(Black PR Wire) Atlanta, GA,—This week, The Home Depot® held the winners’ ceremony to announce the 2017 Retool Your School Campus Improvement Grant Program recipients. This year, nine HBCUs were awarded a total of $360,000 to use towards funding sustainable campus improvement projects of their choosing. To date, the program has awarded more than $1.8 million dollars in grant money to HBCUs. In 2017 alone, 72 HBCUs participated in the voting phase of the program.

The nine winning schools were selected by a combination of cumulative online voting scores, along with grant proposals that were submitted by the schools and judged by a panel of distinguished judges which included: actor Laz Alonso, Howard University alumni and television & film star; Commissioner Gregory Moore, Esq., Southern Intercollegiate Athletic Conference (SIAC); Mr. Michael Tabb, managing partner, Red Rock Global; Dr. Ivory A. Toldson, president and CEO of the Quality Education for Minorities Network; and Mr. Jermaine Luke, store manager, The Home Depot. The ceremony also welcomed author and NAACP award winning actor Hill Harper and special guest Atlanta Mayor Kasim Reed to the Home Depot Headquarters in Atlanta, Georgia.

“The Home Depot is very excited about the continued growth we’ve seen year to year with The Retool Your School Grant Program,” says Melissa Brown, senior marketing manager at The Home Depot. “We always anticipate the overwhelming excitement of the program from the participating schools, but we are most excited about the long-lasting contribution that this program is making to our nation’s treasured Historically Black Colleges and Universities.”

Established in 2010, The Retool Your School Campus Improvement Grant Program strives to give back to our nation’s HBCUs what they have so generously given to the communities that they are a part of. A strong foundation, renewed purpose and distinctive character are just a few of those contributions. The nine winning schools will begin their sustainable projects in the summer of 2017.

The 2017 Home Depot RETOOL YOUR SCHOOL Winners

AWARD CLUSTER 1 CLUSTER 2 CLUSTER 3

$50,000 Alabama State University Kentucky State University Wilberforce University

$40,000 Howard University Tuskegee University Talladega College

$30,000 Winston-Salem University Central State University LeMoyne-Owen College

Within each cluster, there are three winners vying for one $50,000, one $40,000 and one $30,000 grant. Clusters were based on school population size:

Cluster 1: Student enrollment of 4,000 or more

Cluster 2: Student enrollment of 3,999–1,201

Cluster 3 Student enrollment with 1,200 students or less

The Home Depot is the world’s largest home improvement specialty retailer, with 2,281 retail stores in all 50 states, the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, U.S. Virgin Islands, Guam, 10 Canadian provinces and Mexico. In fiscal 2016, The Home Depot had sales of $94.6 billion and earnings of $8.0 billion. The Company employs more than 400,000 associates. The Home Depot's stock is traded on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE: HD) and is included in the Dow Jones industrial average and Standard & Poor's 500 index.

For more information on The Home Depot Retool Your School Grant Program, visit www.retoolyourschool.com.