The Home Depot, the world’s largest home improvement retailer, recently announced the winners of this year’s RETOOL YOUR SCHOOL Campus Improvement Grant Program. This program, established in 2010, provides support for campus improvement projects at Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCU’s) across the country and has awarded $1.2 million dollars in grant money to date to HBCU’s.
This year, the Home Depot will award a total of $255,000 to nine accredited HBCU’s in $50,000, $25,000 and $10,000 grant denominations. Using a new grant structure, the HBCU’s have been categorized into one of three clusters based on student enrollment — schools with 4,000 students or more, schools with between 3,999 and 1,201 students, or schools with less than 1,200 students.
Here are the 2015 Home Depot RETOOL YOUR SCHOOL Winners
$50,000 Grant:
- North Carolina Central University
- Oakwood University
- Huston-Tillotson University
$25,000 Grant:
- Texas Southern University
- South Carolina State University
- Lane College
$10,000 Grant:
- Hampton University
- Spelman College
- Voorhees College
“This has been one of the most exciting years for The Home Depot’s Retool Your School program thus far,” says Melissa Brown, senior manager –marketing, The Home Depot. “The HBCU community and beyond showed their unrelenting support for our HBCU’s and this program. We began with 55 HBCU’s submitting their proposals and now we have determined the winners. The Home Depot proudly congratulates all of the 2015 grant recipients.”
Online voting began February 27, 2015 and ended April 20, 2015. During this period, HBCU supporters cast one vote per day per device for their favorite participating HBCU. Supporters also secured votes for their school by using the designated hashtag for each school via their social media channels. Each use of a school’s Retool Your School designated hashtag counted as one social media vote.
The RETOOL YOUR SCHOOL winners were chosen by a combination of online voting, social media activity and proposal reviews by a distinguished panel of judges. This year, they were Laz Alonso, Howard University alumnus, and film and television star; Angela Burt Murray, Hampton University alumna, and Co-Founder and CEO, CocoaFab.com, a fast-paced celebrity news and style site covering urban pop culture; Gregory Moore, Esq. , commissioner, Southern Intercollegiate Athletic Conference (SIAC); Michael Tabb, managing partner, Red Rock Global, and, Kenneth Hill, district manager, The Home Depot.
The RETOOL YOUR SCHOOL Campus Improvement Grant Program supports the growing sustainability movement by providing special consideration to eco-friendly project proposals. With the goal of issuing grants for projects that have a lasting impact, winning RETOOL YOUR SCHOOL projects will begin in the summer of 2015. For more information on the RETOOL YOUR SCHOOL program, visit www.RetoolYourSchool.com
About The Home Depot
The Home Depot is the world’s largest home improvement specialty retailer, with 2,270 retail stores in all 50 states, the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, U.S. Virgin Islands, Guam, 10 Canadian provinces and Mexico. In fiscal 2014, The Home Depot had sales of $83.2 billion and earnings of $6.3 billion. The Company employs more than 300,000 associates. The Home Depot’s stock is traded on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE: HD) and is included in the Dow Jones industrial average and Standard & Poor’s 500 index.
