Embracing Growth and Engagement: The Melville Trust’s Journey Forward

At the Melville Trust, we believe that our commitment to progress lies not only in looking ahead with optimism and determination, but also in reflecting on past achievements and challenges. As we continue our journey, we are excited to share what we’ve learned and the steps we are taking to deepen our impact and engagement with the communities we serve through our grantees and partners.

Central to our approach is the recognition that meaningful change requires active listening, ongoing learning, and collaborative partnerships. We remain steadfast in our commitment to fostering open, constructive communication. We value the perspectives and values of our grantees and partners, viewing them as essential to our collective efforts to effect positive change.

Building on Data and Feedback for Continuous Improvement

In that spirit of learning, partnership, and growth, Melville Charitable Trust participated in the 2023 Center for Effective Philanthropy’s Grantee Perception Report which offers grantees the opportunity to share completely anonymous and candid insights with participating funders. Since we last participated in this report in 2016, we’ve had a change in leadership and updated our funding approach. Our learnings from the 2016 report informed our new approach and we decided this was the right time to invest again in this additional tool to assess our progress. This study is just one of the many ways we have sought feedback from grantees about our impact and engagement. We are pleased with the insights gained from this report, which serves as a valuable benchmark for our progress, particularly as we assess our new grantmaking strategy.

Below we share some of the results from the CEP survey. You can read the entire report here CEP Final Report 2023.

Reflections of Melville Charitable Trust

According to CEP’s comparison of the Trust and a cohort of similar funders:

Grantees hold Melville staff in high regard, describing them as “approachable,” “attentive,” “responsive,” and “clearly interested in [grantees’] success.” Reflecting these sentiments, grantees’ ratings now place Melville above the typical funder in CEP’s dataset across all measures related to funder-grantee relationships.

We are especially proud to learn that grantees feel our staff are very responsive and benefited from their relationships with our team members.

“Working with the Trust was refreshing in many ways, we had important trust-building meetings early on that allowed us to move into the work with ease. The trust we built with our Program Officer and all members of the Trust we engaged with allowed us to be open, transparent, and vulnerable about our work and the challenges and opportunities we faced.”

According to CEP’s analysis, “Grantees also share positive comments about the Trust in their comments, writing that they “have fostered a collaborative and constructive relationship,” have been able to “push the envelope… to [create] and [impact] lasting change,” and that grantees feel “genuinely supported.” Overall, as one grantee notes, Melville “is more than a funder – they are significant partners in the work.”

To be viewed as a partner in all the vital work the Trust funds is the highest compliment we could receive. We never want to overstep our role as a funder as our grantees are the true drivers of the work; however, we are true believers in important work being done on the ground. We are proud to be active participants and supporters in community-level work and programs when able.

Reflections on Our New Grantmaking Strategy and Application Process

Given our new grantmaking strategy and increased communications, we were especially heartened to receive solid marks related to how we have communicated our goals and strategy. Our strategy is data-driven, with a clear focus on addressing the root causes of racial inequities in rates of homelessness and unstable housing.

“The Trust has been bold (and this is terrific) in naming anti racist policy as a key focus and driver – and this is deeply impactful for the field/sector in addressing housing, systems change and root causes perpetuating the housing crisis and economic crisis.”

Grantees placed the Trust, “in the top 10 percent of CEP’s comparative dataset on all measures related to the Trust’s approach to racial equity, including their agreement that the Trust has clearly communicated and demonstrates an explicit commitment to racial equity in its work, that staff at the Trust embody a strong commitment to racial equity, and that the Trust is committed to combating racism.”

We were heartened to hear that our efforts to make the applications and reporting processes more user friendly – easier, more streamlined and smarter, with the right dose of staff interaction and support – seem to be working. Changes to our pre-application questionnaire and applications received positive feedback as did the grantmaking process:

“I have been very pleased with interactions with our Program Officer as well as the reporting and application guidelines. I actually commented to one of my colleagues that I wish every grant report were as useful, simple and straightforward as Melville’s was.”

Ways to Further Support Our Grantees and the Field

We also received some terrific feedback about how we can better support our grantees and advocate for greater investments from philanthropy.

For example, many grantees would like us to support them with knowledge-sharing and network development opportunities. We learned from the CEP analysis that support beyond financial grants is an area we could expand upon, such as providing more opportunities for convening and connection among our grantees.

Convenings and in-person meetings that can support our grantees and bring more diverse funders to the work is admittedly not an area on which we have focused. However, as with the development of our new GSER, we welcome input on ways we can provide intimate spaces for grantees and their peers to learn, share and collaborate.

Expanding MCT Initiatives

Over the years, particularly since the 2016 survey, we have worked to incorporate our values and the feedback we receive into our grantmaking and the many impactful initiatives we have seeded, including A Way Home America, Funders for Housing and Opportunity, Housing Lab Narrative, and, most recently, PERC.

Building on the insights from the CEP survey and our ongoing relationships with grantees, we have been able to serve as the founding philanthropic partner for these important initiatives that further our commitment to addressing systemic inequity and supporting underserved communities. We have applied the lessons learned from our grantmaking processes as well as the CEP survey and we are working diligently to ensure that our values of collaboration, listening, and community leadership guide our efforts.

We are grateful to the Melville grantees who took part in this survey and we appreciate the opportunity to learn and grow as an organization. We are looking forward to implementing all we have learned as we deepen current and new grantee relationships and initiatives

We value continued feedback and engagement from our grantees and partners. Together, let’s work towards our shared goals of improving lives and fostering thriving communities for Black, Indigenous and Latino/a/x people.