Posted on November 20, 2007

Local Foundations Help to Revitalize Baltimore

In recent years, foundations in Baltimore have played an increasingly important role as leaders in local community development and revitalization efforts, the Baltimore Sun reports.

Not only do Baltimore-based foundations fund programs, they also are a presence in many of the city's governmental and educational bureaucracies. And they are leading the way in revitalizing the city's business and economic life, providing seed money, suggesting policy changes, and investing in companies. "Foundations have become much more significant in the local community over the last twenty years," said Robert Embry, president of the Abell Foundation. "In many ways they have had to make up for the loss of corporate giving because of the lost of corporate headquarters in Baltimore."

The city is home to grantmakers both large and small. In some cases, as with the Open Society Institute-Baltimore and the Annie E. Casey Foundation, both of which were attracted to the city by the nature of its problems and the potential for developing solutions that can be replicated more widely, they got their start elsewhere. But the city is also fortunate to have many homegrown foundations, including the Abell, Harry and Jeanette Weinberg, and France-Merrick foundations, as well as the Baltimore Community Foundation.

In an effort to maximize their effectiveness, area foundations are funding a variety of approaches to the city's many problems, some of which are unusual. The Abell Foundation, for example, invests in businesses with the goal of growing its endowment while contributing to the city's economy. Other foundations are getting involved in policy issues and working to encourage city and state government to do more to address the needs of the poor and disadvantaged. And the Baltimore Community Foundation is working with others to establish the Central Maryland Transportation Alliance in aneffort to provide better public transportation in the area.

Local foundation officials point to rising property values, stable population demographics, and fundamental changes in the school system as evidence that their efforts are paying off. But they also recognize that there is much left to do. "We are always looking at programs in education, in drug intervention, in job training, in health," said Abell Foundation president Robert Embry. "Each one of them is good and cost effective. It is a value judgment as to whether to do one or the other. The need is infinite."