BALTIMORE—Having performed lots of work in his community in Florida and served as chief fundraiser at his former institution, Northwest Florida State College, Jim Chitwood, director of development and foundation operations for Baltimore City Community College’s (BCCC) main development arm, the BCCC Foundation, is a man on the move in Baltimore. As the one charged with spearheading the kind of robust scholarship fundraising which can power the area’s workforce, he seeks new relationships with the downtown business community, academia and government.
Mr. Chitwood, whose perseverance stems from experiences stretching all the way back to childhood, spoke exclusively to Ib’s Blog about the BCCC Foundation and how he is seeking much-needed funds to drive the programs of a college dedicated to “changing lives and building communities.”
“The BCCC Foundation was started in 1984 by some very forward-looking business leaders in the community and it’s had periods of ups and downs, like most organizations that rely on individuals for support,” Chitwood said. “But the foundation is still here.”
The foundation’s abiding vision, “Building a Foundation of Futures,” includes securing philanthropic support to provide scholarships for outstanding students, funding for state-of-the-art technology, and support for faculty in their instruction of academic programs.
Chitwood said the foundation, just like the college itself, has gone through three main changes.
“We change our name each time and now it’s the BCCC Foundation. We are coming back strong. We’ve got a very good group of community folks on our board,” he said.
Board members include such notables as Dr. Carolane Williams, president of BCCC; Derrick Williams, president of Williams and Williams; and Gregory Finnegan, director of Human Resources at Johns Hopkins Health System.
“We’ve got some people [on our board] who are in the community,” Chitwood said. “They can carry the message of the Foundation which is we support the efforts of the College to do its mission. We’ve got this relationship where the Foundation and the College are really two separate legal entities.”
He elaborated the foundation does take very careful steps not to move further ahead of the college and the BCCC Board of Trustees.
“We must be together on what the College wants done and in that regard we also have trustees as members of the Foundation Board, so they are our guide stone,” he said.
The BCCC Foundation is raising money for scholarships to help students succeed, Chitwood said, adding the foundation has implemented a new program called Distinguished Endowed Teaching Chairs.
“We are seeking donations for Distinguished Endowed Teaching Chairs in the amount of $100,000. These Teaching Chairs will be used in every department of the College,” Chitwood said.
He said Teaching Chairs will be available in every discipline starting with such areas as Green Technology, the Life Sciences Institute and health programs “where we need the best trained—the best faculty.”
“They can get faculty the best training, the best support and if we need extra money for faculty salaries they can go to that Chair Fund for prominently endowed Teaching Chairs,” Chitwood said.
“The BCCC Foundation is putting on a significant push to show the community BCCC is a vibrant and important resource for the community,” he continued.
“We’re not just bricks and mortar out here,” he said. “We are training the workforce. We are training people to go to great four-year institutions with scholarships like yourself [after graduating BCCC in 2007, Ibrahim Dabo was awarded a full scholarship at the University of Baltimore] and another gentleman, Kemardo Henry, who is going to Syracuse University on a 2010 Jack Kent Cooke Undergraduate Transfer Scholarship.
“So Jack Kent Cooke’s name is on that one, and some day when you are rich and famous, we can say, ‘we have the Ibrahim Dabo Endowment which supports 10 students a year at BCCC. It supports those people who come to our shores learning and yearning for an education.’ And that’s my mission.”
Chitwood said, in a very real way community colleges are “dream catchers.”
“There’s a book about the role of community colleges and we help people catch their dreams,” he said.
“If students end up spending four or five years taking developmental courses, then the College is not helping them catch their dreams,” he continued.
“We’ve got to do a better job, and if we can, do that by having the funds that the Foundation can bring in to provide the very best construction to enable students to move on and go out to the workforce and become the green technologists and chemists in the labs and the biotech persons who can help us live longer,” Chitwood said.
He pointed out there are many buildings at the college but only one of them – the Bard Library – has a name.
“We are going to name every building and lab on our campuses—here at Liberty Heights, Reisterstown Plaza Center and down at the Inner Harbor,” Chitwood said.
“We are going to offer people the opportunity to name these buildings [and] put those funds to work in places where they are being named.”
If someone donates $500,000 to name one of the art galleries BCCC plans to construct, and prefers to make payment over five years, I’ll say yes, $100,000 a year for five years is an outstanding and very much appreciated way to continue the BCCC legacy, he said.
“And so we put people together with the needs the College has. That’s my job, building relationships, much like you do every day out there meeting with governors and statesmen and people on the streets.”
Chitwood spoke about building a robust community college fundraising effort, and commented on the foundation’s new website, www.bcccfoundation.org, which serves not only as a resource but provides potential donors with a secure means of making donations.
“We start there,” Chitwood said, making reference to the new website. “Then we reconnect with our donors from the past and reach out to new donors.”
On the importance of BCCC’s relationship with the business community, Chitwood was quick to note strong ties.
“I think it’s immense,” he said. “We have good ties with segments of the community that every nonprofit has had and now we’ve got to expand that circle and go into areas focusing, for instance, on what we’re doing at the Life Sciences Institute with biotechnology and biotech companies.”
The BCCC Life Sciences Institute is located at 801 W. Baltimore St., Building Two of the University of Maryland Baltimore’s burgeoning BioPark campus.
“Now we’re going to expand our circle of asking and seeking contributions to the biotech communities and the people that supply them as well. And then we’ve got the green technology folks over here,” Chitwood said.
He said they will be talking to organizations like Constellation Energy and the other power organizations who are going to be beneficiaries of what the BCCC Foundation is doing as far as green technology and weatherization. “All these are positive things for the community,” he said.
“The future of our foundation is going to be individuals like yourself, who are still in our community, working successfully and who graciously give up their time as board members or as people who say, ‘I can call so and so at such and such, and see if I can get us in the door.’ I want that ability to come from alumni as much as anything because they are testaments to the whole ‘paying it forward’ notion,” he said.
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* This page will be updated with related interview photos. Thank you for your patience.
It is a marvelous piece of writing and I am most honored to be included in the world famous Ib;’s Blog as it continues to tsunami growth around the globe. I am sure your interview will greatly assist the college and foundation as we reach out to donors.
Many Thanks by Good Friend,
Jim