Energy Justice Network
$25,000 / 2020 / Environment
Energy Justice Network (EJN) supports grassroots communities threatened by polluting energy and waste technologies through grassroots strategy and organizing support, research, and innovative mapping. EJN believes there is an opportunity in Baltimore to make productive use of recycled glass through the development of a social enterprise model that will generate revenue and create jobs for its Glass Recovery and Sustainable Systems (GRASS) initiative. GRASS intends to recover used bottles from restaurants and residences and resell them to local breweries, or reform the glass into new pieces – products like cups, plates, vases, and more for sale. This grant provided support for staff costs associated with social enterprise model development.
An End to Ignorance, Inc.
$50,000 / 2020 / Health and Human Services
In March 2020, An End to Ignorance launched a food rescue and distribution effort in Baltimore in response to rising levels of food insecurity at the start of the Coronavirus pandemic. Started as a small, neighborhood-based food relief effort in Greenmount West, the program has grown rapidly and now distributes 500-600 twenty-pound boxes of food and household goods through a network of community-based partners throughout the city. This grant provides general operating support for An End to Ignorance.
D.C. Witness
$250,000 / 2020 / Criminal Justice and Addiction
Baltimore Witness will bring the D.C. Witness model of criminal justice transparency to Maryland’s largest city. Rather than merely an arm of D.C. Witness, Baltimore Witness will be a Baltimore project with a standalone website that is driven, directed and managed by a Baltimore staff. By following violent crime cases, starting with homicide and non-fatal shootings and expanding to pretrial decisions, Baltimore Witness will provide unfiltered data to assist in devising better crime reduction policies for the City.
The Compound
$200,000 / 2020 / Community Development
Located in Baltimore’s Midway neighborhood, the Compound is a 20,000 square foot multi-purpose cultural space on one acre of land that provides affordable housing to 10 working artists, affordable work/studio space to 24 artists and artisans, as well as two worker-owned cooperatives and two nonprofits, the Alternative Press Center and the Black Workers Center. Residents and tenants are part of the Baltimore DIY art and music scene and the Compound is known as a venue for innovative music and cultural events. The Compound will renovate four adjacent rowhouses to expand and create 16 new affordable live/work spaces.
Community Wealth Builders, Fiscally Sponsored by Maryland Philanthropy Network
$40,000 / 2020 / Community Development
Community Wealth Builders (CWB) focuses on promoting and catalyzing community wealth building models and strategies in Baltimore City neighborhoods that have experienced historical disinvestment. The Maryland Neighborhood Exchange helps Baltimore neighborhoods to grow local, minority owned businesses and community wealth through investment crowdfunding via a virtual platform through which local investors and businesses can learn about crowdfunding and connect. It helps these businesses mobilize their customers, fans, and other interested residents to step forward and invest. This grant provided support for staffing efforts to support the expansion of the Exchange to target and support businesses in a second community in Baltimore City.
