Howard University wins a big prize! Home Depot Retool Your School announcement

Melissa Brown, senior manager of Marketing at The Home Depot, shared following the live announcement, “We are really proud of the progress this program is making. When we started in 2010, we were only giving out $150,000 in grants. We have doubled the amount of contributions that we are making to HBCUs. I project over time that number will continue to grow.”

For the first time in program history, The Home Depot awarded three Tier I $50,000 grants. This year, they designed a new way to increase participating schools’ chances of winning $50,000.

The new cluster structure increases chances of winning $50,000. All HBCUs competing for a grant were placed into one of three clusters, based on student enrollment. The clusters are identified as follows:

Cluster 1: 4,000+ students
Cluster 2: 1,200-3,999
Cluster 3: less than 1,199 students

According to Brown, since the “Retool Your School” program launched in 2010, Home Depot has awarded nearly $1 million to HBCUs. This year, Home Depot will awarded an additional $255,000 to the winning institutions.

With the incorporation of clusters, participating HBCUs are now only in competition with those schools similar in size based on student enrollment.

The new grant structure — $255,000 will be awarded across nine HBCUs. This year each of the three clusters were award a
Tier I Grant – $50,000
Campus Pride Grant – $25,000
Tier II Grant – $10,000

The Campus Pride Grants were awarded to the school in each cluster with the most online votes and social media activity.

And the winners are:

Cluster 1:

Tier I: $50,000
Howard University

Campus Pride: $30,000
Florida A&M University

Tier II: $20,000
Virginia State University

Cluster 2:

Tier I: $50,000
South Carolina State University

Campus Pride: $30,000
Tuskegee University

Tier II: $20,000
Oakwood University

Cluster 3:

Tier I: $50,000
Lane College

Campus Pride: $30,000
Wiley College

Tier II: $20,000
LeMoyne-Owen College