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At its meeting on Aug. 13, the Menlo Park City Council directed city staff to put the city’s Community Funding Grant program on hold until spring 2025 to provide time to rework and improve the program.
Council members debated whether to continue funding the 28-year-old program due to the large amounts of staff time that are required to fulfill relatively small grants, and a lack of rigor for assessing grant applicants, but ultimately decided that the community would be better served by putting the program on hold to give city staff time to revamp it.
The Community Funding Grant program was established in 1996 to help support local nonprofits whose programs respond to the needs of Menlo Park residents. Community needs that are supported by this community grant include programs for people with disabilities, programs that provide emergency assistance and low income support, programs for seniors and programs for youth.
During the 2023-24 grant cycle, Menlo Park awarded grants that ranged from $1,000 to $22,500 to a total of 40 grantee organizations. The 40 grants cost the city a total of $350,000, according to a city staff report.
Mental health counseling organization and crisis line StarVista received the largest grant, at $22,500. The organization’s grant application says that the funds were used to support mental health services for students at Menlo-Atherton High School.
Other notable fiscal year 2023-24 grantees include Acknowledge Alliance ($16,000), All Five ($13,000), Boys and Girls Clubs of the Peninsula ($10,000), Community Overcoming Relationship Abuse ($10,000), HIP Housing ($12,000); JobTrain ($10,000), LifeMoves ($15,000), Live in Peace, Inc. ($10,000), Nuestra Casa ($10,000), Peninsula Conflict Resolution Center ($20,000), Peninsula Volunteers, Inc. ($15,000), WeHOPE ($10,000), Ravenswood Classroom Partners ($15,000), Samaritan House ($18,000), Vista Center for the Blind and Visually Impaired ($15,000) and Youth Community Service ($10,000).
The full list of grantees can be found in the city’s staff report.
Grants are funded by the city’s general fund, but no more than 1.7% of the general fund property tax can be allocated to the program, according to the program guidelines established in 1996.
Though several organizations have received these grants for at least five years in a row, according to city data, no program in the last year of funding received a grant that funded more than 10% of its operating budget.
Should the Community Funding Grant exist?
“We are re-looking at this program specifically because a council member suggested that it shouldn’t exist,” said Vice Mayor Drew Combs, who sits on the City Council Community Funding Grant subcommittee. “The question (is) should the city do this or not … because I think the program is what it is. It’s not going to, I think, ever have the rigor that … is necessary to validate that these are organizations deserving of the funds that they’re asking for.”
Mayor Cecilia Taylor, who also sits on the Community Funding Grant subcommittee said that taking away the grant program would disproportionately impact the most vulnerable people in Menlo Park.
“I am very interested in the grant program continuing. I just look at the social health determinants and who is disproportionately impacted, and I think taking this (program) away would definitely have a negative impact,” she said.
Combs said that the program is ultimately “done as a side” by the city, and is mainly aimed at targeting smaller organizations. “(They) may be less aware of the grant funding process,” he said.
Council member Maria Doerr, who works in grantmaking in her day job, suggested that one way to improve the program would be to have a defined floor and ceiling for grant amounts, as it may help make the program more efficient if staff focus on smaller numbers of larger grants. There is currently no minimum or maximum grant amount defined in the city’s Community Funding Grant policy. City Manager Justin Murphy said that he has rarely seen the city turn down an applicant to this grant program.
“Would it help the juice to be worth the squeeze if grants were a little bigger, say between $2,000-$5,000 as a minimum,” said Doerr. “I would love to have us reduce the total number of grants that we’re giving to maybe 20 to 30 grants in a year. That will help reduce staff time on this.”
City Clerk Judi Herren said that one staff member spent 260 hours in the previous year reviewing grant applications and preparing to present those grants to the City Council.
Council member Nash said she agreed that the minimum grant amount should be higher. “It seems like that is a lot of work for the applicants and the city for a thousand dollars.”
Nash also said that she is concerned about the amount of money that is spent on this program at a time when the council is going to be “asking taxpayers to support (new) taxes.” Menlo Park voters will be voting on an increased Transient Occupancy Tax during the Nov. 5 election.
“I also recognize that these are nonprofits that are supporting our community members,” she said. “I’m not sure how to balance that.”
Combs said given the way the program is set up, he would actually prefer that the city focus on smaller grants and smaller organizations, rather than focusing on efficiency and giving larger grants to a smaller number of organizations.
“In my experience on the subcommittee, those smaller organizations in the city who may be new, who maybe don’t know of any other sort of grant funding processes … it ends up being a small grant of $1,000 or $2,000,” he said. “If you look at that from a dollar value perspective versus a $20,000 (grant), it may seem as though the impact is less, but this is a population that wouldn’t get funding from any other source.”
Combs said that focusing on these smaller organizations may go against the idea of adding rigor to the Community Funding Grant program, because smaller organizations may not have the infrastructure to provide thorough accounting for the funding. However he is ultimately supportive of the program continuing despite concerns from other council members regarding the rigor of the process to award grants.
“ I’m not necessarily interested in continuing (with) this overarching goal of like, ‘what’s the most efficient way to do this?’” said Combs. “I didn’t understand efficiency to be part of the problem we were attempting to solve. … If that’s how we’re approaching (the grant program), then I would say that my position would be that the city should just get out of this business.”
Nash said she believes that the city should not be in the business of funding community grants at all at this moment in time.
“Put it on hold until a time when we could actually put the energy into looking at the program. … I’m concerned that we are … actually addressing community needs, that we are helping our residents and that we are spending our money wisely and are working wisely with our staff resources, which right now are very limited.”
As this was a study session, the council did not vote on any outcome. However they did direct city staff to put the program on hold for six months, and to do a review of the program. Menlo Park staff will ask previous grant recipients for feedback on the program.
Organizations that have previously received funding are encouraged to fill out Menlo Park’s survey to help improve the program for future funding rounds.
