A colorful digital graphic featuring a castle, a tower, a lion illustration, a palm tree, a stylized rook, and abstract shapes in purple, orange, yellow, and white.

Connecting
Baltimore

Everything you need to build a deeply connected life in Charm City.

A colorful digital graphic featuring a castle, a tower, a crab, a ship, and abstract shapes in purple, orange, yellow, and white.

Connecting
Baltimore

Everything you need to build a deeply connected life in Charm City.

New to Baltimore? Start here.

Get matched with an Ambassador and join the newcomer events newsletter.

Start Here

Love Baltimore? Share it with someone new.

Become a Baltimore Ambassador and help a newcomer fall in love with the city.

Become an Ambassador
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A City Shaped by Place and Possibility

Baltimore is one of America's oldest and most storied port cities—a place of deep history. With more than 250 neighborhoods, Baltimore offers a richness of local identity and belonging. Yet for all its size and history, Baltimore has an unmistakable closeness to it—a "Smalltimore" quality where communities overlap, familiar faces reappear, and connections form more naturally. Our city is filled with people who care, who are warm and welcoming, quirky and down to earth, who care about community. Baltimore has always been a city that builds things, and today it has an extraordinary opportunity to build the social fabric that helps people truly belong. Baltimore is on its way to being the most welcoming, well-connected city in America.

We’re Looking for Connection Builders

Join one of our three connection builder programs and become part of our community - meeting other connection builders at regular special events and socials.

Baltimore Ambassador Network

The Baltimore Ambassador Network is for people who love this city and want to help newcomers find their way in — without a heavy lift. You'll be matched with a newcomer, meet them once in person, and check in a few times over their first 90 days.
Commitment: 1 hour per month

Meet the first Ambassadors.

Baltimore Welcome Community

The Welcome Committee helps you go deeper and become a leader in your neighborhood. Get trained by the experts at the US Chamber of Connection and become part of a national community of fellow neighborhood leaders. Commitment: 5 hours per month.

Baltimore Community Builder Network

Join 100+ leaders who run clubs and activity-based communities in the Baltimore area. Attend our monthly peer learning and collaboration circles and get the support you need to continue to build connection in Baltimore. Learn how the most successful clubs secure sponsorship, attract members, build strong communities, and engage volunteers.

Stylized purple illustration of a Baltimore rowhouse facade
A large group of community builders gathered around dinner tables, cheering

The Missing Infrastructure: Connection

Baltimore is so rich in relationships. We have extraordinary organizations and leaders building community. But these efforts are rarely aligned. They often miss people at the moments when connection matters most—during major life transitions like moving, changing jobs, becoming a parent, navigating health changes, or entering retirement.

We lack the infrastructure for social connection. We have built world-class systems for work, health, and education. We now have the opportunity to do the same with connection, by bringing coherence to all the incredible efforts in Baltimore that already exist. For Baltimore, strengthening connection is not just a social good; it is an investment in the city’s long-term vitality.

Dancers in colorful skirts in front of the Patterson Park Pagoda
Friends sharing a crab feast at a long outdoor table

Our Vision

As a Founding Chapter of the United States Chamber of Connection, we are working to make social connection a core part of Baltimore’s civic infrastructure.

Our goal is to bring together leaders, organizations, and residents to strengthen relationships across communities and make it easier for people to build meaningful connections. Our role is not to replace the work already happening across the region. It is to align leaders, amplify what works, and help build the shared infrastructure and resources needed for connection to thrive at scale.

We are focused on four initial efforts:

1. Launching a State of Connection Report

A regional assessment based on the Six Points of Connection framework to understand where connection is strong, where it is breaking down, and for whom. This will provide a shared baseline for the city and help guide collective action—informing priorities, investment, and coordination across sectors for 2027 and beyond.

2. Building a Connection Council

A cross-sector group of leaders from business, government, nonprofits, healthcare, education, art & culture, and community organizations. The Council will develop a shared regional agenda and coordinate efforts to strengthen connection across systems, while elevating and resourcing the organizations already doing the work.

3. Welcoming Newcomers

We are building a set of events and volunteer opportunities to help welcome new residents. From our Ambassador Program to the Welcome Committee to Welcome Week (Sept 26 to Oct 4) to Activity Club Fairs we are helping new people make connections and find community.

4. Growing the Community Builders Ecosystem

A network of people across Baltimore who are already creating spaces for connection, from neighborhood organizers to cultural leaders to social club hosts. This network provides support, tools, visibility, and pathways for collaboration across communities.

Chapter Founder

Alex Zhu, Chapter Founder, smiling

Alex Zhu

Let’s Connect

We would love to have you join us. We are currently looking for sponsors, volunteers, and partners. To stay connected and receive our latest updates, please subscribe and join our community.

Follow us on LinkedIn and Instagram to find out more!

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