Just five years after enrolling its first students in 1876, Johns Hopkins University became home to the Charity Organization Society, founded with the help of university president Daniel Coit Gilman.

One of the nation’s first non-profit agencies created to coordinate charitable resources across the community under one roof, the society helped introduce the systematic, professional approach to social work that exists today. Its influential general secretary, Mary Ellen Richmond, instituted family case management and rigorous training for the society’s workers, innovations that soon became standard practice within the profession. She went on to head the Society for Organizing Charity in Philadelphia, where she helped establish the state’s Child Labor Committee, and later held a similar position in New York, where she researched and published widely until her death in 1928.

Richmond’s work, and the work of the Charity Organization Society, profoundly altered the way in which cities tried to help their citizens in need. In subsequent years the Charity Organization Society moved off the Hopkins campus, merged with other social services groups and became the Family and Children’s Services of Central Maryland. That group continues its work to this day, just as the Johns Hopkins Institutions—both the university and the world-renowned hospital—continue to work in partnership with their neighbors to address pressing social concerns.

The following pages highlight just some of the projects now underway. Some have been in existence for decades. Others are relatively new. All are based on the idea that, working together, the community and Johns Hopkins can make a difference. It’s what neighbors can do.