A Baltimore nonprofit that received hundreds of thousands of dollars in taxpayer-backed funding has ceased operations, yet the public record does not yet show what happened to more than $224,000 of its remaining assets.

According to reporting by Spotlight on Maryland, Bmore Empowered closed in September 2025 after receiving approximately $300,000 in public funding, primarily through the Baltimore Children and Youth Fund (BCYF). The organization’s most recent publicly available IRS Form 990, covering fiscal year 2024, reported $224,144 in net assets or fund balances. Its final Form 990, which would disclose what happened to those assets when the organization ceased operations, has not yet been filed.

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A Final Form 990 Matters

When a nonprofit dissolves, transparency does not end.

Organizations that terminate operations are generally required to file a final IRS Form 990 and complete Schedule N, which is designed to disclose how the charity’s remaining assets were distributed and whether any funds were transferred to other charitable organizations.

As CharityWatch CEO Laurie Styron told Spotlight on Maryland:

“Money doesn’t disappear into thin air. It goes somewhere. And you need to make sure that you understand where it’s going in a timely manner so that if it doesn’t go where it’s supposed to, you can hold people accountable.”

Without that final filing, donors, taxpayers, regulators, and grantmakers are left without a complete accounting of what happened to the charity’s remaining resources.

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Transparency Matters—Especially When Public Dollars Are Involved

For CharityWatch, the broader concern extends beyond any single organization.

When taxpayer dollars flow through nonprofit organizations, the public has a right to understand how those funds were used, whether conflicts of interest were appropriately managed, and what ultimately happened to charitable assets after an organization closes its doors.

As Styron told Spotlight on Maryland:

“If you just have these inherent conflicts of interest and you’re not willing to be transparent about the flow of money and why these conflicts were necessary, you weren’t willing to prove that there weren’t other charities that could have done similar work, then that’s highly problematic.”

The filing of Bmore Empowered’s final Form 990 and Schedule N should help answer at least one important question: what happened to the organization’s remaining assets after it ceased operations. Until then, a significant gap remains in the public record.

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