Mission

MDC's mission is to equip Southern leaders, institutions, and communities with tools and strategies to advance equity--particularly racial and gender equity--and economic mobility. Our vision is to shape a South where all people thrive.

For over 50 years, MDC has helped Southern communities, institutions, and leaders collaborate to build more equitable systems to achieve better outcomes--especially in North Carolina. MDC and its partners use proven tools and strategies to design, build, demonstrate, scale, and sustain what works to boost everyone--particularly those who have been left behind--to higher rungs on the economic ladder.

What We Do

We research, collect, and analyze data across the South to create a compelling narrative telling the story of where the region is at any given moment. We interrogate how systems impact people and how they can be shifted or recreated to achieve better outcomes. We bring compassion, experience, and a spirit of innovation to our work--supporting and pushing community leaders as they take on longstanding inequities in areas such as education, employment, and health. We cultivate leadership that is collaborative, focused on human dignity, and works to improve the lives of everyone, not just a single class or group. We strengthen anchor nonprofit institutions and those who lead them in communities of color.