McKinsey Institute for Black Economic Mobility

Corporate commitments to racial justice: An update

| Artigo
Megan Armstrong Eathyn Edwards  Duwain Pinder
In the two years since McKinsey first analyzed corporate pledges to fight racial injustice, companies have continued to pledge money—but how it’s being spent remains unclear.

At the end of 2020, the McKinsey Institute for Black Economic Mobility first analyzed the monetary commitments from Fortune 1000 companies and institutions that pledged to fight racial injustice following the murder of George Floyd. In response to a movement that began in America, some of the world’s largest companies dedicated more than $66 billion in funds to the cause. When we analyzed the landscape up to May 2021, companies upped their commitments and made new ones to reach a cumulative amount of approximately $200 billion in earmarked funding.

About the methodology

We conducted a press search to identify the financial and nonfinancial commitments made by the companies on the Fortune 1000 list. The press search resulted in press releases and public statements from companies on the list, which were examined for evidence of a financial or nonfinancial commitment to racial equity, specifically for Black Americans after the murder of George Floyd in May 2020.

Where there were commitments found, we labeled the commitment as internal and/or external and determined to which impact area they were deployed. We tracked three areas for internal commitments: workforce diversity (for example, diversity of talent pipeline, board diversity), inclusion (for example, antibias training), and equity of opportunity (for example, equitable advancement of colleagues). We tracked eight areas for external commitments: affordable housing and homeownership, education (for example, early-childhood education, K–12, higher education), job training and skilling, public infrastructure (for example, digital, transit), minority-owned enterprise development (for example, supplier diversity, access to credit, capability building), public advocacy (for example, civil rights, criminal justice reform), civic engagement (for example, voter registration, bottom-up participation), and financial inclusion (for example, financial education, household access to capital). We also noted any specific financial commitments to each of these areas. If the financial commitment was across multiple areas and not broken down by amount per area, it was noted as a commitment in each of those areas, but the financial breakdown was not tracked as it was not available.

To avoid duplication with the previous analysis of May 2020–May 2021, we referenced sources from the commitments identified in that analysis. An example of a duplicate commitment would be a press release from a company released between May 2021 and October 2022 stating the deployment of funds to a specific organization out of a pool of previously committed funds stated between May 2020 and May 2021.

We’ve taken another look at the racial equity commitments from 1,369 Fortune 1000 companies (including new and recently removed Fortune 1000 companies) from May 13, 2021, to October 10, 2022. Our most recent analysis finds that companies pledged about $340 billion to driving racial equity between May 2020 and October 2022, $141 billion of which has come in the last year, between May 2021 and October 2022.

Based on this most recent analysis, there are three considerations for private business and public institutions looking to contribute to racial equity in the United States:

  • Specificity and transparency. There is an opportunity to provide more details, ideally on a regular basis, about the breakdown of financial commitments and the timeline of a business’s commitments. In doing so, a business can measure the success of their efforts, encourage similar behavior from industry competitors, and ultimately, help combat racial injustice in a meaningful, sustainable way.
  • Involvement of the entire economy. Retail, hospitality, healthcare, and food service, among other industries, could consider increasing their commitments to fighting racial injustice in light of both the makeup of their workforce and their share of the US economy. Doing so may be particularly difficult—yet have an even greater impact—as businesses consider resiliency measures during uncertain economic times.
  • Importance of internal commitments. In addition to making external commitments to racial equity, businesses can also create more equitable workplaces for their employees, particularly for entry-level and frontline workers. At a time when many businesses may be scrutinizing labor costs, they can enrich the lives of their current employees by reexamining internal processes and implementing inclusion and antibias training programs, for example. These investments can lower costly attrition rates.

A business can measure the success of their efforts and help combat racial injustice in a meaningful, sustainable way.

While the global economy is challenging the resilience of businesses across industries, there are also opportunities to create lasting impact in achieving racial equity, one commitment at a time.

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