“It creates long lasting sustainability,” Williams says. “And what I mean by that is, it leveraged those dollars to build on what we were already doing, and it helps us create more capacity. We have exponentially grown in a lot of different areas that we would not have been able to get into without those resources.” That growth, Williams explains, has been both wide and deep, stretching TMCF's reach from high school campuses in Alabama and Texas all the way to community colleges in the Virgin Islands, and from early talent identification programs to a data research enterprise that aims to make TMCF the definitive voice on HBCU outcomes. One of the clearest indicators of TMCF's expansion under Scott's support is the growth of its membership. The organization, which represents the nation's public HBCUs and Historically Black Community Colleges (HBCCs), has grown from 47 to 57 member institutions, a 21 percent increase that Williams attributes directly to the organization's new capacity for
programming and engagement. “We’ve done more activations than we’ve ever done,” Williams says, referring to what TMCF calls “place- based training activities,” intensive workforce development programs delivered directly on member campuses. Most recently, Williams traveled to San Antonio, Texas, where TMCF completed a placement activity at St. Philip's College, an HBCC that serves more than 20,000 students and stands as the largest historically Black community college in the United States. Perhaps the most visible expression of TMCF's expanded reach is the SOAR program, Seeking Opportunities and Achieving Results, a precollege initiative designed specifically for high school juniors. “We catch them in the summer,” Williams explains. “We track them from the junior year to the senior year, helping them with the applications, helping them with scholarships, and hoping that they feed into our schools. We wouldn’t have been able to do
those programs if we didn’t have a gift like MacKenzie Scott’s.” Beyond SOAR, Scott's support has also enabled TMCF to launch DevCom, early talent identification convening events that bring together 500 to 600 HBCU freshmen and sophomores, fully
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