The City Council’s Education and Youth Committee will hold a hearing today on 25-001, a bill that would update the process by which the Baltimore Children and Youth Fund (BCYF) may make grants.

Specifically, the bill would require a uniform application for all grants, require BCYF to disclose the methods by which it evaluates grant applications, require regular fiscal report and program reports from grantees, implement a triennial performance audit, limit discretionary grants and formally cap fund expenditures to:

• 2% for public engagement,

• 18% for staff administration of the BCYF, and

• 15% for technical assistance to grantees.

Put plainly, even if the bill’s reforms are enacted, one in every three dollars will still go to staff and administration and only 65% directly to youth.

Approved by city voters in 2016, the BCYF collects $0.03 for every $100 of assessable property value in the city “to be used exclusively for purposes of establishing new and augmenting existing programs for and services to the children and youth of this city” (emphasis added).

Almost from the beginning, there were challenges.

The fiscal sponsor, Associated Black Charities, had difficulty getting funds to youth while telling the City Council that it needed additional funds to manage the grant-making process. In the spring of 2020, a permanent independent entity was established with the passage of Bill 20-0519.

The initial ordinance permitted 20% – or one in every five dollars – to be used for non-program services, split between public engagement (5%) and administration (15%). The remainder of the funds were to be directed to grantees, ideally those excluded from traditional grantmaking: small, Black, hyperlocal organizations that were of and for the communities they served.

Funds were aimed at nurturing groups excluded from traditional grantmaking – namely, small, Black, hyperlocal organizations.

BCYF did fund those organizations, as their IRS Form 990 reports clearly attest. But not all the money made it from the city coffers to those local organizations. And how much actually made it to youth is even more unclear.

At the July 2025 meeting of the BCYF Finance Committee, the minutes record that a 2024 audit reported total assets of $18.2 million, up from $16.2 million in FY23.

Revenue of $14.7 million (of which $14.3 million came from city funding) compared to expenses of $14.3 million, and net assets increased from $168,000 to $500,000.

Where the Money Goes

Understanding how BCYF spends its money is critical.

The pitch to voters a decade ago was that the city consistently failed to invest in youth and the only way to ensure it would do so was by political force.

An amendment to the charter that would create a legislative lockbox that would guarantee some constant level of investment in our kids, even in lean times, separate and apart from the yearly beg-a-thons that is the city budget process.

Except that it didn’t happen.

Rather than a single application, the newly established BCYF split revenue into different grants. There was a grassroots fund, a president’s fund, an aligned grantmaking fund and mini-grants.

• Baltimore Children and Youth Fund spends freely with little oversight from City Hall, inspector general finds (11/20/25)

Some organizations received multiple awards. Dance Happens received $50,000 from the grassroots fund and another $12,500 from the president’s fund/mini-grants. The Dream Bigger Community Institute got $50,000 from the president’s fund, while Each Teach  got $250,000 from the grassroots fund.

Some of the grants were invitation-only at the discretion of BCYF leadership. How a grassroots entity obtained an invitation has never been made public.

The city said it wouldn’t balance the city budget on the backs of our children until it did.

In the summer of 2025, more than $9 million was transferred from BCYF to the city.

At the behest of Mayor Brandon Scott, about half was used to support YouthWorks, the summer employment program. (Disclosure: I’m the parent of child who participated in YouthWorks.)

Additional funds were directed to Baltimore’s Promise, to various mayoral initiatives and to vague “summer programming.”

Laudable activities all, but the funds were transferred on the say-so of BCYF’s board of directors, and not through the competitive grants process promised to voters.

Funds so precious that we needed a charter amendment to protect them were never supposed to substitute for, or replace, funding for children and youth programs or services.

The very creation of the BCYF was premised on protection of these funds. No matter how bleak the fiscal picture, no matter the competing priorities, these precious, special funds were to be preserved.

No, we wouldn’t balance the city budget on the backs of our children until we just did.

Troubling Signs

Apart from the BCYF dispensing funds to programs that ought to be funded through regular appropriations, the financial documents raise other questions.

In its last three IRS 990 filings, BCYF reports spending hundreds of thousand of dollars on management and HR consultants, even as it had internal HR and administrative staff.

In 2024, for example, it gave $250,000 to the Baltimore City Youth Architectural Collaborative via Fusion Partnerships, which acted as the fiscal sponsor. Fusion Partnership closed its doors in early 2025.

What happened to those funds is unclear. The link from BCYF’s webpage is dead, as is the organization’s website.

Another grantee awarded $72,500 is not in “good standing,” meaning its has failed to meet Maryland compliance rules. Another awarded $250,000 hasn’t filed an annual report with the state for the last two years and has no publicly available Form 990.

Is BCYF Really Helping?

