One of Baltimore’s most successful nonprofits turns 18!
Randi Pupkin keeps a copy of “The Little Engine That Could” on the coffee table in her spacious, art-filled office.
The classic kids’ book reminds her of how far Art with a Heart, the nonprofit she started out of the trunk of her car in 2000, has come.
Since then, the organization, which provides educational, vocational and creative programming to Baltimore’s most vulnerable citizens, has grown in broad strokes. In late December, Art with a Heart moved into its new 8,000-square-foot home at the Mill No. 1 building at 3000 Falls Road.
The new space is a requirement, as the organization continues to expand its already robust offerings.
“I launched the organization with $6,000 for operating expenses and materials,” says Pupkin, a lawyer by training who is now executive director. “At that time, I lawyered by day, and at night I gave four [art] classes a week. The growth was like a snowball. I put one foot in front of the other, pounded the pavement … incorporated through my law desk. It took a year to get the [nonprofit status], then I was able to apply for a grant.”
Nowadays, says Pupkin, “we provide more than 11,500 classes a year and we have a $1.2 million budget.”
Art with a Heart still offers its core programs: off-site visual art classes that it brings to schools, group homes, shelters, hospitals, senior centers and more.
The organization also facilitates public art and community service projects such as the mosaic and painted murals that hang at various sites like the Maryland Center for Veterans Education and Training, the Krieger Schechter Day School playground, the Annie E. Casey Foundation, the Johns Hopkins Health System Legal Department and at public schools and libraries throughout the city.
Commissioned by outside organizations, the murals are “fee-generating opportunities,” says Pupkin. “As a whole, [Art with a Heart] is different [than some other nonprofits] because it doesn’t rely only on grants, though we desperately need them. We earn half of our budget through commissioned pieces and programming fees that are paid by sites.”
Most recently, Art with a Heart launched its Art of Leadership program, which educates teens from diverse racial, religious and socioeconomic backgrounds about Baltimore’s civic challenges.
“We’re now recruiting for our fourth cohort of 10th- and 11th-grade students,” says Pupkin, who notes that to be part of the 13-month program, students must submit to an application and interview process. The program is meant to build students’ leadership skills by exposing them to topics such as education and health care disparities, crime, poverty, the arts and the racial divide in Baltimore.
“They gather as a community to learn about community,” Pupkin explains. Through the process, the teens forge friendships across racial, religious and socioeconomic lines, and develop new ideas to address the city’s most pressing problems.
In 2005, Art with a Heart launched HeARTworks, a highly structured workforce development program offered in the fall, spring and summer that uses art to teach “soft skills” such as job readiness, and to help students and young adults find jobs and apprenticeships. Participants receive two meals a day and are paid a daily stipend of $15 to attend.
HeARTworks participants engage in journaling, take part in financial literacy workshops and create “marketable” art such as jewelry, housewares, furniture and decorative items that are sold at HeArtwares, Art with A Heart’s social enterprise retail store. Each HeARTworks participant must work two weekend shifts per session at HeArtwares, where they learn cash register skills, merchandising, inventory and customer service. Proceeds from sales are split between Art with a Heart and the organizations that refer youth to the HeARTworks program.
“In the last three years, we’ve created a job pipeline and a list of employers who will hire kids who’ve completed our program,” says Pupkin. Since the HeARTworks program launched, 73 percent of “out-of-school” participants have gone on to find employment.
“The combination of making art and learning job skills is a successful combination,” says Pupkin. “Making art makes people feel good and feeling good makes one more amenable to hearing feedback and learning job skills.”
For more information about Art with a Heart, visit artwithaheart.net.
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