EXCLUSIVE: HBCU Grads: We Don't Give Back Because We're Never Asked
In this clip, Xavier Peoples, the founder and CEO of HBCU Change talks about why HBCU Grads don’t give back to their institutions.
Below we have included the transcription
Todd Finley (00:08):
Xavier Peoples is the founder of HBCU change. Xavier, tell me and our audience who you are.
Xavier Peoples (00:17):
I am Xavier Peoples. I'm the founder and CEO of HBCU change. I work for a firm by the name of Capitol group, and we're the largest active money manager in the world. And as a part of that, we've managed some of the largest endowments and foundations literally in the world. And so, because of that, I know that my firm has the tools and the resources that could truly help HBCUS. I went to the head of my firm one day and I said, can you tell me how many HBCUS foundations and endowments that we've managed? Because I feel that these schools can truly benefit from my resources and the answer was zero. So I took it upon myself to fly over the country all over the country and talk to a couple of HBCUS, just to get a better understanding of their endowments and their foundations.
Xavier Peoples (01:32):
They all said the real crux of our issue is getting alumni to consistently give back to the institution. Can you help solve for that? And so I got back on a plane and I came home and I sent out a survey to 5,000 HBCU grads, and I asked them, why didn't they give back? Or why don't you give back on a consistent basis? The number one answer to that survey was we don't give back because we've never been asked, followed closely by we don't give back because we don't feel that we can give back a donation that will have an impact on the university. And that's when the light bulb went off with me being in the investment space. I don't know if you're familiar with the app by the name of acorn, but acorn basically rounds up the change from your daily transactions and then invests the change into the market.
Xavier Peoples (02:26):
And I said, what if I create an acorn for HBCUS where we round up the change on a daily basis? And we give that change back to the HBCU of your choice. And so upon further research, what we found was that on average, if a person connects both their debit and credit card to an app to give back, they give back on a low side, $54 on the high side, $87 a month, depending upon their transactions. So using a school like Clark Atlanta university here in Atlanta. Clark Atlanta has 40,000 active alumni. And so let's just say we were to get 10,000 of those alumni to sign on and give back to their school. That's $540,000 a month, over $6 million a year, going back to Clark Atlanta university, which will have a tremendous impact on the school. And so our goal and our mission is for HBCUS to be self-sustained and not have to rely on government funding and sporadic checks from big donors to supply. They can survive off the change from their alumni alone. And that's what we aim to do.
