Lead our Team!
Executive Director
6/27/19
The Melville Charitable Trust, Inc. (Melville Trust), a highly respected organization with a reputation for “punching above its weight,” is the largest foundation in the United States exclusively devoted to preventing and ending homelessness. Since its founding in 1990, the Trust has upheld the conviction that homelessness is a solvable social issue and that safe, accessible, and affordable housing is an indispensable part of the solution. For nearly 30 years, Melville Trust has invested more than $150 million in grants, national collaboratives, and other program-related initiatives to advance proven, lasting, and cost-effective solutions that empower people with the least resources and biggest barriers to success. And where solutions have not yet been identified, the Trust has supported exploration and innovation to find the most promising approaches.
Melville Trust has an endowment of $146 million and operates a two-pronged strategy: it supports concrete efforts to end homelessness in its home state of Connecticut and works to improve the policy environment at the national level. Melville Trust is committed to justice, innovation, systems-change work, and collaboration and invests in long-term solutions. Not merely a catalytic grantmaker, the Trust is also a convener, advocate, social entrepreneur, and program manager of its own mission-related investments in Hartford. Melville Trust has been effective in changing public thinking around homelessness, driving philanthropy and government policy away from emergency palliative responses toward proven, durable, and cost-effective alternatives.
Some of Melville Trust’s noted program initiatives include: A Way Home America, a cross-sector national movement to end youth homelessness; Funders for Housing and Opportunity, a collaborative focused on improving life outcomes for those who pay more than half of their monthly income on rent or do not have a home at all; Secure Jobs CT, a multi-site pilot designed to better connect the workforce and homeless service systems; and Reaching Home, Connecticut’s campaign to end homelessness.
In recent years, Melville Trust has strategically shifted its focus “upstream,” placing increased emphasis on responding to homelessness by engaging directly with the systems that feed it, including housing, mental health, criminal justice, child welfare, and employment. Although more progress is needed to determine how best to dismantle entrenched systemic inequality, the Trust is clear that multiple systems must be engaged as part of the solution.
In keeping with this holistic approach, Melville Trust has committed to closely examining the racial injustices embedded in issues of housing access. Moving forward, it is invested as a foundation in adopting a racial equity framework through which to approach its grantmaking, collaboratives and partnerships, and internal operations.
After several years of productive strategic and organizational evolution, Melville Trust seeks a new Executive Director to expand upon its endeavors. This next leader will bring a demonstrated commitment to the mission of Melville Trust, along with a record of strategic and impactful leadership within mission-driven organizations. The successful candidate will have experience advocating for and achieving measurable outcomes related to systemic change and will have executed scalable and sustainable solutions for which there is clear evidence of effectiveness. This leader must also bring a demonstrated commitment to dismantling structural racism and other forms of entrenched inequality. The next Executive Director will be an accomplished convener, collaborative partner, and an effective communicator, with strong financial and management acumen, and background as a grantmaker or grantee. Experience reporting to a governing body, supervising a high-functioning senior staff, and varied experience across sectors and disciplines is strongly preferred.
Melville Trust has retained Isaacson, Miller, a national executive search firm, to assist in this search. A full copy of the position description can be accessed via their website at www.imsearch.com/7104.
Rebecca Swartz, Partner | Tatiana Oberkoetter, Associate
Isaacson, Miller | 263 Summer Street, 7th Floor | Boston, MA 02210
Electronic submission of application materials is strongly encouraged.
The Melville Charitable Trust is an equal opportunity employer and candidates from diverse backgrounds are encouraged to apply.
