“As the landscape of higher education continues to evolve, one lesson has become undeniable: capacity is the strategy,” said Dr. Michael L. Lomax, UNCF president and CEO and visionary behind ICB. “We are no longer focused on institutional survival; our focus is institutional strength. Institutions must be built to adapt, to innovate, to grow and to thrive. That is the work ICB has advanced for the past 20 years, and it is more important now than ever.”

Over the past two decades, institutions have navigated a series of disruptions—from the 2008 financial crisis to the COVID-19 pandemic—alongside shifting federal policy, changing demographics, and rapid technological advancement. Throughout, ICB has worked alongside institutions not only to navigate change but to build the internal strength required to lead through it.

“At the time of ICB’s founding, capacity building was not part of the higher education lexicon,” said the Institute’s founding director Dr. Elfred Anthony Pinkard, who was named UNCF President-in-Residence and Chair of the 20th Anniversary Campaign. “We understood that without strong institutions – financially, operationally and strategically – student access and institutional sustainability would always be limited. The Institute’s initial chapters built the foundation for 20 years of impact.”

A series of catalytic investments has accelerated ICB’s growth and positioned it at the center of some of the nation’s most ambitious higher education transformation efforts. A landmark $50 million investment from the Lilly Endowment in 2016 expanded the Institute’s capacity-building model at a critical moment for the field. Since then, ICB has played a leading role in major national initiatives including participation in the Gates Foundation’s Intermediaries for Scale initiative—an unprecedented effort to transform hundreds of institutions nationwide.

Over two decades, UNCF’s Institute for Capacity Building has:

• Engaged a national network representing more than 80% of all HBCUs, strengthening institutional performance and long-term sustainability at scale
• Designed and deployed dozens of high-impact initiatives, including flagship efforts such as the HBCU Institutional Advancement Program, the Career Pathways Initiative and HBCU Transformation Project — advancing strategies across finance, governance, student success, digital transformation, and leadership development
• Mobilized and stewarded nearly a quarter billion dollars in philanthropic investment from more than 20 leading funders and partners to build institutional capacity at scale
• Convened thousands of institutional leaders and practitioners through national platforms such as UNITE, accelerating shared learning, alignment, and collective action
• Helped catalyze a fundamental shift in philanthropy, moving the field beyond access-focused giving toward sustained investment in institutional capacity and long-term performance

ICB’s capacity-building work has reshaped nearly every dimension of the institutional enterprise—advancing progress across finance, governance, advancement, endowment growth, facilities, data and analytics, teaching and learning, digital innovation, student success, work-integrated learning, wealth building and learner voice.

These efforts have contributed to a meaningful shift across the sector. HBCUs are more strategic, more data-informed, and more focused on long-term sustainability than they were two decades ago. A new generation of leadership and historic philanthropic investments have further accelerated this progress.

Yet the stakes are rising. Institutions now face tightening federal resources, increasing financial pressure, and technological disruption that is fundamentally reshaping how higher education operates.

“In many ways, the conditions that defined under-resourced institutions for decades – doing more with less, operating under constraint and innovating out of necessity – are now being felt across higher education,” said Dr. Roslyn Clark Artis, president, UNCF-member Institution Benedict College and chair of the UNCF Board of Member Presidents. “The question is no longer whether capacity matters. The question is whether institutions are prepared to build it fast enough.”

Join Us at UNITE 2026

UNCF invites leaders, practitioners, partners and supporters from across higher education to join us at UNITE 2026, where we will release a landmark report capturing lessons learned from two decades of institutional capacity building—and collaborate with partners, advocates and champions to chart the path forward to transform the nation’s HBCUs.

The UNITE Summit agenda is now live and features dozens of opportunities to connect with catalytic leaders that lead and support change efforts with historically Black colleges and universities.

Additional sessions and details on the plenary stages will be released in the coming weeks.

“In this milestone moment, UNCF and its collaborators will celebrate progress made while investigating what it will take to grow HBCUs in a rapidly changing and increasingly uncertain environment,” said Ed Smith-Lewis, UNCF senior vice president and lead of the Institute for Capacity Building. “We have an opportunity to define a new era of impact for HBCUs that could have ripple effects for generations to come.”

The Institute for Capacity Building’s 20th anniversary campaign will launch formally at the UNITE 2026 Summit.

###

About UNCF

UNCF is one of the nation’s largest and most effective supporters of higher education and serves as a leading advocate for college-bound students. Since its founding in 1944, UNCF has raised more than $6 billion to support students’ access to higher education, provide scholarships and strengthen historically Black colleges and universities (HBCUs). Each year, UNCF awards more than 13,000 scholarships to more than 10,000 students totaling more than $64 million. The scholarships support students attending more than 600 US-based colleges and universities including 37 UNCF-member HBCUs. Through its efforts, UNCF has helped generations of students to get to and through college. We believe a college education plays a vital role in strengthening the pipeline of leaders and professionals who advance our society. Our logo features the UNCF torch of leadership in education and our widely recognized trademark is, ‟A mind is a terrible thing to waste.”® Learn more at UNCF.org or for continuous updates and news, follow UNCF on Instagram.