Last week, the T. Rowe Price Foundation granted $6.5 million over three years to address critical gaps in Baltimore’s nonprofit sector.

The commitment includes $2.25 million in impact grants to be distributed among eight nonprofit initiatives focused on building a healthy nonprofit community in Baltimore, and more than $3 million in multiyear general operating grants to be distributed among more than 140 nonprofits. It’s the largest commitment to date from the Fortune 500 company that’s headquartered in Baltimore.

Some of the impact grants include:

  • Coppin State University: $450,000 total ($150,000 per year)— The grant will fund the establishment of an academic center at Coppin State University to study and research the nonprofit sector. The center will be the first of its kind in Baltimore and at any historically Black college or university in the nation. The university will work with the T. Rowe Price Foundation to publish the State of the Baltimore Nonprofit Sector report, which the foundation developed in 2022.
  • “Sharing Sugar”: $225,000 total ($75,000 per year)— The grant willl fund the “Sharing Sugar,” a collaboration among nonprofits to reduce costs by sharing transportation, space, equipment, services and other resources. CLLCTVLY will manage the project, with support from the foundation’s grant funding.
  • Arts Every Day: $225,000 total ($75,000 per year)—The T. Rowe Price Foundation is extending its previous impact grant funding for Arts Every Day to support the continuation of The Baltimore Arts Education Initiative. Through the initiative, 91% of students in kindergarten through grade 5 now have access to weekly visual arts instruction. That is an increase from 60% in the 2018-2019 school year.

Other receipients include Neighborhood Financial Trust ($450,000 total; $150,000 per year), Baltimore Nonprofit Finance Fund ($300,000 total; $100,000 per year), Uplift Alliance ($225,000 total; $75,000 per year), The Peale ($225,000 total; $75,000 per year), and Public Private Partnership ($150,000 total; $50k per year).

John Brothers, president of the T. Rowe Price Foundation and T. Rowe Price Charitable, told Baltimore Fishbowl that the philanthropic organization is committed to building trust and authentic relationships to help Baltimoreans thrive.

“We focus on nonprofits,” Brothers said. “We focus on supporting their leaders, their organizations, and their networks. So, we don’t focus on very specifically on issue areas. We focus on helping the nonprofit sector as a whole.”

Usually, grants given to nonprofits are predicated on being spent in very specific ways, on particular projects, and rarely for more than one year at a time. This makes it difficult for nonprofits to think strategically and long-term about their funding. Brothers says multi-year general operating grants are very rare, making up less than 5% of all grants. But 90% of the T. Rowe Price Foundation’s grants are general operating multi-year, enabling the nonprofits to which they donate plan years down the road, and with flexibility on how the money is spent.

“A very small percentage of foundations give general operating grants, which is basically saying to nonprofits, ‘Hey, we trust you to spend those dollars the way that you believe that you need to,’” Brothers said. “We’re a part of [a philosophy] that’s called trust based philanthropy, which is really built on the idea that you trust communities and their organizations to do things well, because they’re working hard every day on the ground and it’s not for us to go in and tell them how to spend their money or to give to them in ways that makes it more difficult.”

In this tranche of grants released, $3 million of the $6.5 million are general operating multi-year. Of the portion that are very specific investments, Brothers says those classifications were based upon intense work and communication with the nonprofits and what they said they needed.

“Those investments were built off of months and months of listening to community members and partners and we wear our shoe leather out at the local level, listening to local communities and what they say is important to them,” Brothers said.

As an example, he cited $450,000 given to Neighborhood Financial Trust, which is dedicated to helping nonprofit workers build financial success for themselves.

“You probably know a lot of people that work in nonprofits, and they’re busting their hump every day to try to serve the missions of the important work that they’re doing,” Brothers said. “But they often do that their own expense, both financially and otherwise. For us, we want to protect them. We want to help them. We know that they’re doing really great work.”

Brothers feels like T. Rowe Price is a partner in and member of the Baltimore community, and as such, must earn the community’s trust.

“The second we sit back and say, ‘The community trusts us!’ it’s probably the second that we lose that trust. We’ve got to go out and earn that every day,” Brothers said. “And really, we focus really strongly on our bedside manner and community, how we relate to community, how we show up for them…. No one in any neighborhood of Baltimore is saying, ‘I can’t wait for T Rowe Price to tell us about [how to do] childhood education!’ right? But what they need, what Baltimore needs is infrastructure. T. Rowe has that. But often our neighborhoods do not.”

T. Rowe tries to use its grants program to help nonprofits build whatever infrastructure they need to function more efficiently, whether it’s helping them weather a storm if their payments from the state haven’t arrived or connecting a nonprofit to someone T. Rowe knows elsewhere who can help them.

Reflecting on what the company’s footprint looks like in the community beyond financial support, Brothers spoke again of authentic relationships and a trust-based approach, but also of acting as a hub that focuses on partnership and collaboration.

“Our superpower is seeing the work from 10,000 feet above and so we can come in to say hey, you’re working on this and you’re working on this. How can we bring you together?”

“How do you use the infrastructure of a company to support community life? You see behind me there’s art on the wall. Community artists all over our office. The CoLab, which you all have reported on in the past, that was space that the firm wasn’t using that now we use to help local small business intermediaries support small businesses in the city…. And then finally social capital. So, using our globalness to say, ‘Hey, local nonprofit, you are saying you want to do this. Well, we actually know somebody in London that’s doing that work there. Can we pull you together?’ Or ‘Hey, I’m about to meet somebody over here. Can we bring you to that?’”

Brothers expressed enthusiasm about the Coppin State grant, stressing that while most cities have an academic center that focuses research on the nonprofit sector, Baltimore does not. T. Rowe Price released its first State of the Baltimore Nonprofit Sector report in 2022.

“That state of the sector report, in most cities the local university would have done that, but we don’t have that. So, for us, we’re giving them that report, so that you can have infrastructure, but we’re also funding the first nonprofit academic center but also the first one ever created in an HBCU,” Brothers said.

A sign of that trust and partnership is the company’s ability to absorb criticism and regard it with value, he said.

“We have community partners that feel totally safe, because we have trust with them, of telling us when we messed up. We want that,” Brothers said. “That’s really valuable to us, that community and our partners feel strong enough to be able to let us know what they want and where we might not be meeting them and not feel that there’s going to be anything challenging that will come from what might be a really challenging conversation.”