Hope Enterprise Corporation

Hope Enterprise Corporation is associated with the Economic Analysis and Research Network (EARN). a left-of-center coalition of state-level policy organizations organized by the labor-union-aligned Economic Policy Institute. ² Much of the early funding for the Hope Enterprise Corporation came from the Ford Foundation and the Heron Foundation, two left-of-center grantmaking institutions. The Ford Foundation provided a $3 million investment in 1999, while the Heron Foundation gave a grant of $250,000 in 2001. ¹

In December 2024, the Hope Enterprise Corporation received a $35 million donation from MacKenzie Scott, the ex-wife of Amazon founder and CEO Jeff Bezos. ³

History

Formerly known as the Enterprise Corporation of the Delta, Hope Enterprise Corporation began in 1994. ⁴ Hope Enterprise Corporation is the sister group of the Hope Credit Union which sponsors the left-of-center Hope Policy Institute. ⁴

Hope Enterprise Corporation is associated with a number of left-leaning economic and political groups, including the Economic Analysis and Research Network (EARN) and the State Priorities Partnership. ¹  EARN is a coalition of left-of-center, state-level policy organizations which support the Economic Policy Institute, a labor-union-aligned and funded research institution. ² The State Priorities Partnership is a left-of-center network of more than 40 policy and research organizations. ⁵

Activities

Hope Enterprise Corporation supports left-of-center financial and development policy implementation in the American Deep South. In pursuit of these ends, the Hope Corporation has testified in front of the congressional Joint Economic Committee and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and has met with federal banking regulators within the past decade to discuss its mission. ⁶

Hope Enterprise Corporation has advocated for the expansion of government welfare programs, including temporary asset relief programs and Medicaid expansion. ⁷ Hope Enterprise Corporation has also demonstrated hostility to right-of-center economic measures, fighting to prevent the passage of a bill that would have offered $1.6 billion in tax cuts and relief. ⁷

In 2016, the Hope Enterprise Corporation co-formed the Expanding Black Business Credit Initiative with six similar credit unions and community development financial institutions. In September 2021, they formed the Black Vision Fund to expand the funding available to the member groups. The fund claimed that its goal was to increase the amount of funding to member institutions in order to make more loans to black-owned businesses to reduce what they claimed was a “racial wealth gap.”  ⁸

In April 2020, the Regions Foundation, which is the corporate grantmaking foundation of Regions Bank, awarded a $100,000 grant to the Hope Enterprise Corporation to assist small businesses in recovering from the COVID-19 pandemic and the associated lockdowns. ⁹

In October 2020, Hope Enterprise Corporation announced a new project intended to develop a new neighborhood in Brookhaven, Mississippi using Opportunity Zone Fund equity and Low Income Housing Tax Credits. ¹⁰

In February 2021, Hope Enterprise Corporation announced a plan across five southern states to help communities and businesses affected by the COVID-19 pandemic with a focus on black-owned businesses. Goldman Sachs helped finance the plan with up to $130 million. The plan included historically black universities and colleges who would help provide technical assistance to the businesses. ¹¹

In August 2021, Charter Communications announced a $3 million grant to Hope Enterprise Corporation to provide loans to small businesses in what they alleged were economically impacted parts of Kentucky, Tennessee and Alabama. A condition of the grant was that $1 million would be earmarked to communities in Charter’s service area in Kentucky. ¹²

In April 2022, Hope Enterprise Corporation worked with the W.K. Kellogg Foundation and the Delta Regional Authority to bring an online-based grocery delivery service to the small town of Drew, Mississippi, which did not have a grocery store. HOPE gave the venture $400,000. ¹³

In May 2022, Hope Enterprise Corporation used New Markets Tax Credits to help finance the expansion of Tippah County Hospital, which provided the hospital with a new emergency room, 25 new hospital beds, and expanded surgery and outpatient clinic facilities. ¹⁴

In June 2022, HOPE’s then-program officer Cassandra Williams wrote an op-ed in The Hill advocating for the Biden administration to increase federal resources for rural communities. Williams also criticized the Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) enacted during the COVID-19 pandemic relief, claiming it had not met the needs of businesses owned by people of color. ¹⁵

