Category: Microgrants

Join Us at Our Preservation Celebration 2022!

Join us for our Preservation Celebration 2022 at the newly restored and re-opened Peale Museum! On October 13, we’ll honor our 2022 Preservation Award winners and, with your help, give out four microgrants to people working on the front lines in our historic neighborhoods. We’ll say thank you to our volunteers and honor all of their hard work this year. This gathering also acts as Baltimore Heritage’s annual meeting where the board will elect its new members. With food from Baltimore vendors, wine and beer from Maryland suppliers, and complimentary valet service, we hope you will join us for what promises to be a wonderful evening. And we couldn’t be in a better historic place than the newly renovated Peale Museum. We hope you’ll join us on October 13!

Register here! Tickets are a suggested donation of $25.

Preservation Work at Contee-Parago Park

In October 2020, Baltimore Heritage awarded Friends of Contee-Parago Park a $500 micro-grant to help them preserve the original dedication plaque installed in the park in 1971. Here’s an update from Jean Lee Cole of the Friends of Contee-Parago Park:

The sign was installed this morning by a wonderful team from the Serra Stone company, who also did the demolition of the wall and building of the new brick piers. It took a long time to locate this company and secure funding for the work. But it’s been completed! And the mini-grant from Baltimore Heritage helped keep the preservation of the original sign an important priority throughout the process. Members of both the Contee and Parago families have expressed their joy in seeing the plaque featured more prominently in the park, and Reese Culbreath, grandson of Edward Parago, selected the heart-shaped boulder onto which the plaque was installed and determined its placement. It was quite moving to be part of this restoration of history.

William Contee and Edward Parago

Come enjoy the park and help out at this upcoming event:

 

Thank you to the Friends of Contee-Parago Park for their important preservation work! For more information on Contee-Parago Park, check out our Five Minute Histories video:

 

Micro-Grants Fund Six Baltimore Projects!

Thank you to everyone who came to our virtual micro-grant party last night and helped select grants for six Baltimore projects! It was a fun and participatory event. Here are the six projects that received funding:

$500 Micro-Grants: 

  • Thomas Johnson Elementary Middle School field trip to the Baltimore Museum of Industry
  • Community murals in Irvington by Cooperative Community Development, Inc.

$250 Micro-Grants: 

  • Website costs for the Friends of St. Vincent Cemetery
  • Shutter restoration at the Irish Railroad Workers Museum Visitors Center

$50 Micro-Grants:

  • Brochures for the Baltimore Immigration Memorial and Museum
  • Research equipment and other costs for the Baltimore Crime Museum

 

We will keep you posted as these projects move along and, again, thank you!!

2021 Virtual Pitch Party: Help Us Give Away Six Micro-Grants!

Please help us give away six micro-grants to advance good ideas in Baltimore. This is our sixth year of providing micro-grants and as we have done in past years, we’ll have five finalists provide three-minute “pitches” of their ideas… and then we will ask you to cast virtual ballots for your favorite. Based on your votes, we will give out two $500 grants, two $250 grants, and two $50 grants. Register here!

This year hear pitches from these organizations:

  • Baltimore Crime Museum
  • Baltimore Immigration Memorial and Museum, Inc.
  • Cooperative Community Development Inc
  • Irish Railroad Workers Museum
  • Friends of St. Vincent Cemetery (FoSVC)
  • Thomas Johnson Elementary Middle School #84

We’ll learn about some great initiatives underway in Baltimore and have a little fun helping them out. This is also Baltimore Heritage’s annual meeting where we elect board members and officers. It’s free and we hope you join us!

Thank you again for supporting us and our work with Baltimore’s historic buildings and neighborhoods. Whether from your couch or your backyard, we hope you can join us at 5:30 pm on October 21, 2021 via Zoom for this special event.

Accepting Ideas for 2021 Micro Grants for Preservation Work

We’re in our 6th year of giving away micro-grants to help fund preservation work in the city. If you have a good idea to help preserve a historic building or place in Baltimore or help revitalize a historic neighborhood, we’d love to hear from you! The process is easy: simply fill out the online application and hit send by Wednesday, September 22, 2021.

We’ll pick the five most promising ideas and give them a chance for one of two $500 grants, two $250 grants, or one $50 grant. The awards will be made on October 21, 2021 at a virtual pitch party. Over Zoom, supporters of each idea will get three minutes to pitch them and at the end, the crowd will cast virtual ballots to decide which ideas receive the micro grants. Whether funded or not, we will promote all the ideas and projects to help them garner attention and volunteers.

The types of eligible projects are endless, and as long as they relate to Baltimore’s history, heritage, historic buildings or historic neighborhoods we will consider them. Past award winners include: restoring leaking masonry at a historic church, launching an after school arts-based safe space program in a historic neighborhood, supporting archaeological efforts at a historic furnace, and providing supplies for a community trying to provide access to a neighboring park. The sky’s the limit!

The amount of the award ($50, $250, or $500) may not be enough to complete an entire project. That’s OK. The goal is to help spark new and support existing neighborhood-level preservation work. You don’t need to be a nonprofit organization or even a formalized group to be eligible. Individuals and small groups are welcome! Complete rules can be found on the application.

And you can now register for October 21’s Virtual Preservation Pitch Party!