Anniversaries have always been a time to take stock -- to give thanks for the accomplishments, to look ahead to the future, to set attainable goals and search for betterment.

Indeed, each anniversary is a time to make the move from good to great.

This week, as I celebrate my third anniversary as president and CEO of the National Urban League, I’ve been doing just that: reflecting as well as looking ahead. And to be candid, the Urban League Movement has done a lot of good for a lot of people.

We’ve taken pride in empowering communities and changing lives.

Economic empowerment -- the civil rights issue in this 21st century -- has been our main focus over the past three years. In the future, focusing our work to increase job training and placement, homeownership and business development, we will help to close the economic gaps that still exist in communities of color nationwide.

Since 2004, our Urban Entrepreneurship Program has enabled more small to medium-sized businesses to grow and to create more jobs. The Stonehenge Capital/National Urban League Empowerment Fund was created to make debt and equity investments available to small businesses located in low-income communities through $127.5 million in the New Markets Tax Credits.
In 2004, through our partnership with the Department of Labor we created the Urban Youth Empowerment Program which has provided over 1,000 at-risk and/or adjudicated men and women, 18-21 years old, with intensive educational assistance, on-the job skills, and full-time employment in fifteen cities. They have increased their earnings, recidivism rates are down and 25% of participants earned high school credentials. A new grant will extend the program to 12 cities, helping 3,000 more people.

With 975,000 African American men incarcerated in America’s prisons, stripping communities of their financial and social means, a Black Male Commission was established to find a national, coordinated effort to redress the incarnation and employment issues affecting Black men. Moving forward, we will focus our work in advocating for policies and programs that create an effective prisoner re-entry strategy, fatherhood support through job development and academic achievement and improving early childhood education.

We introduced the Equality Index to our annual signature publication, The State of Black America, the most used and respected research guide chronicling the status and issues facing African Americans and urban communities. The Equality Index provides the empirical evidence of the disparities between blacks and whites in education, economics, health, social justice and civic engagement.

The Urban League Census, unveiled last year, highlighted collective fiscal operations, employment, programs and tax contributions of the Urban League affiliates to their communities is $769 million dollars each year.

We introduced the Katrina Bill of Rights that became the clarion call for civil rights organizations to ensure those displaced by the hurricane were afforded every opportunity to vote, work, recover, return, and reclaim their land as rebuilding takes place. Urban League affiliates were on the front lines as well, providing jobs and housing to over 25,000 hurricane survivors. We were also at the forefront to renew the Voting Rights Act.

And finally, the League’s civil rights agenda has reached out to a new generation of socially conscious men and women under 40 years old through the creation of Urban Influence magazine and the Influencer Summit.

Those are a few of the initiatives that have defined my first three years 3 years as president. And with over 2.1 million people being touched by the work of the Urban League Movement each year, it’s safe to say we’re doing good work.

There’s a wonderful book written by Jim Collins entitled, Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap … and Some Don’t. In great detail, Collins explains how an already thriving company can gradually reach even higher levels of success.

During my tenure, we have worked closely with many organizations who have recently experienced a transition in leadership, ushering in a new generation with civil rights voices --Bruce Gordon, NAACP, Janet Murguia, La Raza, and Michael Lomax, UNCF. We all have a have a responsibility to take that leap written about so eloquently by Collins. To go from good to great -- one anniversary at a time.

To Be Equal, www.nul.org, 120 Wall Street, 8th Floor, New York, 10005