Howard U and PNC are launching a national center for entrepreneurs

Two years after receiving a grant to fund it, Howard University and PNC bank recently launched the PNC National Center for Entrepreneurship.

The grant makes Howard the leader in an affiliated consortium of schools and a regional hub for the center’s efforts. With the center, Howard students, families and local entrepreneurs can tap into resources to help grow their businesses. Currently, there is no physical space for the center; to create one, Howard is kicking off hiring with this grant and fundraising over the next few years for a physical space in the Howard School of Business.

PNC awarded the five-year, $16.8 million grant to Howard in October 2021, though a center director was not selected until later in 2022. Therefore, Howard said the relationship with the bank will continue for the next five years.

Erin Horne McKinney, national executive director for the center, said that the process began with the idea of a space with strategic and impactful initiatives for entrepreneurs of any age or industry. The university has been holding various pop-up shops for students to determine interest levels, and leaders found that students needed a retail space on a minimum-weekly basis to showcase their work.

Horne McKinney described the center as multigenerational, interdisciplinary and industry-agnostic. It will also point founders in the direction of both local and national resources. This includes developing an online resource directory by state and city, which Howard and PNC are building in collaboration with the Greater Washington Black Business Chamber.

“[We want to] change the mindset of individuals, so that you don’t have to wait until you’re a certain age to start a business,” Horne McKinney told Technical.ly. “You can start while you’re a student, you can start while you’re a kid. Not all businesses require venture capital.”

The center will also be a resource for HBCUs nationwide looking to expand Black entrepreneurship. Clark Atlanta, Morgan State and Texas Southern University are also consortium schools that will lead programming in their regions and extend the Howard Center’s programming nationwide.

The center’s five pillars are programs, research, resources, access to capital and education. So, in addition to the pop-up shops and pilot programs at Howard, the initiatives will also be rolled out across the network. Horne McKinney said that leadership is working to ensure the initiatives aren’t predatory, which means validating and vetting many of the partnerships.

“It’s also really important that with the Black community, you have to have trust,” Horne McKinney said. “So we’re leveraging the brands of Howard and the other HBCUs that we’re partnering with, and PNC, to build that trust and help make sure that programs are impactful and are actually intentional programs to do pilots at Howard — and then help spread that across the network.”

All in all, Horne McKinney wants this center to aid the return of Black business districts and corridors, which will help lead to more generational wealth. When the world starts to see more Black billionaires, she said, she’ll know the tune has changed for Black founders.

The funding from PNC is part of an $88 billion community benefits plan from PNC, with $1.5 billion being used to support Black Americans in low- and moderate-income communities. At a launch event Tuesday, PNC and Howard also gave out $25,000 grants ($250,000 in total) to HBCUs trying to build entrepreneurial resources. They distributed an additional $10,000 in faculty fellowship grants to those conducting research on Black entrepreneurs.

The program launch will culminate in a national conference taking place in DC June 14-16.

Richard Bynum, chief corporate responsibility officer for PNC, said that these grants and initiatives aim to build out a curriculum, resources, infrastructure and connectivity in an already existing network to strengthen the opportunities for Black founders

“Ultimately, we want to grow and create as many entrepreneurs moving to scale and, going forward, be true, resilient businesses as we possibly can,” he said.