was to hire an administrator, Kimberly Henderson, to run MREI. But she stepped down in early 2022 after media reports linked her to problems in her previous job, leading a state agency in Ohio. An audit found the Ohio Department of Job and Family Services had a “lack of controls.”
The mayor then went in a new direction and directed the private donations to be held by the Foundation for the Carolinas, which acts as an informal bank for the MREI funds. To oversee the funds, the four focus areas now have their own advisory boards, made up of private donors, including the Duke Endowment, Ally Financial, and Bank of America.
Trying to get JCSU into the top 10
The effort to lift up JCSU is perhaps the most visible.
The city’s only historically Black university has so far received $51.3 million in cash, and about $6.5 million in in-kind contributions. The school’s annual program service revenue — the money it makes from things such as tuition — is less than $30 million a year.
Harriet Hobbs, a chief strategist at JCSU, said the school has spent the money to make the school better.
“We have 10 success coaches who work on recruitment and retention, and we’re focusing on hiring exceptional faculty and staff,” she said.
She added the school is working to develop programs in data analytics, business administration and pre-health.
One challenge: When those racial equity funds run out in June 2027, JCSU will have to find new money to keep those positions and programs funded.
“We are having those conversations around sustainability,” she said. “Everyone is aware that this is soft money and we need a plan to move forward.”
She said departments are “actively seeking other opportunities for their programs.”
When the initiative was launched, one of the goals was for JCSU to move into the top 10 rankings in the U.S. News and World Report’s rankings for historically Black colleges and universities. That would put the school alongside or near HBCU powerhouses such as Spelman, Howard and Morehouse.
The effort to move up has been mixed.
In 2021, JCSU was ranked 45th in the U.S. News HBCU rankings, and then in 2023, the school moved up to 26th. But in the rankings that just came out this fall, the school slid back to 36th.
The university is on probation from the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools Commission on Colleges. The accrediting organization said the university did not “demonstrate compliance” with the agency’s standards for financial responsibility and control of finances.
Hobbs said the school is working to get into compliance.
“There was no mismanagement of funds, none of that,” she said. “It’s just that we need to tighten up and do better in terms of how we process grants and financial aid.”
But Hobbs says things are looking up. She said the university just enrolled its largest freshman class in a decade this fall.
In an interview with WFAE, Lyles didn’t talk about the school necessarily moving into the top 10, but she talked about the school surviving.
JCSU, a private school, doesn’t get funding from taxpayers. Earlier this year, Queens University in Charlotte merged with Elon University, a decision made, in part, because of the challenges private universities face.
“When I first started working with the business community, they asked what the number one priority was,” Lyles said. “And I said we should not lose the only HBCU in our city.”
The mayor said she believes JCSU grads now are better prepared to get jobs after graduation. And then she pivoted to the university’s football team, which has only lost once this season.
“Sports teaches you a lot in life,” Lyles said. “I think that has made a difference in some of the things we didn’t think about. We were more focused on ‘Let’s get them smarter, let’s get them jobs.’ Sometimes it’s OK to think we’re going to give them an opportunity of life in a different way.”
For the record, the football team hasn’t received money from the equity initiative. JSCU is expected to receive its last MREI funds in 2027.
Trying to bridge digital divide
The Center for Digital Equity at Queens University has been tasked with helping low-income communities get online. MREI has earmarked $20 million for the center, though some of that money is in-kind contributions and money it was previously set to receive.
The center has bought computers for people who don’t have them. And it pays for “digital navigators” who teach low-income seniors how to get online.
“It’s not just how to get online,” said Mike Rizer, the executive director of corporate citizenship with Ally Financial, which donated $2 million to the digital equity initiative. “How do you do online banking? How do you get a job? (The navigators) try to meet people where they are.”
Bruce Clark, who leads the center, said he’s tried to be as transparent as possible. After Henderson resigned from leading MREI in 2022, he said, “We knew it was going to be messy. We made sure we were as transparent as possible and published our reports on time.”
Clark said he meets with the advisory board twice a year. He said the mayor hasn’t asked to speak to him about the center’s efforts to bridge the digital divide.
Can Corridors of Opportunity fund bus shelters?
The largest of the four MREI focus areas is the so-called “Corridors of Opportunity” — six areas of the city slated to receive additional funding and support. The corridors have received sizeable private donations, including $15 million from the Knight Foundation and $20 million from Wells Fargo.
Most of the money, however, is public funds that were shifted to the corridor program, or were simply renamed as such.
During the debate over the transportation sales tax this fall, critics of the plan have said that unspent Corridors of Opportunity money should pay for improvements to bus stops, including benches, shelters and lighting.
Robert Dawkins of the group Action NC said that would be a good way for the corporate community to contribute to the region’s transit needs.
WCNC reported earlier this year that there is more than $70 million in Corridor money that hasn’t been spent yet.
When asked about the Action NC proposal, Lyles said that’s not possible and that the money has already been allocated.
