Bill Implementation
Strengthening BCYF’s Commitment to Baltimore’s Youth.
Baltimore City Council Bill 25-0100 introduces new standards for governance, grantmaking, and financial reporting for BCYF. We welcome this as an opportunity to build on our existing practices and bring even greater public visibility to the work we do every day for Baltimore’s young people and the key role this fund has played in our city’s historic decrease in crime and gun violence. We’re moving forward with a clear, phased plan with 24 specific action items across our organization to ensure every requirement is met ahead of the next fiscal year.
What the Bill Means
This legislation updates the standards for BCYF in regard to items like the structure of our Board, managing funding decisions, and the process and frequency of financial reports. Many of these practices are already central to how BCYF operates, and this is a chance to deepen those practices and make them more easily accessible and understandable to the communities we serve.
What BCYF is Doing
- Ensuring our Board Reflects Baltimore: Enhancing how Board members are recruited and appointed to make sure our Board continues to represent the full economic, cultural, and geographic diversity of Baltimore’s youth.
- Sharing our Grantmaking Process: Publishing our public grant manuals and expanding our website resources so that any nonprofit applying for funding has clear, detailed guidance on our process.
- Expanding our Reporting Systems: Centralizing our data systems and reporting calendars to support even more robust audits, financial plans, and annual reports.
- Maximizing Community Impact: Introducing new systems to monitor grant distribution, including a new standard ensuring no single grant exceeds 25% of annual funding, helping our resources reach as many communities and nonprofits as possible.
- Preparing our Team: Staff are reviewing updated procedures and training together so that every person within BCYF is ready to operate under the new standards.
Board Oversight
These changes don’t happen in isolation. Our Board of Directors will formally review the major updates outlined here, including the Board composition standards, the conflict of interest policy, and our annual financial plan and report, to ensure this work is guided by strong governance at every step.
Our Timeline
These updates will be rolled out in phases between June and October 2026.
June: Assess current operating & grant processes
July: Begin drafting procedure updates for grant applicants and Staff
August: Build our implementation team
September: Expand financial reporting and Board policies
October: Share Board composition updates
We’re so proud of the standards we’ve built, and we are grateful that the City and our community came together to help us grow them further. We believe this work reflects our continued dedication to the families, nonprofits, and community leaders who trust BCYF to invest wisely in our children and young people for decades to come.
