In 2020, amidst an unprecedented wave of corporate pledges to combat racial inequity following the murder of George Floyd, a leading Fortune 200 financial services company focused on a significant societal need where they could potentially have impact: reducing the racial wealth and opportunity gap for Black Americans. (According to Federal Reserve data from the same year, white households owned 82.4% of the wealth in the U.S., while Black and Latinx households only held 4.6% and 3.1%, respectively.)
Pledging several hundred million dollars, the company launched an expansive initiative to address these disparities. Key focus areas included 1) ensuring delivery of equitable and affordable products and services; 2) identifying opportunities to invest in and support Black-owned businesses; and 3) deepening advocacy to expand financial access in underserved communities.
The challenge for the company was twofold: aligning all departments to operate under a cohesive, cross-functional strategy and assessing the impact of their efforts. The company called on Ichor to help navigate these hurdles.
The Ichor team began by conducting an in-depth review of the company’s efforts. Through thorough stakeholder interviews, the team pinpointed misalignments and missed opportunities, both within the company and in the communities they aimed to serve. The findings revealed that the program’s lack of central governance led to overlapping efforts and insufficient collaboration.
Ichor worked closely with the client to streamline the company’s complicated organizational structure. The team proposed establishing a dedicated unit to oversee the initiative’s various workstreams, a move designed to replace departmental silos with a more effective, unified operation. The client embraced this restructured approach, enabling greater interdepartmental coordination as well as overall effectiveness.
To gauge the success of each department’s efforts, the Ichor team devised an extensive measurement framework for evaluating program outcomes. This enabled the client to go beyond simply tracking immediate outputs and focus on the long-term impact of initiatives on key communities, with the ability to iterate tactics as needed. For example, rather than solely tracking the number of grants allocated to Black-owned small businesses annually, also tracking the percentage of these businesses that were still operational after a few years.
These changes helped strengthen the program and laid the groundwork for the client to scale certain initiatives as well as grow critical external partnerships for increased impact. To date, the company is set to exceed its financial commitment well ahead of schedule and is making significant progress in embedding equity into its ongoing business practices. By increasing investments in Black-owned businesses and creating alternative financial programs to combat systemic inequities, the company is paving the way to better outcomes for underserved communities.
