Taxpayer-funded nonprofit tied to mayor’s wife closed. Where did its money go?

BALTIMORE (WBFF) — A nonprofit that received roughly $300,000 in taxpayer-backed funding and employed Baltimore Mayor Brandon Scott’s wife shut down last year, but its latest public tax filing showed more than $224,000 in net assets — and there is not yet a final filing showing what happened to the organization’s resources.

Bmore Empowered ended operations in September 2025, after years of receiving public funding, mostly through the Baltimore Children and Youth Fund. Its director of operations was Hana Scott, the mayor’s wife, who was paid $51,000 through the organization from August 2024 to September 2025, according to documents obtained by Spotlight on Maryland.

Now, nonprofit watchdogs say Bmore Empowered’s closure raises an accountability question: Where did its remaining money go?

The organization’s most recent publicly available tax return, covering fiscal year 2024 and filed nearly a year late, reported $224,144 net assets or fund balances. Its fiscal year 2025 return was due in May but has not been filed, according to the IRS and charity databases. Charities can get an extension to November.

Bmore Empowered’s cofounders, Nazaahah Amin and Kieta Iriarte-Amin, did not respond to questions about whether they have plans to submit documentation on how the nonprofit’s remaining funds will be spent.

Laurie Styron, CEO of Charity Watch, a nonprofit watchdog that advocates for financial transparency, said organizations that dissolve are legally required to file a final tax return detailing what happened to their remaining assets. She said nonprofits are supposed to return unspent grant money and donate extra funds to other charities.

“Money doesn’t disappear into thin air,” she told Spotlight on Maryland. “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.”

Styron said she worries that Bmore Empowered’s history of late tax filings gives reason to believe they’ll never disclose where the remaining money went.

“Past behavior is often a good predictor of future behavior, and this charity doesn’t have a great track record of being incredibly transparent and accountable,” she told Spotlight on Maryland. “I’ve seen many, many instances in my 25-year career of charities simply not filing that form and the IRS not following up on it. Hopefully, that won’t be the case here.”

Amanda Beck, a Georgia State University professor specializing in nonprofit accounting, said the absence of a fiscal year 2025 filing leaves a significant hole in the public record.

“We still don’t know what happened in 2025 before the organization shut down—and so there’s a really big transparency gap here,” she told Spotlight on Maryland. “You’ve got an organization that no longer exists. Who is responsible to file the 990 with the Schedule N to explain what’s happened the last couple of years of operations? I think it’s probably up to state oversight.”

‘I’ve never taken a salary’

Spotlight on Maryland reported last week on documents obtained in a public information request with BCYF on how grantees spend taxpayer money. Some of the documents revealed that Hana Scott was paid $51,000 through Bmore Empowered from August 2024 to September 2025.

BCYF is more than 99% funded by Baltimore City taxpayer dollars but operates as a nonprofit. It sent Bmore Empowered about $250,000 since 2022, according to its tax forms, to fiscally sponsor a local arts organization.

When asked about the story last week, Mayor Scott said there was nothing wrong with the payments to his wife detailed in BCYF documents.

“[Bmore Empowered] worked as fiscal agent for smaller organizations as a passthrough. This is not about someone’s personal money,” he told Spotlight on Maryland.

Hana Scott did not respond to questions about the $51,000 payments but released a video three days after the story was published, claiming that she never received taxpayer dollars and was paid by Bmore Empowered as a contractor.

“I’ve never taken a salary, I’ve never been a W-2 employee at any of these local nonprofits. I was a paid contractor every time I did work at a nonprofit locally,” she said in a video posted Sunday on her Instagram. “I’ve been asked to step down from boards because they have seen the stories.”

Hana Scott was Bmore Empowered’s director of operations from September 2021 to September 2025, according to her LinkedIn.

Money to consultants

Bmore Empowered’s latest 990 in fiscal year 2024 does not list Hana Scott’s position or salary but does list about $300,000 spent on contractors—more than half the organization’s spending that year.

Documents obtained by Spotlight on Maryland in a public information request with BCYF reveal specific payments by Bmore Empowered to contractors and consultants. This included sending more than $100,000 to Siyana Partners LLC in 2025.

Siyana touts on its website that it “employs an approach that centers creativity and equity to help organizations tackle problems in sustainable ways.” It did not respond to questions about what services it provided for Bmore Empowered.

Felicia Jones Taylor, one of two partners at Siyana, left a review on Hana Scott’s LinkedIn in April, stating, “I’ve hired Hana twice to support operations in former positions I’ve held Hana is a top notch operations professional!”

Documents show Bmore Empowered sent more than $8,000 between September 2024 and January 2025 to IDGET Consulting LLC, which states on its website that: “We operate from a mindset of abundance, as the creation of a new future requires us to shed the limiting beliefs placed on us by capitalism, white supremacy, and patriarchy. Everyone can and must contribute to our collective liberation.”

IDGET Consulting LLC did not respond to questions about what services it provided for Bmore Empowered.

Styron said there may be legitimate reasons why a nonprofit spends primarily on contracts and consulting but warned that the way those payments are aggregated in tax forms provides limited transparency to the public.

“We often call those line items ‘the kitchen sink’ because charities can put a lot of expenses for consultants and there’s often not a lot of information that substantiates that what the consultants were paid commensurate with the services that they received in return,” she told Spotlight on Maryland.

A Spotlight on Maryland investigation last year revealed how Bmore Empowered received $80,000 from the taxpayer-backed Downtown Partnership to open an office on North Howard Street in Baltimore that never opened. The nonprofit did open an office on North Charles Street but was sued in September 2025 for not paying rent there, then stopped operations.

Bmore Empowered is not the only Baltimore fiscal sponsor to struggle with operations, as Fusion Partnerships also ended operations last year. Strong City Baltimore closed in 2021, then its former CEO pleaded guilty to misdemeanor bank theft for improper use of COVID-19 relief funds.

Styron said the sum of concerns at Bmore Empowered reveal a questionable nonprofit ecosystem in Baltimore.

“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,” she told Spotlight on Maryland.

Spotlight on Maryland is a joint venture by The Baltimore Sun, FOX45 News and WJLA in Washington, D.C. Have a news tip? Call 410-467-4670 or emailSpotlightOnMaryland@sbgtv.com. Contact Patrick Hauf atpjhauf@sbgtv.comand @PatrickHauf on X.