Priorities
Where our giving is focused today
These program areas — and the intersections among them — serve as a blueprint for our grantmaking and reflect our unwavering support of Baltimore.
Jewish Community Services
Our deep Jewish roots and commitment to Jewish values, particularly social justice, inform all of our grantmaking. Supporting Jewish families will always be a priority.
Among the Foundation’s grantees in this focus area are Camps Airy & Louise, a boys’ and a girls’ camp in Western Maryland that Aaron and Lillie Straus started to provide an enriching camping experience to Jewish children from Baltimore and the surrounding area, regardless of their economic background. Today, the camps continue this tradition by providing opportunities for self-growth, life skills, life-long friendships, an appreciation for the natural world, and an affirmation of Jewish identity.
Health Access
We believe all Baltimoreans deserve access to quality health care, regardless of where they live, who they are, or what they earn. Our work focuses on improving access to health care, with particular attention to mental health, maternal health, and reproductive health. We recognize that systemic racism, trauma, and longstanding inequities have created significant barriers to care, and we support organizations working to address them. This includes investing in culturally responsive, community-based services as well as advocacy efforts that protect rights, expand access, and create lasting improvements in how care is delivered and funded.
Among our grantees in this focus area is Emergency Contraception for Every Campus, which is working to expand access to emergency contraception and other over-the-counter birth control on Maryland college campuses, helping students access the reproductive health care they need, when they need it.
Welcoming Newcomers
More than 100 years ago, even before launching their foundation, Aaron and Lillie Straus devoted time and resources to support the health and resettlement of waves of immigrants arriving in Baltimore. Our founders believed this backing would allow new Americans to thrive both personally and professionally, with great benefits to our city.
Today, our city is home to more than 50,000 foreign-born Baltimoreans. We work across sectors to address immigration policy and to ensure legal and social services support new arrivals so they can build safe, stable, and thriving lives here. Among our grantees in this focus area is Centro Sol, founded in 2013 to respond to the healthcare needs of a growing local Latino population, promoting equity in health and opportunity.
Social Innovation & Leadership
We focus on the intersection of social innovation, leadership, and entrepreneurship to catalyze our city’s unique assets and talents. Baltimore has quickly created a growing ecosystem that attracts and celebrates new ideas and new leaders who advance effective, efficient, and sustainable solutions to strengthen our communities. The Foundation seeks to democratize opportunity, provide capital, support technical assistance, and create new vibrancy across our city.
More than two decades ago, for example, we offered early funding to the Sylvan Beach Foundation, which aimed to develop a for-profit social enterprise that would feed the professional trajectories and entrepreneurial drive of young men in the workforce development program. The result – Taharka Brothers – is now an employee-owned, small-batch ice cream company producing some of Baltimore’s tastiest pints.