In 2021, OSI-Baltimore and Baltimore’s Promise introduced the B’More Invested initiative, an innovative model of community-led grantmaking designed to address and reverse the legacy of under-investment in Black organizations, leaders, and communities. OSI-Baltimore invested $1.7 million and brought in additional funders to create a $2.3 million pooled fund to support ten leaders of color who are working at the grassroots level to advance community-based alternative approaches that promote healthy, safe, and thriving neighborhoods.
B’More Invested
$1,700,000 over 18 months to support the B’More Invested initiative and fund alternative approaches to community safety and healing.
The following 10 local grassroots organizations each received $150,000 grants for general support. Learn more at BmoreInvested.org.
A Revolutionary Summer is a critical reading and writing program dedicated to shifting harmful and traumatic narratives about Black women and girls through literature, art, self-inquiry and self-empowerment.
Black Male Yoga Initiative supports healthy self-development through the LifeForce Development Process, which integrates skills, principles and practices of yoga, mindfulness, meditation and life coaching as means of personal improvement.
The Black Yield Institute is a Pan-African power building and social movement institution in Baltimore’s Cherry Hill community. Its two-fold mission includes mitigating the immediate impacts of food apartheid in poor Black and brown communities and building movement towards Black Land and Food Sovereignty.
Bloom Collective is a liberation-focused network of health and wellness practitioners grounded in birth and reproductive justice, womanism, human rights, holistic care and healing justice.
Bmore Empowered is dedicated to empowering women and girls of color through mindfulness and entrepreneurship.
BYKE Collective is a youth-centered drop-in bicycle workshop in Greenmount West with a focus on providing mentorship, restorative practices, and workforce development for youth from disinvested communities
Fight Blight Bmore’s mission is to remediate blight through community projects and programs that are envisioned, directed and owned by the community.
MOMCares provides birth and postpartum doula care to black women who are characterized as high risk or have had a birth resulting in Neonatal Intensive Care involvement.
Organizing Black is a grassroots, member-led organization with the ultimate goal of Black liberation. The organization builds local power through transformational Black direct action organizing, political education, and participatory governance practices.
Out for Justice places individuals affected by the criminal justice system at the forefront of policy-reform efforts that directly impact them, their families and their communities, accomplishing its mission through engagement, education and empowerment.