Sept. 30, 2015: Announcing HopkinsLocal: For a Stronger Baltimore

Dear Colleagues:

Last spring, the unrest in Baltimore shed light on the racial and economic disparities that challenge our city and our nation. Since then, Johns Hopkins University and the Johns Hopkins Health System have joined with community, political, and faith leaders to renew and reaffirm our commitment to supporting our city and our fellow citizens. We are redoubling our longstanding efforts, knowing that the health and well-being of Johns Hopkins are inextricably tied to the physical, social, and economic well-being of Baltimore.

With that in mind, we are proud today to launch HopkinsLocal, a new initiative to build a stronger Baltimore by harnessing our own economic activity to promote growth and employment in our city. This joint effort by the university and health system will focus our entire organization on maximizing opportunities for city residents and city businesses when we build, hire, and buy, and it will allow us to encourage other employers to invest in Baltimore as well. Our goals include:

• filling, by 2018, 40 percent of targeted positions by hiring from within the city's most distressed communities;
• increasing by at least $6 million over three years the amount of goods and services the university and health system purchase from Baltimore-based businesses, including those owned by minorities and women;
• enlisting at least 24 suppliers from outside the area that we will hold accountable to hire, procure, and invest locally; and
• spending at least $20 million in design, consulting, and construction work with minority, women and disadvantaged businesses by applying new targets across all Johns Hopkins construction projects.

As many of you know, Johns Hopkins has been engaged in economic inclusion efforts for some time, and we have made meaningful progress through our community partnerships in East Baltimore and the Homewood area, our projects with city schools, our expanded summer jobs program for city students, and our ex-offender hiring efforts. Yet we also have seen the unrealized opportunities and untapped potential of our city, and we determined several years ago to find ways to leverage even more of our own economic activity for the benefit of our fellow citizens. We asked leaders in construction, human resources, and purchasing across the organization to examine existing policies and practices and to think creatively about ways we could do more. And when the acute needs of the community were brought to the fore last spring, our efforts took on even greater urgency.

The result is HopkinsLocal: a deep, solid, and measurable commitment to increase design and construction contracts with local, minority-owned, and women-owned businesses, expand the number of new hires that come from city neighborhoods, and spend more of our purchasing dollars with city vendors. The initiative will enhance our ongoing efforts to support diversity in our workforce and among our business partners. It will help create the stable jobs that are the bedrock of safe and thriving communities. It will harness our role as an economic engine to create more lasting opportunities and stand with other institutions to support the city's OneBaltimore goals.

We encourage you to visit the HopkinsLocal website to learn more about the initiative and ways you can contribute to our success by purchasing goods and services from city businesses and by hiring city residents. Your support will help sustain healthier, safer, and more vibrant communities where we are all be proud to live, work, and study.

Sincerely,

Ronald J. Daniels             
President, The Johns Hopkins University                              
               
Ronald R. Peterson
President, The Johns Hopkins Hospital and Health System
Executive Vice President, Johns Hopkins Medicine