Vote Now Until March 26th

The Home Depot Retool Your School Program encourages and recognizes innovative projects that contribute to the campuses of accredited Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs).

Since its inception, the program has awarded grants to HBCUs for campus renovations, repairs, and enhancements, and has awarded 184 campus improvement grants totaling over $5.2 million. This year, the program has quadrupled its investment into HBCUs by introducing new needs-based grants and student-focused opportunities.

The program launched the official entry application last month, and by entering, the accredited HBCUs are included in the HBCU Online Voting Challenge. 

In the HBCU Online Voting Challenge, the schools will compete for the most votes via the Retool Your School official website, social media, and designated Home Depot events. 

The top ten schools per Cluster with the most votes will win a Campus Improvement Grant and move forward in the program to submit a proposal for a campus improvement project.

Under the Cluster System, each accredited HBCU is assigned to one of three groups based on school size/enrollment data. This is to better equalize each school’s opportunity to submit a proposal. Respondents will be divided into the following three Clusters :

  • Cluster 1, which includes those Respondents with a student enrollment of 4,000 or more;
  • Cluster 2, which includes those Respondents with a student enrollment between 1,201 and 3,999;
  • and Cluster 3, which includes those Respondents with a student enrollment of 1,200 or less.

Online voting began on Monday, February  27, 2023, at 12:00 a.m. EST and will end Sunday, March 26, 2023, at 11:59 p.m. EST.

During the voting period, people can vote for participating schools via the official website, social media (Instagram and Twitter), or manual in-person voting during Home Depot-sponsored events. 

Total votes will reflect all votes from the beginning of the voting period and website voting will be unlimited during the voting period. 

Social media votes are defined as votes that use the school’s designated hashtag on Twitter, and/or Instagram on an original post, and the user’s account must be public in order for the vote to be counted. 

Twitter original tweets and retweets count as votes and Instagram votes are counted if it is an original in-feed post and an original story post. Only the first mention of a hashtag in a post or story will count as one vote. Multiple mentions of a hashtag in a single post or story will only count as one vote.

For more information regarding The Home Depot’s Retool Your School voting rules, click here