How Can We Help?
David Kanter
Donor Services Officer
Baltimore Community Foundation is a known, trusted, and sought-after partner and vehicle that inspires and leverages capital and charitable giving to make a measurable impact on Baltimore.
Our 2023–2025 strategic plan, Inspire, leads with our strengths and lays out the targets, indicators, and strategies that plot our progress.
At its core, Inspire is built around three key goals:
Driving best-in-class donor engagement
Leveraging our unique relationships and resources to expand community impact
Growing BCF’s brand from within.
Through these three focused goals, we’re energizing our donors, expanding our partnerships, and reaching higher heights in the pursuit of a better Baltimore.
The combined breadth and size of philanthropy in Baltimore is significant, and provides generous givers with countless opportunities for growing wealth and making an impact.
As a pillar of Baltimore’s philanthropic movement for over five decades, BCF is uniquely positioned to mobilize resources from a diverse range of partners—and direct them towards a variety of causes and needs. This community-centric role is crucial when confronting unprecedented challenges like the Key Bridge collapse, and equally powerful in making consistent progress on a host of issues affecting the Baltimore region.
Our influential voice, combined with our identity as a bridge between and among the nonprofits and various government entities that guide this region, helps us facilitate change while creating new and fruitful partnerships. When we leverage our voice, plus our local connections and those of our Board of Trustees, we effectively energize and align a diverse group of individuals and organizations who share a common goal.
We have a robust set of tools and skills that enable us to deploy strategic resources, leverage additional investments, quickly learn and respond to change, and inspire our stakeholders to keep pushing for progress.
Among them are our:
• Expertise on local issues
• Insight on innovative and impactful nonprofit organizations
• Strategic grantmaking
• Responsive grantmaking
• Impact investing
• Effective storytelling and evaluation
In 2023, BCF will launch a scorecard on our commitment to race, equity and inclusion.
By 2025, BCF will improve communication with donors and foundations. We will increase our knowledge of the Baltimore region and strengthen our relationships with donors. BCF will also identify staff on our Development and Donor Services Team who can offer personalized support and guidance.
By 2025*, BCF will diversify its current pool of donors with a focus on age, aiming for 20 percent under the age of 55.
By 2025*, BCF will diversify its current pool of donors across races, aiming for 12 percent non-white by 2025.
By 2025*, BCF will increase median size of non-endowed donor-advised funds.
By 2025, at least three BCF impact investment deals will leverage a minimum three-fold multiplier.
By 2025, BCF will seek to influence progress on key levers that will shape the future of Baltimore:
Digital Divide
Kindergarten Readiness
*2019 baseline year, where applicable
As a respected civic leader operating right here in the heart of our vibrant community, we use our local influence to build public-private partnerships and encourage community investment, pushing for positive change through both capital and collaboration.
What does the civic leadership community and local philanthropy look like and do in these regions? Are there indicators that reflect how good a city and metropolitan statistical area are for children, middle-class households and business? In these comparable regions, we will explore and act on similarities, demographics, locational assets, challenges, and points of differentiation.
BCF is guided by the knowledge that profound disparities in opportunity exist between people of color and their white counterparts. We acknowledge the historic and ongoing role that structural racism plays in creating and perpetuating those disparities. That is why we are committed to reducing racial disparities, identifying and combating structural racism, and fostering more equity and inclusion through our strategic grantmaking, impact investing, special initiatives, and advocacy.
BCF is proud to be a powerful catalyst for change, uniting donors, nonprofits, and community leaders in a collective effort to build a better Baltimore now and for the generations to come.
Our goals are ambitious. But when we come together with a clear mission in mind, we can create an entire region of thriving schools, businesses, neighborhoods, and people.
Donor Services Officer
Donor Services Officer
VP of Philanthropy
Contact Dara Schnee, VP of Philanthropy, for a confidential, in-depth consultation about these and other giving options, tax benefits of each and how they can help to achieve your financial and charitable giving goals.
If you need assistance with Donor Central, please fill out the form below or call (410) 332-4171 with any questions you have and we will respond as soon as possible.
BCF Community Investment Team is here to help. Please fill out the form below with any questions you have and we will respond as soon as possible.
Contact John Gilpin at jgilpin@bcf.org to request hard copies of our Personal Estate Planning Kit. Please provide your mailing address and how many copies you would like.
Visit our planned giving website to find additional tools and resources to help your clients.
We have a nearly 30-year history of offering grants to resident-led groups and community projects in Baltimore City and Baltimore County. These grants give residents the resources they need to accomplish a small project, get more people involved, and encourage the next generation of neighborhood leaders. We also fund programs that support the development of leaders of all ages who are working to improve their neighborhoods and schools. Our support is intended to help identify, activate, inform and network leaders. And finally, we believe when schools and neighborhoods team up to improve their school and community, meaningful and lasting change can be made. We are interested in funding proposals in which the students and adults in schools collaborate intentionally with community residents, neighborhood associations, and other individuals, groups, and institutions in the area surrounding a school.
We believe that attracting and retaining effective and diverse school leaders is a key lever for change in Baltimore’s educational landscape, and so we fund school leadership development efforts at the district and individual school level. We are interested in funding proposals that focus on principal coaching, mentoring, peer networking, wellness/self-care, as well as pipelines that identify and develop new leaders. We will also continue to support efforts that build a culture of appreciation and encouragement for school leaders.
Our on-line application system provides applicants with a portal to start a new grant application or to continue updating an application already in process. Please be sure to select the “Save and Finish Later” button when you are finished working on your application in order to save your current session’s work. At any time during the application process you can select the “Contact Us” button in the top right corner of the screen and you will be able to send an email to the Baltimore Community Foundation staff with specific questions.
To be considered for funding, proposals must be submitted through the online application portal, however, we provide a PDF version of the application along with other useful forms here for your reference:
When you are ready please select one of the following options:
I have not applied for BCF funding online in the past.
Select this option if you have never used our website to apply for a grant from BCF.
I previously applied for BCF funding online in the past.
Select this option if you have applied for any of BCF’s grants using our website. Your profile may still be in our system and you may login using your account.
We have allocated funds for two geographical areas that bookend a crucial corridor on the Westside of Baltimore City: Howard Park /Forest Park area (served by Calvin Rodwell Elementary Middle School and Liberty Elementary), and Reservoir Hill/Penn North area (served by Dorothy I Height Elementary). In these three schools and their surrounding neighborhoods, we will support projects and activities designed to make the communities safe, clean, green and vibrant; and improve the quality of the schools. Some projects may be neighborhood-focused, some school-focused and others collaborative projects between the schools and their respective communities.
High quality early childhood education has a lifelong effect on students. Through our Early Learning grant program, we are interested in system-wide early childhood education proposals that will help Baltimore City and County’s youngest learners, and their families, get the start they need. Nonprofit organizations that offer programs and/or services to Judy Centers are encouraged to contact the centers directly to explore partnership opportunities.
Director of Planned Gifts
410-332-4171 ext. 132
Communications Officer
410-332-4171 ext. 181
Executive Director
Leonard and Helen R. Stulman Charitable Foundation
Please fill out this form and select the documents you are requesting.