Nonprofit

WJZ meteorologist Bernadette Woods is leaving the CBS-owned station to join a non-profit firm in New Jersey focused on climate change, she said Wednesday night. Woods, who has been with WJZ for seven years, said she will remain at the station helping with the transition for the next month. After that, she, her husband and their two children will be moving to Princeton, N.J., where she will join Climate Central as staff meteorologist. "I'm very excited about the opportunity in Princeton," she said.

Sometimes it helps to share your goals and setbacks with others in similar straits. That's sort of the theory behind the Maryland CASH Campaign's financial coaching program that will start in June. The program will be open to 10 to 15 Baltimore-area residents who will set a goal and meet weekly for six weeks for group coaching so they can reach their target. Just as some people manage to shed pounds through weight-loss programs with group support, some people achieve financial goals in a group setting, too, said Robin McKinney, director of the Maryland CASH Campaign.  "Some prefer the accountability you have with a group.

Greg Cantori plans to downsize when he retires. Really, really downsize. His retirement home is 238 square feet — one-tenth the size of the average new American house — and sits in his Anne Arundel County yard. He and wife Renee can hitch it to a truck and take it with them wherever they go. "It's so cheap — that's what's so cool about this," said Cantori, 52, who envisions a surf-and-turf future, alternating between the house and a sailboat. "We bought the house for $19,000.

Eric Schwaab, a native Baltimorean who's spent the last three years in the federal government overseeing fisheries and coastal conservation efforts, is returning home to take a new post at the National Aquarium . Schwaab, 52, currently an acting assistant secretary in the leadership at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration , will join the aquarium July 1 as its first-ever senior vice president and chief conservation officer, the...

On Thursday, the day the Supreme Court upheld Obamacare, a 47-year-old Baltimore woman went to the drugstore, and pulled out her debit card to pay for a prescription refill. But she didn't have enough money in the account to cover the $425 charge. So she asked the pharmacist and staff for a favor. "I asked them to break up the prescription to give me one-third," says the woman, who would not allow her name to be published because she didn't want to disclose her medical conditions.

Beatrice A. "Bea" Checket, who had been head of activity programming at a Westminster retirement community and earlier had established the Women's Business Institute, died Feb. 25 from pancreatic cancer at Gilchrist Hospice Care. She was 67. Beatrice Ann Noppenberger was born in Baltimore and raised in Federal Hill. She was a 1960 graduate of the Institute of Notre Dame and attended the College of Notre Dame of Maryland. She worked as a third-grade teacher at St. Matthew's Parochial School on Woodbourne Avenue and then joined Pratt & Whitney Aircraft in Hartford, Conn.

Enterprise Community Partners, a Columbia affordable-housing nonprofit, said Thursday that it has received a $300,000 grant for community revitalization work. E TRADE Savings Bank earmarked the donation for Enterprise's work in financing affordable housing, rebuilding communities and responding to the blighting effects of foreclosures in neighborhoods.

David Ross is a father of two little children, 3-year-old London and 9-month-old Maia. But he's also a father figure to other youngsters through his work as a member of the 5th L, a Baltimore performance poetry troupe that often works with students, according to his wife, Courtney. For that reason, Ross was honored Sunday at a Father's Day Festival, the first such event sponsored by Fathers Rock, a nonprofit group dedicated to showing appreciation for fathers and father figures.

A three-decade-old Columbia nonprofit group that helps immigrants adjust to life in Howard County is searching for a new director with the departure Wednesday of Jennifer Blake, FIRN's director for nearly the past three years. Roy Appletree, who held the job for about four years before Blake, has agreed to return as interim director until the position is filled, he said. Appletree began Thursday. Blake did not return calls for comment. Nestor Benavides, FIRN's board president, said the change will provide "new blood and energy, and a focus on the future," and was prompted by a combination of tightening finances and Blake's desire to work for a national group.

In the world of small, for-profit businesses, saving your boss a few thousand bucks in postage could very well result in a tidy little bonus in your next paycheck. In larger corporations, money-saving ideas are regularly rewarded with ample bonuses. These incentives encourage employees to take some responsibility for producing a healthy bottom line.So why not offer financial incentives to nonprofit employees? Heresy, you say? Unthinkable in the nonprofit world?"It just wouldn't work" is the phrase I most often hear when I suggest an incentive system, including noncash incentives such extra vacation days for nonprofit employees.

