Below is information on Federal funding, National and local foundations, and other funding websites.

Individual National Foundations

Barbara Bush Foundation - Funds family literacy programs, which can include additional components such as parent support groups, parent involvement, home visits, job training, etc.

Carnegie Foundation - Plans to dedicate a major part of its grant funds over the next few years to education reform, beginning with early childhood education and extending to higher education. The focus will also include urban school reform.

The Ford Foundation - Looks at ways to reduce poverty and injustice. The Economic Development unit of the Foundation seeks to make durable economic improvements in the lives of the disadvantaged. The unit coordinates efforts in development finance and economic security, and workforce development.

The Freddie Mac Foundation - Invests in programs that improve the lives of children and families and build stronger communities. Emphasizes the integration of services that focus on family strengthening and youth development in order to maximize the benefit to children and their families.

George Lucas Foundation - Documents and disseminates models of the most innovative practices in U.S. public schools.

The Mott Foundation - Supports the concept that each individual’s quality of life is connected to the well-being of the community, both locally and globally. Three areas of focus are community organizing, education and economic opportunity, which it believes are the keys to empowering people to escape poverty entirely.

The Rockefeller Foundation - Committed to enrich and sustain the lives and livelihoods of poor and excluded people throughout the world. Goal is to transform poor urban neighborhoods into working communities—safe, healthy and effective neighborhoods—by increasing the amount and quality of employment, improving the quality of all urban schools, and increasing the influence and voice of the poor and excluded in political decisions that affect their lives.

The Abell Foundation - 410-547-1300, Robert Embry, President. Works to effect positive change on societal problems in the Baltimore area, with a strong focus on programs promoting educational reform, job creation and tourism; strengthening families; reducing drug addiction and alleviating hunger and homelessness.

The Annie E. Casey Foundation - 410-547-6600, Douglas W. Nelson, President. Fosters public policies, human-service reforms, and community supports that more effectively meet the needs of today’s vulnerable children and families.

Baltimore Community Foundation - 410-332-4171, Cheryl Casciani, Director of Programs. Permanent collection of more than 270 different charitable funds supported by the general public and serving the greater Baltimore region. Each fund was established with a unique mission and purpose, which the Community Foundation is pledged to carry out in perpetuity.

The Discount Foundation - 301-468-1288, Susan Chin, Executive Director. Seeks to empower poor and working people by strengthening their collective institutions, and to advance innovative public policies designed to secure jobs with livable wages, benefits and career opportunities for poor and working people.

The Enterprise Foundation - 800-624-4298, Bart Harvey, Chairman and CEO. Rebuilds communities and works with its partners to provide low-income people with affordable housing, safer streets and access to jobs and child care.

France-Merrick Foundation, 410-832-5700, Robert Schaefer, Executive Director.

Morris Goldseker Foundation of Maryland - 410-837-5100, Timothy D. Armbruster, PhD. Focus is community development, economic development, family services, health care, human services, neighborhood development and urban development.

The Hoffberger Foundation - 410-369-9336. Responds with available resources to unmet needs in the greater Baltimore Community. High priority is employment, training and job creation.

The Marion I. and Henry J. Knott Foundation - 301-618-5649, John C. Smyth, President. Provides resources for nurturing and family unity through cultural, educational, health care and human services activities in the Roman Catholic community and through the activities of other deserving agencies that the Knott family encourages and supports.

The Open Society Institute - 410-234-1091, Diana Morris, Director. Takes on issues of national consequences that take on the limitations and opportunities created by local, social, economic and political conditions.

The Straus Foundation -  410-539-8308, Jan Rivitz, Executive Director.   Develops programs in areas to secure better futures for vulnerable children by helping to build family and community supports which nurture their educational, social, economic and physical well-being.