Grantmaking Focus
Recent Grants

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• Programs and Grants
  
  Grantmaking Focus

  
  Empower Baltimore supports strategies, initiatives and organizations that help the corporation meet its mission. Grantmaking activities will be executed through a set of goals and objectives where grantees must demonstrate outcomes and proven practices that that are aligned with at least one of the following focus areas:
  
  Human Capital Development for Economic Success – A commitment to human capital represents an investment that people make in the enhancement of their skills, knowledge, talent and abilities. Strategies in the areas of workforce development and training, education and skill enhancement can enhance an individual’s social and economic growth, preparing them to have choices about their future. Evidence exists that people who have enhanced capacity have more ability to identify resources that support their economic well-being, economic stability, educational attainment, and civic involvement. Empower Baltimore seeks to link its focus and investment in people to opportunities that provide them for greater economic successes. Our goal would be to invest in strategies that give individuals capacity and allow them to gain access to resources that maximize their potential and to opportunities that impact their economic self-sufficiency. Grantmaking objectives may include:
  
  -Addressing the gap between low earnings and income security through workforce development and training activities that promote career enhancement

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  -Income and saving support strategies tailored toward low income families or provide opportunities for residents to gain access to public benefits

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  -Consumer education and financial literacy related to savings, debt management, financial planning and asset accumulation

• -Fostering learning, professional and personal development, and social networks
  
  Community Revitalization – As a process to improve the condition of neighborhoods through the enhancement of assets or positive neighborhood activity, Empower Baltimore’s approach to community revitalization encourages activity in neighborhoods that is influenced and directed by community organizations and residents. Many Zone residents remain vulnerable and peripheral to larger revitalization efforts in their own communities. It is Empower Baltimore’s belief that as the market turns in neighborhoods current residents should also benefit. Our goal would be to support revitalization activities that are designed to benefit existing residents, enable and equip residents to take advantage of new neighborhood activity, and where new activity is influenced by the organizations that mobilize the community’s voice. Grantmaking objectives for this area may include:
  
  -Activity that enhance one or more elements of the Land Use plans commissioned by Empower Baltimore and Village Centers customized to the individual needs of Zone neighborhood
  
  -Attracting or leveraging resources that serve the interest of EZ neighborhoods

  
  -Civic participation and leadership development in neighborhoods for residents to enable them to contribute to the revitalization planning in neighborhoods
  
  -Activity that allow residents to benefit from market-driven influences that impact the neighborhoods they live in
  
  Access to Capital, Assets and other Investments – Empower Baltimore’s array of investment products were created as incentives to attract people and businesses into the Empowerment Zone. In the ten years of the original strategic plan, the Zone - and Baltimore - has changed, forcing the relevance of those attraction tools and products to potentially change. Where Empower Baltimore once created markets with loan products and homeownership tools, new opportunities may now exist to use these products to increase the asset building potential of under served residents and communities in different ways. Empower Baltimore has its own array of products that it created over the years, most of which need to be redefined or reshaped to respond to the current needs of residents, businesses, and neighborhood commercial activity. Empower Baltimore will initiate an analysis and possibly commission a market scan to assess the potential of our:
  
  -Business loan products
  
  -Tools and products for retail corridors / Main Streets
  
  -Housing Venture Fund
  
  -Exterior Repair Grant
  
  -New Market Tax Credit / Other tax credit incentives
  
  Recent Grants

• • -Sojourner Douglas College Workforce Center for Customized Training
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  • -HEBCAC for Community Organizing in McElderry Park and Madison East End Planning
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  • -East Harbor Village Center for Community Organizing for Workforce Support Initiatives
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  • -Maryland Volunteer Lawyers Association for 2006 CASH (Creating Assets, Savings and Hope) Campaign

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