Augusta’s Paine College is a distant eighth in vote recipients for The Home Depot’s Retool Your School program, which has donated millions to HBCUs over the last decade.
Winners will be announced in April, so voting efforts are already well underway, but time remains for the Augusta community to help move its hometown school to the top of the list of schools that could win $1 million for campus improvement projects.
“Since 2009, The Home Depot has continued to increase its investment in campus improvements for HBCUs,” said Derek Bottoms, chief diversity, equity & inclusion officer for The Home Depot. “In addition to other HBCU initiatives supported by The Home Depot over the years, we are doubling our Retool Your School commitment to $1 million for 2021. We are ensuring that, upon their return to campus, HBCU students have an upgraded environment that enhances their educational experience as they progress on their journey to become the next generation of leaders.”
Retool Your School has provided more than $3.1 million for 117 sustainable campus improvement projects for 87% of the nation’s HBCUs, per the official press release from The Home Depot. In total, more than 36 million votes have been cast in support of participating schools.
Extra votes can be earned by completing program-related challenges. They’re unique in their directive and at what time of the voting period they can be completed. The “Orientation” level, which lasted from Feb. 15 to 21, focused on building the Retool Your School Twitter and Instagram accounts toward a larger audience, and that effort netted some schools 10,000 extra votes.
During the final “Graduation” phase, which runs March 4 to 18, a school administrator releasing a 15-second video coaxing potential voters into action from the school’s official Twitter or Instagram can bring in a cool 100,000 votes.
At the time of publication, Paine College is in eighth place with 9,518 votes, compared to Tougaloo College in Tougaloo, Miss., first in the group with 118,423. Find more information at their website.
Tyler Strong is the Business Editor for The Augusta Press. Reach him at tyler@theaugustapress.com
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