At 5 N. Howard St. sits a vacant building painted with a blue leopard. Its front door is boarded up, the gates locked tight.
The property was supposed to become the new home of Bmore Empowered, a nonprofit serving Black women and girls. The group received $80,000 in taxpayer-backed funding from May 2024 to November 2024 through the Downtown Partnership of Baltimore’s BOOST program to open a storefront there. But the doors never opened.
Instead, the nonprofit — whose operations director is Hana Scott, wife of Mayor Brandon Scott — launched a storefront at 344 N. Charles St., where a sign now advertises available office space. In September, a landlord sued Bmore Empowered for unpaid rent at the N. Charles St. location and won a judgment for $3,514 after no one from the organization appeared in court, according to court documents. That same month, the nonprofit announced on Facebook that it was going on an “organizational pause” to “realign our resources.”
The contradictory trail of storefronts, rent disputes and the organizational pause has raised a pivotal question: What happened to the $80,000 Bmore Empowered received to open a Howard Street office that never materialized?
Downtown Partnership says it has not received documentation showing how the money was spent. A spokesman for the partnership told Spotlight on Maryland that Bmore Empowered is no longer part of its Black Owned and Operated Storefront Tenancy (BOOST) Program, which provided the $80,000 for a new storefront.
“We are currently finalizing a reconciliation of their expenditures and expect to have that completed by the end of the year,” said the spokesman for the Downtown Partnership, which was awarded $28 million from the Maryland state government through fiscal years 2024 and 2025.
Downtown Partnership was awarded $1.6 million in federal funds from the American Rescue Plan Act through Baltimore City in 2022, with the BOOST program among the initiatives supported by the funds.
Maryland OneStop, the state’s charity database, lists Bmore Empowered’s registration status as “delinquent.”
Bmore Empowered has also not filed its fiscal year 2024 nonprofit tax form, which was due to the IRS in May. The organization did not respond to the following questions:
- How long is Bmore Empowered planning to put its services on hold?
- Are you able to continue paying employees while pausing operations?
- Why have you yet to file your tax form for fiscal year 2024? Are you able to provide this tax form?
“You’re probably at a point where you cannot make payroll,” Schlake told Spotlight on Maryland. “That’s usually a point when you’re not having enough money. You just don’t have, even for the services you want to offer, you just run out of people.”
Public records show Bmore Empowered received $62,500 from the Baltimore Children and Youth Fund, which is more than 99% funded by Baltimore City taxpayer dollars, in fiscal year 2024. The Baltimore City government awarded Bmore Empowered $25,000 in December 2022.
Spotlight on Maryland contacted each of Bmore Empowered’s listed sponsors. Three responded — Downtown Partnership, Baltimore Community Foundation and Annie E. Casey Foundation — and all said they have no active grants with Bmore Empowered. Other listed sponsors did not respond, including Youthworks, which is run as a public-private partnership under the Mayor’s Office of Employment Development.
Documents obtained by Spotlight on Maryland reveal that Bmore Empowered’s cofounder, Kieta Iriarte, was issued two notices of tax liens from the state of Maryland this year, totalling $25,740. Attempts to reach Iriarte were unsuccessful.
Bmore Empowered’s latest nonprofit tax form for fiscal year 2023 shows it spent $501,670 on contractor payments, which accounted for about 50% of its expenditures.
One of Bmore Empowered’s listed services is fiscal sponsorship, a process in which an established nonprofit handles the finances and sometimes the operations of smaller organizations that often do not have tax-exempt status. Nonprofits that provide these services are able to aggregate the financial information of their fiscal sponsors under one tax form.
Bmore Empowered is not the first organization to pause or end its Baltimore-area fiscal sponsorship program in recent years.
Spotlight on Maryland reported in March that Fusion Partnerships, a Baltimore nonprofit, announced the end of its fiscal sponsorship program after receiving at least $3 million in Baltimore City taxpayer dollars since 2020, most of which came through the Baltimore Children and Youth Fund.
Strong City Baltimore ended its fiscal sponsorship program in 2021 following allegations from some of its partners that it mismanaged funds.
The vacant building at 5 N. Howard St. was set for another opportunity for redevelopment this year when the Maryland Department of Housing and Community Development (DHCD) awarded $100,000 to the Market Center Community Development Corporation to “Transform the property into a dynamic mixed-use development, including the creation of modern apartments on the upper levels and a state-of-the-art ghost kitchen.”
However, a DHCD spokeswoman told Spotlight on Maryland that the company had relinquished the award.
Market Center Community Development Corporation did not respond to a request for comment on whether it still has plans to redevelop 5 N. Howard St.
Brooke Conrad contributed to this report. Spotlight on Maryland is a joint venture by The Baltimore Sun, FOX45 News and WJLA in Washington, D.C. Have a news tip? Call 410-467-4670 or email SpotlightOnMaryland@sbgtv.com. Contact Patrick Hauf at pjhauf@sbgtv.com and @PatrickHauf on X.
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