Investing to Impact Baltimore
Earlier this month, Invested Impact partnered with the Association of Baltimore Area Grantmakers (ABAG), Baltimore Community Lending, and Humanim to host the Baltimore Impact Tour. The event included a bus tour of the various community investment accomplishments that Ours to Own has achieved in just over a year since its launch. With investments that start as low as $20, Ours to Own makes investing accessible and community-centric. The initiative connects investors with projects, organizations and businesses working to support local schools, critical community projects and thousands of units of affordable housing while earning a financial return. The campaign channels money into the community to promote optimal community impact. Since its launch 18 months ago, Ours to Own has raised over $5 million in investments from small $20 investments to upwards of a million dollars.
Here’s a quick overview of the event along with pictures and tweets from various participants of the tour:
Humanim:
The tour began at the American Brewery, home to Humanim. Human creates economic opportunities for those who face barriers to employment. With a focus on workforce development and a focus on promoting minority owned businesses, Humanim launched City Seeds, which houses the School of Food.
School of Food is a business and training program that walks food and beverage business owners through the process of transitioning a business from something small like a farmers market stand to an organization with a mature business model.
Eula McDowell and Juan Nance, alumni of the School of Food, provided the various participants with delicious snacks and spoke to the audience about how they would like to expand their ventures moving forward. Mr. Nance thanked Humanim for allowing him to dream bigger, and potentially be the ‘black naked juice’. Other major Humanim social enterprises include Details Deconstruction and Brick + Board, whose warehouse was our last stop on the tour.
City Arts 1 & 2:
City Arts apartment buildings were the next stop on our tour. These apartment buildings aim to revitalize the neighborhood while trying to avoid the negative effects of gentrification. The buildings were created in response to the plethora of vacant homes in the neighborhood, but also to keep costs low for people that already lived in the neighborhood. The residents of the building must be making 60 percent of the area’s median income (a statistic generated from the U.S Department of Housing and Urban Development). City Arts provides affordable housing to a selections of artists who show a commitment to their art form. The establishment caters to visual and performance arts with galleries and dance studios located on the premise.
Impact Hub and The Parkway Theater:
On the bus, our founder and CEO Rodney Foxworth discussed developments on North Avenue, including Impact Hub Baltimore, home to Invested Impact offices, and the new Stavros Niarchos Foundation Parkway Theatre where the Maryland Film Festival is located.
Southwest Baltimore Partnership:
The Southwest Baltimore Partnership aims to create “an awesome, healthy, architecturally beautiful, diverse, cohesive community of choice built on mutual respect and shared responsibility.” During the Summer Impact Tour, the bus stopped at a property that the Southwest Baltimore Partnership was able to acquire through the help of Baltimore Community Lending. Their goal is to bring West Baltimore Street “back to life” and increase foot traffic, which they are doing by creating retail storefronts and residential homes. As part of their revitalization plan, Southwest Baltimore Partnership is creating jobs for minority contractors and employing them in geographically under-resourced neighborhoods that participate in the partnership.
Remington Row:
When we arrived in Remington, Thibault Manekin, co-founder of Seawall Development met us in front of the newly created Remington Row apartment buildings. Mr. Manekin discussed the development of an open source idea that provides the neighborhood with amenities that are useful for the community. He discussed R. House, a food hall located just up the block from Remington Row. Seawall wanted to create a launchpad for chefs in Baltimore. Since its opening, R House has created a couple hundred jobs, and many of the restaurants are seeing more success than they originally anticipated.
Brick + Board:
Details Deconstruction and Brick + Board are both Humanim social enterprises focused on the deconstruction the vacant homes in Baltimore. After the homes are deconstructed, the materials are salvaged to be resold. When we went to visit the warehouse for Brick + Board, they were housing a Made in Baltimore pop up shop, which featured various furniture pieces that artisans created from the salvaged wood. while simultaneously adding to the recycling culture of Baltimore city Brick + Board provides living-wage jobs for Baltimoreans that face barriers to employment.
The Summer Impact Tour showed various investors and community members the real benefits that socially conscious investing can have. We toured a wide range of places from housing to office spaces, showing the abundance of innovation and enormous potential that can be found in Baltimore City.
