Walmart allocates $800K to Black business owners

By TheGrio Staff

Walmart’s one-year grant to the Russell Innovation Center for Entrepreneurs is part of the company’s 2020 pledge to invest $100 million in racial equity over five years.

Walmart is investing in Black businesses.

According to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, the retail giant said on Tuesday that it would be donating $800,000 to the Russell Innovation Center for Entrepreneurs – an Atlanta-based nonprofit organization devoted to creating, nurturing and expanding Black entrepreneurs – to support initiatives to train entrepreneurs who make consumer goods.

“We’re going to be the place that when you see RICE on the head of any application that comes in, Walmart will know that they have to give it a good look,” said RICE President and CEO Jay Bailey, “because we’re going to prepare these entrepreneurs to win, to be shelf ready, to be retail ready.”

Walmart’s one-year grant to RICE is part of the company’s 2020 pledge to invest $100 million in racial equity over five years.

Here’s how the nonprofit plans to allocate the funds.

Read about recent efforts to block a grant for Black women entrepreneurs here.

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