An article in CNN assesses how corporate America has stepped up to respond to our country's racial reckoning in the wake of George Floyd's murder. LISC's EVP for development, Beth Marcus, commends the extraordinary influx of corporate philanthropy in the past year, but notes that enduring impact in communities depends on “keep[ing] that moment going...we have to make sure it's sustained.”
The excerpt below was originally published on:
George Floyd's death was a wake-up call for Corporate America. Here's what has — and hasn't — changed
By Chauncey Alcorn, CNN Business
New York (CNN Business) - One year ago today, the world watched George Floyd's life slowly slip away under the knee of a Minneapolis police officer.
The outpouring of rage and empathy that followed shook the foundations of Corporate America in unprecedented ways, but experts say it's far too early to say whether the business world's pledged commitments to lasting social change will stand the test of time.
"Change was never going to happen overnight," said Rashad Robinson, president of Color of Change, a racial justice nonprofit that works with private companies. "So many of the corporations that spoke up have deep systemic challenges that can't be solved with a tweet, a statement, a diversity committee."
Floyd's murder changed Black Lives Matter from a controversial social justice movement to an almost ubiquitous corporate mantra virtually overnight. Fortune 1000 companies poured billions of dollars into programs designed to address systemic racism and committed to fulfilling quantifiable racial hiring quotas after decades of resisting them.
In June, Reddit appointed Y Combinator Managing Director Michael Siebel to replace its co-founder, Alexis Ohanian, on the company's board after Ohanian resigned and requested to be replaced by a Black person. In October, JPMorgan Chase committed to invest $30 billion to promote racial equity over the next five years. Bank of America, Citi and Goldman Sachs made similar, billion dollar pledges.
The Local Initiatives Support Corporation, the nation's largest community development financial institution, says it set a new fundraising record last year, enabling it to invest $2 billion into historically undeserved communities, both rural and urban.
“We raised probably two and a half times what we've raised in other years,” said Beth Marcus, EVP of resource development for LISC. “We saw Corporate America step up in some unprecedented ways. We were able to make grants to 12,000 small businesses. More than 80% of those are owned by minority individuals.”
A steep hill to climb
But Marcus said it will take much more than one year of funding to have a lasting impact on America's racial wealth disparities. A Brookings Institute study published in December estimated it would cost more than $10 trillion to close the racial wealth gap between Black and White US households.