The Local Initiatives Support Corporation (LISC) has announced commitments totaling more than $400 million toward its goal of raising $1 billion in support of efforts to address racial disparities across the United States.

Launched last November, Project 10X — named for the estimated tenfold difference in average wealth between Black and white Americans — is aimed at narrowing racial disparities in health, wealth, and opportunity. Seeded with $20 million from LISC, the initiative has secured early investments from Centerview Partners, Foot Locker, JPMorgan Chase & Co., the Macquarie Group, Kaiser Permanente, Prologis, Walmart, and the Anthem, James Irvine, Kroger Co., MetLife, Minneapolis, and Owens Corning foundations.

With the goal of expanding economic opportunity in communities of color, the initiative will make investments ranging from capital infusions for minority-owned banks and businesses, to grants in support of health and education programs, to grants and technical assistance focused on expanding homeownership and family wealth-building opportunities. Among other things, the initiative is working with partners in Minneapolis and St. Paul to create the Community Asset Transition Fund, a $30 million effort to help BIPOC communities rebuild from the civil unrest and COVID-related losses of the past year. Elsewhere, a three-year, $2.45 million grant from the Anthem Foundation to LISC Indianapolis will enable the latter to support a plan to link urban farms, farmers markets, and community kitchens to schools, homes, and wrap-around services.

"We are working with public, private, and nonprofit partners to make investments that take on entrenched inequality — whether that means making sure BIPOC-led developers have better access to capital or helping Black and Brown families get fair home appraisals so they can build intergenerational wealth and invest in their communities," said LISC president and CEO Lisa L. Glover. "In that way, Project 10X is additive to work we have been doing for decades."