The three organizations above represent a small fraction of BCYF grantees. But they share one common factor with all grantees: we don’t know how many youth were aided by funds.

Although its annual report stretches to more than 100 pages, BCYF never says how many children were served by each organization and for what sum of money.

Instead, the report has grantee totals and process measures – things like the number of grantees who opened the summer technical assistance newsletter – but no outcomes. Page 48 tells us that 22% of grantees find BCYF services “very helpful,” but the percentages add up to only 40%.

What did the other 60% of respondents say?

As a city taxpayer, a parent, a community advocate and someone who thinks budgets should reflect an entity’s moral commitments, the annual report says a lot about how the adults within BCYF were served, including at expensive staff retreats, but very little about how its grants resulted in meaningful and measurable activities for youth.

• How many children have been served since BCYF’s inception? In which neighborhoods? By which programs?

• Are some children served by more than one provider?

• What happens when a grant ends? Are children referred to other organizations?

• How much are grantees spending on overhead and salaries, if any?

• What sort of financial controls is BCYF exercising over grantees?

• Can funds be used for capital expenses like renovations or equipment?

Program evaluation is hard, unrelenting work. It is typically lumped into administrative or operating costs, each of which is eyed skeptically as slush that should be spent on youth.

But it is only through such evaluation that we can understand where dollars are going, how much each organization is spending per youth and how successfully, and how success might be replicated and failure mitigated.

Evaluation helps grantees understand how they’re performing too, how they compare to others in the city, how they’re managing their cash flow and human capital, and which kids are dropping out and why.

But nearly a decade since the BCYF was created I am almost certain no one at the current entity, or within city government, could tell us how many youth have benefited from the fund, let alone their race or ethnicity, gender, age or neighborhood of residence.

That’s not a commitment to children. It is sloppy oversight, content to conflate the passage of an ordinance with meaningful, sustainable youth services. And it doesn’t have to be this way.

Model Programs Elsewhere

IN HILLSBOROUGH COUNTY

Dedicated funds going to youth are a relative rarity in the country, but there are some examples of stand-out programs.

One is found is Hillsborough County, Florida, home to Tampa and about 1.5 million people, which established a small ad valorem tax on the taxable value of real and tangible personal property.

That levy bankrolls the Children’s Board, which funds training, technical assistance, capacity building and community organizations that serve children and their families. The fund dedicates 84% of its revenue to programs, more than what the City Council is proposing for BCYF.

Grant opportunities are clearly outlined, with timelines and clear Request for Proposals. Importantly, there are clear outcome measures and an annual report with counts of the number of children and adults served. Their audits are posted in full.

IN SEATTLE

In Seattle, Washington, voters approved and renewed the Families, Education, Preschool, and Promise (FEPP) Levy. Like Hillsborough County, the levy is clear about where the funds are going and what they’ll support. Funds are closely overseen and evaluation report detail exactly where funds went and why.

 

IN OAKLAND

Like Baltimore, Oakland, California, has a Children and Youth Fund. The ordinance requires that 3% of the General-Purpose Fund be set aside as annual revenues, along with interest accrued, and any unspent funds from prior years are appropriated to the Oakland Kids First! Children’s Fund.

Unlike Baltimore, Oakland requires that 90% of funds be spent on grants and only 10% on administration and evaluation. The annual evaluation report tells us how many kids were served, and their races and ages. We can also see survey data from participants and their parents or caregivers.

Both Oakland and Seattle have explicit commitments to racial justice, with Oakland “allocating resources toward those youth in greatest need.” The Oakland Community Stressors Index (OCSI) uses a combination of 22 risk factors across a range of domains to identify neighborhoods throughout the city experiencing chronic stress, violence and trauma.

A mapping of the zip codes of OCFY children and youth participants demonstrate that a majority of participants live in neighborhoods with the highest stressors as identified by the OCSI.

Somehow, each of these funds manages to spend less on administration and overhead than BCYF, while simultaneously telling constituents what it is doing with public funds.

We Can Do Better

I’m glad the Council is asking questions, however belatedly, about BCYF. I worry, though, that too many members may be reticent to delve deeply, perhaps concerned that any critical questioning will be twisted by some news outlets into another story about government failures.

I hope the Education and Youth Committee, chaired by Councilman John Bullock, is willing to admit past failures, then start the process of course correction and meaningful oversight.

This can happen if lawmakers demand the kinds of evaluation and data available in other jurisdictions.

And why should we settle for less?

Our young people are no less deserving than those in Florida or Washington, or California, and our community organizations are no less capable. It only seems that our political leadership has lagged behind in asking where youth dollars have gone (or not gone) and why.

• Melissa Schober is a community and educational advocate who lives in Greater Charles Village.