B'more Invested

COMMUNITY-CENTERED CAPITAL

A Transformational Grantmaking Strategy for Advancing Community-Based Solutions, Collaboration, and Racial Justice

Our mission

B’more Invested is an exciting new initiative and demonstration pilot anchored by OSI-Baltimore and Baltimore’s Promise. This initiative:

Centers the core values of racial equity, justice, community transformation, and collaboration.
Administers $2.3 million in pooled, private capital to advance the grantmaking, capacity building, facilitation, and administration of the initiative.
Brings together a Grant Advisory Team of 23 Community Stakeholders and 11 Funders to distribute $1.5 million in grants to ten leaders of color who are working at the grassroots level to advance community-based alternative approaches that promote healthy, safe, and thriving neighborhoods.
Administers nearly $500,000 to support community participation in the decision-making process and grantee capacity building.
Will provide resources for evaluation and continued stakeholder education efforts.

Our principles

B’more Invested was forged to address disparities in how philanthropy has traditionally operated. Nationally, 8 percent of philanthropic investment goes to people of color, with less than 2 percent of grant dollars from large foundations going to Black-led organizations.

In Baltimore, communities of color have also experienced systemic disinvestment from both public and private sources for centuries. An Urban Institute analysis shows that Baltimore City neighborhoods that are less than 50 percent African American receive nearly four times the investment of neighborhoods that are over 85 percent African American, and low-poverty neighborhoods are receiving one and a half times the investment of high-poverty neighborhoods.

Given the racialized impact of present and historical investment practices, B’more Invested is focused on committing resources in Black communities and other communities of color, including immigrant and refugee communities, that have suffered from longstanding patterns of chronic disinvestment and underinvestment, and economic, social and political exclusion.

B’more Invested will strive to:

Model and incentivize diverse partnerships and collaborations that bring together grassroots advocates, community leaders, local public officials, community practitioners, residents, and resource partners.
Share decision-making power between funders and community- and resident-leaders, especially Black, Indigenous, People of Color (BIPOC) community members representing impacted communities.
Respect, value, and lift up the knowledge and expertise of community members to support community-based alternative solutions that will help create a safe, just, and equitable community.

About the Grant Advisory Team

The B’more Invested Grant Advisory Team consists of Community Stakeholders and Funders who are eager to test, learn from, and scale promising innovations that tackle the most pressing issues of our city while also addressing the most urgent challenges and limitations of our local systems.

B’more Invested structures its work with an explicit Race Equity and Inclusion frame that governs every aspect of its development and decision-making. View Grant Advisory Team Members.

Our focus areas

In the first cohort of grants, the B’more Invested Grant Advisory Team identified and funded efforts to support community safety-related alternative models and systems in three areas: