Johns Hopkins is a critical economic engine for Baltimore, with hundreds of new employees hired each year, ongoing construction and renovation projects across the city, and annual purchases totaling millions of dollars in goods and services. Johns Hopkins has reaffirmed its long-standing commitment to Baltimore with several major initiatives designed to help the city realize its full economic potential.

In fall 2015, the university and health system launched HopkinsLocal to take a holistic approach to promoting greater economic growth and employment opportunities in the city. HopkinsLocal is a commitment to increase design and construction contracts with local minority- and women-owned businesses, expand the number of new hires that come from city neighborhoods where employment opportunities are needed, and build relationships with more city-based vendors. The initiative will also enhance Johns Hopkins’ ongoing efforts to support diversity in its workforce and among its business partners. In its first year, across both the university and health system, HopkinsLocal has:

• Committed $55.5 million in construction spending with businesses certified as minority-owned, women-owned, or disadvantaged.
• Hired 304 people from the city’s most distressed communities and campus-area communities into targeted positions.
• Increased its purchases of goods and services from Baltimore-based companies by nearly $5 million.
• Hired 119 individuals with criminal records at Johns Hopkins’ Baltimore City locations, including 41 among the HopkinsLocal focus area new hires.

Building on the model of HopkinsLocal, 25 Baltimore-area businesses collectively launched BLocal in April 2016 to expand existing programs or create new ones to build, hire, invest, and buy locally. The Baltimore Sun’s editorial board hailed BLocal as “a much-needed shot in the arm” and “a statement by Baltimore’s most powerful residents that the problems of the city’s powerless matter to them, too.” Taken together, HopkinsLocal and BLocal will infuse at least $69 million into local and minority-owned, women-owned, and disadvantaged businesses over three years.