In 2022, Hope Enterprise Corporation entered into an agreement with Hinds County, Mississippi to spend $3 million allocated to the county under the American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) to aid small business recovery within the county. The Hope Credit Union received $1.5 million to provide collateral for small businesses seeking loans through the credit union. The other $1.5 million went for providing technical assistance for those businesses and to cover HOPE’s marketing and administrative services. Hope never spent the money allocated to cover the marketing costs. HOPE returned the unspent $1.5 million to Hinds County in July 2024. ¹⁶ In March 2023, Hinds County District 2 Supervisor David Archie criticized HOPE for not putting the entirety of the $7.5 million it promised in private leverage for those loans. Instead, HOPE only put up $4 million and blamed the county for delays in receiving money. ¹⁷

In 2023, Hope Enterprise Corporation joined a coalition to advocate against the passage of Kansas State Senate Bill SB71, which would have ended community programs including affirmative action. Members of HOPE had publicly testified against the bill, which preceded the Arkansas legislature voting on and rejecting the bill. ¹⁸

In 2023, HOPE developed a program to respond to the over 5,000 Mississippi and Alabama residents facing eviction due to the sunsetting of the Low Income Housing Tax Credit program. HOPE created a program with the goal of transitioning the renters to home ownership by developing a mortgage program using 100% financing, down payment assistance, and loan loss reserves. Housing advocacy group Enterprise Community Partners selected HOPE as one of six groups to participate in its Housing Affordability Breakthrough Challenge. ¹⁸

In April 2024, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) announced that Hope Enterprise Corporation would be receiving over $93 million through its Solar for All grant competition to install residential weather-dependent energy in the state of Mississippi The EPA awarded the grant through the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) spending bill’s $27 billion Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund. ¹⁹ According to Hope Enterprise Corporation’s website, the group plans to offer the program in Arkansas as well, but the EPA had not funded it as of early January 2025. ²⁰

In September 2024, Hope Enterprise Corporation participated in a joint venture with Goldman Sachs to spend $20 million to assist businesses in the rural South. HOPE claimed to have made a $3 million initial commitment to community development financial institutions within the state of Alabama. ²¹

Leadership

Bill Bynum is the founder, president, and CEO of the Hope Enterprise Corporation. He is also a founder of the Self-Help Credit Union in North Carolina. As of 2024, Bynum sat on the boards of the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta New Orleans branch, Aspen Institute, NAACP Legal and Education Defense Fund, Black Vision Fund, Deep South Today, and Acumen America and was an advisor to Bank of America, Goldman Sachs, Wells Fargo, and E Pluribus Unum. Bynum previously chaired the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau Consumer Advisory Board and Treasury Department Community Development Advisory Board. He served as a member of the Biden-Harris Presidential Transition Team, the U.S. Partnership on Mobility from Poverty, the U.S. Treasury Department’s Advisory Committee on Racial Equity, and as a Towsley Policymaker in Residence at the University of Michigan Gerald Ford School of Public Policy. ²²  Bynum made at least $582,826 in 2023. ²³

Corey Wiggins, who served as the federal co-chair of the Delta Regional Authority under President Joe Biden, previously was senior vice president of the Hope Enterprise Corporation. ²⁴

Financials and Funding

According to Hope Enterprise Corporation’s 2023 tax return, the group had $18,999,928 in revenue, $25,123,190 in expenses, and $122,583,166 in total assets. Among its revenue sources were $4,322,212 in program service revenue and $4,531,556 in government grants. ²³

In 2019, the Gates Foundation awarded $390,245 to the group. ²⁵

In 2020, the Ford Foundation awarded a $4,000,000 grant to the group. ²⁶

In 2021, the Rockefeller Foundation awarded a $750,000 grant to the group. ²⁷

In 2023, the David and Lucile Packard Foundation awarded a $1,500,000 grant to the group. ²⁸

In December 2024, MacKenzie Scott, the ex-wife of Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, donated $35 million to the group. ³

In May 2024, the Hope Enterprises Corporation received two grants from the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), of $93.7 million and $62.5 million, to be paid over a five-year period and for the purpose of developing and providing solar energy projects for “low-income and disadvantaged communities (LIDAC).” ^{29 30 31}