Banner Neighborhoods Community Corporation
$35,000 / 2020 / Community Development
Banner Neighborhoods provides low-income senior and disabled homeowners with home repairs and handicap modifications. Relieving homeowners of the cost and difficulty of completing home repairs and maintenance enables them to age in place and retain their community ties and social networks. The exterior house improvements, and in some cases tree and vine removal in yards, are critical to keeping senior’s home compliant with code, avoiding environmental citations and municipal fines that unpaid can lead to tax sale and loss of a home.
Baltimore Outreach Services, Inc.
$25,000 / 2020 / Health and Human Services
Baltimore Outreach Services (BOS) operates a 40 bed shelter for women and children in South Baltimore, one of only three family shelters in Baltimore City. To support and stabilize families staying at the shelter, BOS offers case management, job training and employment support services, educational programming, health and mental health services, and transitional housing. In Fiscal Year 2020, BOS served 98 women and 145 children. This grant provides general operating support for BOS.
Baltimore Kids Chess League, Inc.
$40,000 / 2020 / Education
Sponsored by the Abell Foundation and Baltimore City Public Schools since 2004, Baltimore Kids Chess League (BKCL) offers an academic extracurricular program that serves more than 150 children from kindergarten to 12th grade in 21 schools. Due to Covid, BKCL has migrated to a new virtual format, using the innovative “Think Like A King” chess software to move students through chess strategy sessions, assigning a chess rating based on each student’s level of play, and effectively matching opponents with an equivalent level of chess skill. Teams practice weekly under the auspices of trained chess coaches and compete in novice, local, state, and national chess tournaments sponsored by the United States Chess Federation.
Baltimore Development Corporation
$100,000 / 2020 / Community Development
For Baltimore to both attract Opportunity Zone and other investments and ensure such investments benefit community residents and businesses, the Opportunity Zone and Impact Investment Coordinator provides a valuable resource and competitive advantage to connect investors with projects and to connect projects to critical financing. Baltimore has been nationally recognized as one of the first cities to have a designated point person for the Opportunity Zone program. The grant covers the third year of the Coordinator’s salary.
Baltimore City Department of Planning, Fiscally Sponsored by Civic Works, Inc.
$89,600 / 2020 / Community Development
The Baltimore Food Policy Initiative within the Baltimore City Department of Planning will provide mini-grants to grassroots community organizations who are working hard and quickly to fill gaps in Baltimore’s larger emergency food-distribution system as the COVID-19 crisis continues. Funds will be used for food, protective equipment for volunteers and nonprofit employees, transportation and fuel costs to supply food to those who are homebound, elderly, immuno-compromised, and living in poverty, most of whom are unable to access distribution centers, have lost their local pantry program due to COVID closure, or may have a gap without food while, for example, waiting for their Meals on Wheels registration to be processed or for SNAP benefits to be approved.
