$450,000 from The PNC Foundation will establish ‘E3 powered by PNC’
This post was originally published on St. Louis American
By Karen Robinson-Jacobs
Harris-Stowe State University will have new tools to boost its entrepreneurial offerings to African American students and community members in the St. Louis area thanks to a nearly half-million-dollar grant from the Pittsburgh-based PNC Foundation.
The PNC Foundation, which receives its principal funding from The PNC Financial Services Group, announced Tuesday it has awarded HSSU a three-year, $450,000 grant to establish E3 powered by PNC, an initiative that will provide up to $150,000 a year to help the university share entrepreneurship and economic empowerment resources with Black students and business founders in the St. Louis region.
The PNC grant is the largest the university has ever received to support its Minority Entrepreneurship Collaborative Center for Advancement (MECCA), which launched in the fall of 2020 and is part of the Anheuser-Busch School of Business at HSSU. Programs launched with the new grant funding will fall under the MECCA umbrella.
The PNC grant also marks the financial services giant’s first investment in the region’s only HBCU.