Organized in 1990, The Melville Charitable Trust concentrates its efforts on finding and fighting the causes of homelessness. It supports direct service and housing programs on the state level, particularly in Connecticut, that can serve as models throughout the country. The Trust also funds national research, education and advocacy initiatives focused on housing and policy.
The Trust was established by the estate of Dorothy Bigelow Melville. Throughout her life, Mrs. Melville participated with her husband, Ward Melville, in many philanthropic activities around their home in Stony Brook, Long Island. Mrs. Melville placed no specific strictures on how the funds of the Charitable Trust should be devoted. Rather, she relied on the judgment of her son, Frank Melville, to choose charitable causes.
Frank organized and chaired the Board of the Trust for nearly 15 years, until his death in 2007. The work of the Trust has been defined by the vision and wisdom of the Trust Board which, in addition to Frank, included his wife, Allen, their son, Steve, and their life-long friend and colleague, John R. Gibb. The Trust has also benefited from the enthusiasm and generosity of Frank’s sisters, Ruth Berlin and the late Margaret M. Blackwell.
At its first meeting in 1990, there was unanimous agreement by the Board to consider a common concern - homelessness - as its initial funding focus. Believing that in a healthy society no one should be left behind, the Trust set out to lend support to programs that would alleviate and reduce the damaging impact of homelessness on children, adults and our communities.
Since that time the Trust has invested more than $85 million in grants and Program Related Investments (PRIs) to nonprofit organizations working to alleviate homelessness and develop housing and community solutions.
The Trust is the largest foundation in the United States that is exclusively devoted to focusing on homelessness and affordable housing. It plays a key role in building networks and strengthening the provider, developer, research and advocacy communities. In particular it has funded key innovations in supportive housing that have become models for a nationwide movement, and helped to found Funders Together, a national network of foundations and corporations supporting strategic and effective grantmaking to end homelessness. The Trust’s work has sparked the development of over 150,000 units of permanent supportive housing for the chronically homeless. Its strategic and financial backing has helped to reduce chronic homelessness in America by over 30%.
The Trust has played a lead role in shaping policies on the national level, supporting research and advocacy efforts that have led to an increase of 100,000 new housing subsidies for those with long term disabilities. The Trust has also been a steady and generous supporter of legal efforts supporting community integration for the disabled and mentally ill, through groups such as the Bazelon Center for Mental Health Law. After Hurricane Katrina, The Trust funded a successful state and national level collaborative effort to secure funding for 3,000 units of supportive housing for the disabled in Louisiana. In August 2008, the Frank Melville Supportive Housing Act passed the U.S. House of Representatives. This legislation aims to address the housing crisis faced by millions of extremely low income people with disabilities through effective community integration.
Ultimately, the Trust is setting out to change public thinking about the ways to consider and end homelessness. Its conscious strategy has been to move policy, decision making and the structure of government and philanthropy away from emergency, palliative responses that serve only to perpetuate homelessness and toward proven, lasting and cost effective alternatives that will permanently end homelessness as we know it today.