Truist grants $500k to aid Richmond Community Wealth Building office

Truist Foundation announced it has made a $500,000 grant that will ultimately help Richmond’s Office of Community Wealth Building provide further financial, education and employment coaching to city families, the philanthropic arm of Truist Financial Corp. announced in a press conference Friday.

“At Truist, our purpose is to inspire and build better lives and communities, and that is critical to everything we do,” Truist Chairman and CEO William H. “Bill” Rogers Jr. said “It guides all of our decision making.”

Truist’s grant will fund Washington, D.C.-based nonprofit Lift Inc. to provide two years of training to case managers from the Richmond Office of Community Wealth Building on Lift’s one-on-one financial, education and employment coaching program to implement in its services to parents. Lift began the instructional partnership with Richmond in April.

“I think it’s actually building on what they’re already doing, which is why I’m so excited to partner with OCWB,” Lift CEO Michelle Rhone-Collins said. “There was already this happening within the office but they didn’t have the capacity to do it at a grander scale, so we’re able to turbocharge the effort. The environment was already right for us.”

The Office of Community Wealth Building currently serves around 150 families through its various programs and plans to scale its services to serve 300 families this year.

“We have a real common purpose, particularly in this sector,” Rogers said. “[Truist and OCWB] really work to create just and equitable communities, which is critical to the success of great cities, and serving those who have historically been underserved.”

Lift, which provides financial, education and employment coaching to parents in marginalized communities, currently operates in Chicago, Los Angeles, New York and Washington, D.C., and Richmond. In 2022, the organization reached more than 900 families in those cities through its partners, for which it provides technical assistance.

“We are so pleased to see the funds to support the expansion of [Lift’s] work as they link arms with the Richmond Office of Community Wealth [Building], to catalyze change, breaking down barriers and building new pathways to opportunities along the way,” said Truist Foundation President Lynette Bell. “This is where change starts.”

Based in Charlotte, North Carolina, Truist formed from the 2019 merger of BB&T and SunTrust Bank. The bank had assets of $555 billion as of Dec. 31, 2022. The Truist Foundation was established in 2020.