Grants

Urban Teachers

With Abell Foundation start-up funding, Urban Teachers launched a new model of teacher preparation in 2009, recruiting outstanding college graduates, training them in a year-long clinical preparation, providing classroom support over four years, and linking their certification to demonstration of effective teaching practices and student learning gains. In summer 2020, Urban Teachers will begin training another 100 new incoming Resident Teachers who co-teach with mentor teachers for the first year of a four-year commitment. This grant will enable Urban Teachers to embark upon a strategic planning process to reaccess and design a new business and financial model that will garner more earned reveue and reduce costs without impacting program quality. This model will further reduce reliance on philanthropy to 20% of the total budget, and reduce the financial burdens on teacher candidates.

In summer 2020, Urban Teachers will begin training another 100 new incoming Resident Teachers who co-teach with mentor teachers for the first year of a four-year commitment.

Second Chance for Women, Fiscally Sponsored by Fusion Partnerships, Inc.

Second Chance for Women (SCW) operates in the Maryland Correctional Institution for Women (MCIW) and was founded in 2009 by Mary Joel Davis.  Currently, Second Chance helps women prepare for their parole hearings on a one to one basis. This one on one support and mentoring is obviously ideal, but it does not scale.  Funding from the Abell Foundation will support SCW to create an accessible and user friendly parole handbook to expand their outreach in the prison system through distribution of the handbook  in the prison libraries and in workshops conducted by Second chance and other reentry providers in the facilities.  

Open Works

Open Works is an engine for grassroots economic development especially in the manufacturing sector and will actively support memberships, studio rentals, and revenue from classes and other programming once conditions are safe enough to resume those revenue generating activities. While Open Works has moved forward with a ramp up of PPE production, and will receive payment via local hospitals for those items, a number of ongoing expenses that were typically funded with membership fees or other revenue are not currently supported with that revenue. This grant provided general operating support for the organization.

Moveable Feast, Inc.

Founded in 1989 as a volunteer-led organization providing home-cooked meals to people with HIV and AIDS, Moveable Feast is now the leading provider of home-delivered, medically tailored meals for people with chronic health conditions in the Baltimore region.  The organization delivers approximately 550,000 meals annually to individuals who are medically compromised and have diseases that are impacted by nutrition.  Moveable Feast is an active participant in the national Food Is Medicine coalition, an association of nonprofit food and nutrition service providers that collaborate to advance public policy, promote research, and share best practices on the provision of medically tailored meals and nutrition education.  This grant provides general support for Moveable Feast’s operations.    

Morgan State University Foundation

Funding from the Abell Foundation will support Morgan State University’s evaluation of the pilot aerial surveillance program implemented by the Baltimore Police Department. The purpose of this program evaluation is to provide an objective, evidence-based evaluation analysis as to the effectiveness of aerial surveillance in support of crime and violence reduction in Baltimore City.