By Councilman Mark Parker
The Baltimore Children and Youth Fund (BCYF) is doing vital work every day to shepherd significant public resources by funding youth-serving community-based organizations in neighborhoods across our city and strengthening those organizations through technical support.
Created by the City Council and affirmed by Baltimore voters in 2016 through a charter amendment, the current version of BCYF took shape more than five years ago when the City Council passed authorizing legislation for the new non-profit which was being created to oversee the fund.
Since that time, the organization has grown and developed in key ways: dedicated and growing staff leadership, an engaged and dynamic board of directors, a robust community grant review process, established partnerships around the city, and multiple years of success in deploying public funds as grants to youth-serving community-based organizations across Baltimore.
Given that organizational growth and success, it is now time for the City Council to return to the authorizing legislation from 2020 to make needed updates to better align the legislative framework with the operational reality of the current BCYF organization, to fill in some of the gaps which were left and to bring a bit more clarity to the law. This is a responsible action by the City Council to better support the vital mission and ongoing operations of the Baltimore Children and Youth Fund, to affirm and strengthen those things which make BCYF unique and transformative, and to make sure that the great work happening across our city continues to receive funding and technical support.
There are four key things about BCYF that this legislation is aiming to strengthen.
One is community accountability, in the form of the community grant-making review process which determines how these public funds are stewarded and sent out to support youth-serving organizations. The second is technical assistance, especially working with grassroots community organizations. BCYF does excellent work making sure that they have the staff support, the resources, the guidance, to help them become more professional organizations, become better organized, seek other funding, and build for sustainability and effectiveness in the work that they do. The third is youth leadership on the board of directors. Youth leadership is a shared core commitment across the work of the entire organization, and this bill will affirm and strengthen that commitment at the board level. And finally, it’s about making sure resources get into the hands of organizations in as clear and transparent a way as possible, and making sure that those resources are being deployed across the city where they can do the most good.
I’m grateful for stakeholders who have been part of these conversations, all the people who have done the challenging and transformative work of bringing BCYF to this point: community leaders, staff, board members, current and former council members, and others who have guided and supported the work of the organization. Many people have been very generous with their feedback that they’ve given on this bill and this part of this process, and it is only that collaborative feedback which can help this bill, or any bill, take its best and final form.
Finally, we must always recognize and commend the grantees for the way that they are pouring themselves—heart, mind, and soul—into the work that they’re doing with our young people. It is our great responsibility and joy as a city, through BCYF, to fund and support their efforts to transform the lived experience of young people across our communities.
The opinions expressed in this commentary are those of the writer and not necessarily those of the AFRO.