The United Way of Central Maryland will provide nearly $3 million in community grants intended to provide financial stability to families, quality education to children and healthy alternatives to individuals, the organization said this week. In all, 71 nonprofit programs will receive funding to change the lives of impoverished Marylanders. The money is expected to help offset a loss in services some may experience as a result of federal sequestration. "Our region is simultaneously experiencing increases in poverty rates and government cuts to critical social programs," said Dominique Moore, chairwoman of the local United Way's Baltimore City Partnership Board.

The United Way of Central Maryland's Access to Healthy Food Initiative distributed more than 2.8 million pounds of groceries - enough to fill 56 tractor trailers - to low-income individuals and families, the organization announced Tuesday. Businesses, organizations and individuals, including 89 healthy food drives across the region hosted by Constellation Energy, Johns Hopkins institutions, LifeBridge Health and others, made contributions. The amount of food is nearly double the initiative's first-year goal set when it kicked off in 2011.

When officials in Washington evaluate the consequences of the sequester, Tiara Bland wants them to consider the sixth-grade girls at Mother Seton Academy. Bland, a 22-year-old AmeriCorps member at the Baltimore academy for low-income children, said the decision by government leaders to impose across-the-board spending cuts will shortchange the urban youths who turn to her for advice on math problems and life. Bland, who aspires to be a school psychologist, is one of 17 AmeriCorps members performing education and literacy work in Baltimore for the Notre Dame Mission Volunteers.

A global nonprofit that battles the spread of viruses has moved into the University of Maryland BioPark after sprouting from the university's Institute of Human Virology. Global Virus Network is the west side research park's newest tenant. It moved from incubator space in the virology institute, within the University of Maryland School of Medicine. GVN combines the resources and expertise of 30 virology research centers in 21 countries, helping them to share information and ideas to explore vaccine development, understand virus behavior and respond to viral outbreaks.

Residents across the Baltimore region could soon be hit with annual bills of $18 to more than $100 to pay for stormwater treatment, wetland restoration and other projects aimed at improving Chesapeake Bay water quality. The fees, to be charged by localities starting this summer, have drawn complaints from local officials who object to the state mandate that requires the fees but also businesses and nonprofit organizations who estimate that, in some cases, their charges could be tens of thousands of dollars.

Amid complaints over what critics dismiss as a "rain tax," some powerful lawmakers in Annapolis are mounting a last-minute attempt Monday to delay state-mandated storm-water fees that Baltimore city and Maryland's nine largest counties are about to assess their property owners for cleaning up the Chesapeake Bay. State Sen. Joan Carter Conway , chair of the Education, Health and Environmental Affairs Committee, said Sunday she plans to propose...

Owned and operated by the Church of the Brethren's general board, the Brethren Service Center in New Windsor is home to six nonprofit organizations that work in relief and development, disaster response, social justice, peace education and hospitality. The groups are: Emergency Response/Service Ministries: Part of the Church of the Brethren, the ministries provide volunteers to help clean up and rebuild homes after disasters and to comfort children in traumatic disaster situations. Their material resources effort annually ships clothing, medical and school kits and blankets to more than 70 countries.

The Baltimore Office of Promotion & The Arts is accepting applications for its CityArts 2003 Grant Program to promote visual, literary and performing arts in city communities. The program awards two types of grants: Community Arts Projects Grants, which help city artists and nonprofit cultural organizations promote arts discovery; and General Funding Grants, which defray costs for nonprofit cultural organizations. Grant applications are due by 4:30 p.m. Feb. 24. Applications: 410-752-8632 or download one from www.promotionandarts.

The Community Foundation of Anne Arundel County awarded some $134,000 to eight county organizations this month through its Ladders to Success grant program. Jan Hoffberger, program director for the foundation, said every day the organization "sees examples of the good work being done by many nonprofits throughout our community," and the grants seek to support those efforts. Grant awards generally fall under Youth Development or Economic Opportunity categories, and recipients of this year's grants include organizations that help residents with developmental disabilities, groups helping youngsters with homework and programs juvenile offender intervention.

In response to your editorial about programs in Baltimore's Oliver neighborhood, I would like to highlight the efforts of Baltimore HELPS (Healthy Eating Leading Partnerships for Seniors), an initiative being led by Medicare's Quality Improvement Organization in Maryland ("Fixing Oliver," March 13). As noted in the editorial, there is wide variation in life expectancy in the city. In fact, life expectancy in the Oliver neighborhood is approximately 20 years less than other areas in the city.