A Baltimore nonprofit that once employed the mayor's wife has shut down without filing the final tax paperwork required to show where its remaining taxpayer-backed money went. BMore Empowered ended operations in September 2025 after being sued for nonpayment of rent, leaving behind unanswered questions about roughly $300,000 in public funding the organization received over the years.
Hana Scott, wife of Baltimore Mayor Brandon Scott, served as BMore Empowered's director of operations from September 2021 to September 2025, according to Fox Baltimore. The nonprofit was co-founded by Nazaahah Amin and Kieta Iriarte-Amin, and it operated offices on North Charles Street while receiving public funding for years. Fox Baltimore reports the organization has no publicly filed fiscal year 2025 tax return, even though its deadline — with a possible extension to November — has passed.
Laurie Styron, CEO of CharityWatch, said dissolving organizations are legally required to file a final tax return detailing their remaining assets, and that nonprofits are supposed to return unspent grant money and donate any extra funds to other charities. She told the station that BMore Empowered's late filings raise concern the group may never disclose where its remaining money went, calling the situation's conflicts of interest and lack of financial transparency “highly problematic.”
A Pattern of Contractor Spending
The station's reporting found BMore Empowered spent about $300,000 on contractors in fiscal year 2024 alone, accounting for more than half of its spending that year. Among the recipients was Siyana Partners LLC, which received more than $100,000 from the nonprofit in 2025, and Idget Consulting LLC, which received more than $8,000 between September and January the following year. Neither Siyana Partners nor Idget Consulting responded to questions about the services they provided, per the same reporting, and Amin and Iriarte-Amin also did not respond to questions about how the group's remaining funds were documented.
The spending pattern is not new. A 2023 analysis of IRS filings by Baltimore Brew found BMore Empowered spent 79% of its operating funds — more than $550,000 — on non-programming expenses such as consulting and management fees in 2021, the same year Hana Scott joined as operations director. BMore Empowered reported $224,144 in net assets or fund balances for fiscal year 2024, according to Fox Baltimore's reporting.
First Lady Responds to Scrutiny
Hana Scott was paid $51,000 through BMore Empowered from August 2024 to September 2025, and has said she was a paid contractor whenever she worked at a local nonprofit. In an August 2026 Instagram video, she addressed the media coverage directly, telling followers she was paid strictly as an independent contractor by the nonprofit and never received funds directly from municipal agencies, as reported by Baltimore Fishbowl. She also said she had been asked to step down from boards because of the news stories.
Mayor Brandon Scott has defended the arrangement, describing BMore Empowered as a fiscal agent and pass-through for smaller organizations, and saying the payments to his wife detailed in Baltimore Children and Youth Fund documents were not improper, according to Fox Baltimore. The Baltimore Children and Youth Fund, known as BCYF, sent about $250,000 to BMore Empowered since 2022 to fiscally sponsor a local arts organization, per the station's reporting. BCYF is funded more than 99% by Baltimore City taxpayer dollars.
A Failed Storefront and a Lawsuit
BMore Empowered also received $80,000 from the taxpayer-backed Downtown Partnership of Baltimore to open an office on North Howard Street, an office that was never opened, Fox Baltimore reports. In July 2023, the Downtown Partnership of Baltimore had selected BMore Empowered as the sole nonprofit in the second cohort of its Black Owned and Operated Storefront Tenancy program, awarding grant funds for a planned storefront at 5 North Howard Street. That location never materialized as part of the group's footprint.
BMore Empowered was sued for nonpayment of rent in September 2025 and stopped operations shortly after, according to Fox Baltimore. Amanda Beck, a Georgia State University professor specializing in nonprofit accounting, said the missing fiscal year 2025 filing creates a significant transparency gap. Styron separately noted that aggregated consultant and contractor payments listed on tax forms provide only limited public transparency into how the money is ultimately used.
Part of a Broader Oversight Problem
BMore Empowered's collapse fits into a wider pattern of instability among Baltimore nonprofits and their fiscal sponsors. Strong City Baltimore closed in 2021, and its former interim CEO pleaded guilty to federal misdemeanor bank theft for misusing $1.4 million in Paycheck Protection Program loans to pay off prior organizational debts, a case that ended with a sentence of time served in October 2025, according to Baltimore Brew. Fusion Partnerships, a fiscal sponsor that supported roughly 100 Baltimore community organizations, ended its fiscal sponsorship services in 2025 following years of financial distress, tax liens, and accounting deficiencies flagged in a 2022 audit.
Oversight of BCYF itself has also drawn scrutiny. A March 2026 report from the Baltimore City Inspector General found the city's Department of Audits had no record of receiving required financial audits from BCYF for fiscal years 2022, 2023, and 2024. Separately, a February 2025 investigative report found BCYF had awarded nearly $1 million in taxpayer funds to another local nonprofit that folded 18 months later without filing required tax forms — a pattern watchdogs say BMore Empowered's unresolved finances now echo.
BCYF was created through a November 2016 city charter amendment approved by Baltimore voters, allocating three cents per $100 of assessed property value to a dedicated, non-lapsing fund generating roughly $14 million to $16 million annually for youth initiatives. In July 2025, legal counsel for BCYF sent a formal letter to Sinclair Inc. criticizing media coverage of the fund's taxpayer expenditures, including reports on staff out-of-state travel and wellness expenses, reflecting ongoing friction between the fund's leadership and investigative outlets.
Mayor Brandon Scott and Hana Scott were married in a private Baltimore ceremony on August 11, 2024, about a year after publicly announcing their relationship and expectation of a child, a milestone Hoodline previously covered. With BMore Empowered's books now closed to public view, watchdogs like Styron and Beck say the absence of a final tax filing leaves both taxpayers and grantees with little way to confirm where the nonprofit's remaining money ended up.
