Beginning in 2023, Baltimore’s Promise partnered with Spitfire to maximize its efforts to ensure all young people in Baltimore City have access to the opportunities they need to thrive.
While Baltimore’s Promise had institutional support from public and private stakeholders and visibility as a backbone organization across the city, it wanted to take its historic work to scale. To do this effectively, we needed to build its communications capacity and more intentionally tell its story as a vital citywide collaborative — and underscore its work across a diversity of sectors and industries to improve outcomes for Baltimore’s young people.
Spitfire worked with Baltimore’s Promise to create a strategic communications plan that identified organization-wide goals, core audiences, and SMART (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-bound) objectives across programs and initiatives, including the launch of the CareerBound Initiative. We collaborated to develop a launch plan that outlined key events and identified key audiences to engage, as well as overarching messaging that described the initiative and the organization’s vision.
Throughout the duration of our partnership, Spitfire traveled to Baltimore to facilitate a series of in-person training sessions to help program and communications staff build skills in online engagement, messaging development, and strategic and ethical storytelling. We also reviewed opportunities for Baltimore’s Promise to tap into or overcome dominant and opposing narratives around Baltimore’s young people and shift the narrative to achieve our goals.
As of 2025, we continue to support Baltimore’s Promise with strategic guidance, planning and coordination on how, where and whom to engage to achieve its vision for young people. These efforts have resulted in the implementation of five-year strategic goals and communications objectives, increased staff capacity and integration of communications activities among Baltimore’s Promise staff.
