This report explores food procurement processes in state and private higher educational institutions in Baltimore and identifies a range of strategies to more fully realize local purchasing power. The report recommends actions to support local minority business enterprises and small businesses, modifications to procurement processes, and outlines legislative opportunities to connect state agency and institutional purchasing power to businesses in targeted reinvestment areas. Many of the recommendations are applicable not just to food but other services and commodities as well. 

This report documents the experiences, successes and lessons learned during the Learning and Action Agenda Project, an effort to provide local grantmakers with information and strategies around issues of importance to the Casey Foundation —particularly around the Foundation’s Family Economic Success framework — and to motivate them to take action on those issues within their own communities and networks.