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Funding Community Invests in Children
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What if instead of trying to penalize children and families who are struggling, communities gave them the opportunity to succeed? That's the philosophy behind the Safe and Sound Campaign's Maryland Opportunity Compacts.
Launched in 1995 as part of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation's five-city Urban Health Initiative, the Safe and Sound Campaign works on priorities developed through a broad collaborative effort and voted upon by city residents. The Campaign's goals are to ensure babies are born healthy; children live in safe and nurturing families, enter school ready to learn, and are successful in school; young people make healthy choices and live in safe neighborhoods; and adults value and appreciate young people.
Over the past 12 years, the Campaign has received broad support from funders, including: Associated Black Charities, Bank of America, Aaron Straus & Lillie Straus Foundation, France-Merrick Foundation, Jacob & Hilda Blaustein Foundation, Alison & Arnold Richman Fund, Suzanne Cohen's Fund for Populations at Risk at the Baltimore Community Foundation (BCF), and United Way of Central Maryland.
The Safe and Sound Campaign has forged Maryland Opportunity Compacts with the Maryland State Government to dramatically change the way our state delivers social services. Maryland Opportunity Compacts are binding agreements between state government and local partners that give incentives for diverting troubled kids and families from expensive and punitive placements to cost-effective home- and community-based treatment. Initiated as an innovative financing tool in 2004, the Compacts reduce excessive spending on last-resort programs like juvenile confinement and foster care and expand investments in opportunities that promote success, without new government spending.
For example, through an investment of $400,000, the Baltimore County Multi-Systemic Therapy Compact has kept young people out of institutional care and has saved the state $250,000 in just four months. This early success exceeds expected targets and predicts even better long-term results.
The Annie E. Casey Foundation, BCF, Harry & Jeanette Weinberg Foundation, Abell Foundation, Open Society Institute-Baltimore, and the Charles Crane Family Foundation have specifically joined public and private sector partners to invest in the development of these Opportunity Compacts.
"What's most important about the work we've done in partnership with local funders is to redefine what the problem is and create new and much more positive solutions that produce measurable results," says Hathaway Ferebee, Executive Director of the Safe and Sound Campaign. "Bolstered by the philanthropic community, we have advanced the notion that there should be just one track: the Opportunity Track".
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"These path-breaking agreements have the potential to reorient our whole approach to vulnerable families and troubled kids away from enormously expensive and wasteful deep-end system responses toward a more humane and effective emphasis on prevention, early intervention and positive supports," says Douglas Nelson, President of the Annie E. Casey Foundation and President of the Board of the Safe & Sound Campaign. "We are on the cusp of a real breakthrough here." |
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Snapshots of Philanthropy offer a glimpse into the many ways funders are making a difference in our community. This is one in a series of 25 profiles created to celebrate the work of Association of Baltimore Area Grantmakers (ABAG) members in recognition of the 25th anniversary of ABAG.
The Association of Baltimore Area Grantmakers is the Greater Baltimore region's premier resource on philanthropy, dedicated to informing grantmakers and improving our community, with membership of more than 120 private foundations and corporations |
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