Menlo Park suspends its Community Funding Grant program

At its August 13 meeting, the Menlo Park City Council directed city staff to pause the city’s Community Funding Grant program until spring 2025 to allow time to revise and improve the program.

Council members debated whether to continue funding the 28-year-old program because of the large staff effort required to approve relatively small grants and the lack of rigorous evaluation of applicants. But they ultimately decided that the community would be better served by putting the program on hold to give city staff time to redesign it.

The Community Funding Grant program was created in 1996 to support local nonprofit organizations whose programs address the needs of Menlo Park residents. Community needs supported by this Community Grant include programs for people with disabilities, programs that provide emergency assistance and support for low-income individuals, programs for seniors, and programs for youth.

During the 2023-24 grant cycle, Menlo Park awarded grants ranging 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 government report.

Mental health counseling and crisis hotline organization StarVista received the largest grant, $22,500. The organization’s application states that the funds were used to support mental health services for students at Menlo-Atherton High School.

Other notable grant recipients in fiscal year 2023-24 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 complete list of scholarship recipients can be found in the city’s personnel report.

The grants are funded from the city’s general fund, but under program guidelines established in 1996, no more than 1.7 percent of property taxes from the general fund may be allocated to the program.

Although several organizations have received these grants for at least five years in a row, according to the city, no program received a grant in the last year of funding that represented more than 10 percent of its operating budget.

Should there be a Community Funding Grant?

“We’re re-examining this program because one council member felt it shouldn’t exist,” said Vice Mayor Drew Combs, who sits on the City Council’s Community Grants Subcommittee. “The question is whether or not the city should do this … because I think the program is what it is. I think it will never have the rigor that … is necessary to confirm that these organizations deserve the funds that they’re requesting.”

Mayor Cecilia Taylor, who also serves on the Community Finance Grants Subcommittee, said eliminating the grant program would disproportionately impact Menlo Park’s most vulnerable people.

“I’m very interested in seeing the grant program continue. I just look at the social determinants of health and the people who are disproportionately affected, and I think eliminating that (program) would definitely have a negative impact,” she said.

Combs said the program is ultimately run “sideways” by the city and is aimed primarily at smaller organizations. “(They) may be less aware of the grant funding process,” he said.

Council Member Maria Doerr, whose day job is in grant writing, suggested that one way to improve the program would be to set a floor and ceiling on grant amounts, as this could help make the program more efficient as staff focuses on smaller amounts of larger grants. Currently, the city’s Community Grants policy does not specify a minimum or maximum amount. City Manager Justin Murphy said he has rarely seen the city turn down an applicant for this grant program.

“Would it be worth the effort if the grants were a little higher, say at least $2,000 to $5,000,” Doerr said. “I would like to see us reduce the total number of grants we give to maybe 20 to 30 grants a year. That would help reduce the staffing costs.”

City Clerk Judi Herren said one staff member spent 260 hours last year reviewing grant applications and preparing to present those grants to City Council.

Councilmember Nash said she agreed that the minimum grant amount should be higher. “It seems like that would be a lot of work for the applicants and the city for a thousand dollars.”

Nash also said she was concerned about the amount of money being spent on the program while the City Council “will be asking taxpayers to support (new) taxes.” Menlo Park voters will vote on an increase in the Transient Occupancy Tax in the Nov. 5 election.

“I also realize that these are nonprofit organizations that support our community members,” she said. “I’m not sure how to balance that.”

Combs said that given the way the program is structured, he would actually prefer if the city focused 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, these smaller organizations in the city that may be new and not aware of other types of grant funding processes, they end up only receiving a small grant of $1,000 or $2,000,” he said. “When you compare that from a dollar perspective to a $20,000 grant, it may seem like the impact is smaller, but this is a population that would not receive funding from any other source.”

Combs said that focusing on these smaller organizations may run counter to the idea of ​​making the Community Funding Grant program more rigorous, as smaller organizations may not have the infrastructure to ensure thorough accounting for funding. But he ultimately supports continuing the program, despite concerns from other council members about the rigor of the grant awarding process.

“I’m not necessarily interested in pursuing that overarching goal of ‘what’s the most efficient way to do this?'” Combs said. “I didn’t understand that efficiency is part of the problem we’re trying to solve. … If that’s how we approach (the grant program), then I would say my position is that the city should just get out of this business.”

Nash said she believes the city should not be looking into community grant funding at all at this time.

“Put it on hold until we can actually muster the energy to look at the program. … I’m concerned that we … actually respond to the needs of the community, that we help our residents and that we spend our money wisely and use our human resources wisely, which are very limited right now.”

Because it was a study session, the council did not vote on the outcome. However, it did direct city staff to suspend the program for six months and conduct a review. Menlo Park staff will ask previous grant recipients for feedback on the program.

Organizations that have previously received funding are encouraged to complete Menlo Park’s survey to help improve the program for future funding rounds.