Melanie Edwards-Tavares started her career on the South Coast working for multiple nonprofits in New Bedford, where she was born and raised.
She started early.
Growing up, her family didn’t have many resources and money was tight, but she grew up in a Cape Verdean and Portuguese family that always had an open door and would share what they had with their neighbors.
“The house was always open, and there was always something on the stove, anybody who came in, everybody was fed,” she said.
That door included children and teens who were drawn to both Melanie and her mother. While living in New Bedford’s United Front Housing Development as a teen, she and her mother Louan Tavares started the Positive Influence Peer Leadership program to teach teens like herself about civic responsibility.
Edwards-Tavares, the new SouthCoast Community Foundation president and CEO, said she believes this has made a huge impact on how she sees the world, how her children see the world and how she hopes her grandchildren will see the world.
“I think it was just naturally engrained in me that this sense of community goes beyond just you and an action,” she said. “It really is about how you demonstrate your love for those that you know and also those that you don’t.”
The return home
Edwards-Tavares, who lives in Fairhaven, said what brought her to philanthropy was wanting to see things from multiple perspectives.
She was serving as a director of capacity building and nonprofit support for the Hartford Foundation for Public Giving when the pandemic hit and got to see a major transition take place in philanthropy and what happens when people pool their resources, time and expertise together in a crisis.
“I also happened to be a part of philanthropy during the racial reckoning that took place after the murder of George Floyd and got to see how that transition in relation to everything that was happening around the world really ignited a spark for many people when thinking where do I stand for all of this and how can I make an impact and be more connected to community,” she said.
Through her relationships with funders, who became her partners in getting work done, she fell in love with the work and how different systems work together to make a community. She said beyond the immediate need, there’s a much bigger picture.
Her journey led her back to New Bedford when she learned of the SouthCoast Community Foundation opportunity. She said she lived the direct service experience, both receiving services and providing serves, so she feels she has a very good vantage point at this point in her career.
She said she also watched how a very large and very old philanthropic organization was able to quickly pivot to become far more accessible and thought wouldn’t it be wonderful if she could be in her own community while it was all unfolding.
“That’s why I came home,” she said. “I wanted to see the impacts here, and again, having grown up in the city, having grown up on the SouthCoast where my children and my grandchildren live, where my parents and grandparents are aging, I have a vested interest in what happens in the SouthCoast.”
Why now
She thought it would be the most fitting opportunity for her to be in New Bedford for this part of her career and had asked herself why she wouldn’t want to come back to a community that is important to her and to a region where she grew up that is important to her.
She said she couldn’t be happier working at one of the 16 community foundations in Massachusetts covering 41 communities and working on how to bring the resources into the region in all different areas whether it’s education, workforce development or arts and culture.
She started working for the Foundation Sept. 8 during the annual summer gathering and got to meet with donors, nonprofit leaders and staff members get reacquainted with the foundation’s nonprofit, government and other community partners, many she has worked with before.
About her mission
Edwards-Tavares said her mission for the Foundation is to be a convener who brings people who are interested in investing in the community and have a vested interest in the outcome together. She wants to focus on how to be the most impactful with resources and funding and be a voice for the community at large.
“I feel like the mission for us really is to be in the center of all that and to make sure that we’re uplifting the stories of folks here in the region and that we’re very much aware of what we have available to us and where there are gaps and what those gaps are,” she said.
She said it’s also about collaborating with other funders. She has a vision for the Foundation in that she believes they are incredibly adaptive as things grow and change with so many new opportunities before them, such as collective giving, or bringing more than one individual together to pool resources and make decisions together about where the need is the greatest.
“Another part of this is how are we elevating the field of philanthropy, how are we making it more accessible for everyone so folks don’t just think you have to have a really high number in order to give and make an impact,” she said. “What we can see is it takes everyone. Even folks opening up a small fund or pooling their dollars together could make an impact in somebody’s life.”
A sense of connection
She’s interested in doing more with community giving to help make a collective impact on the SouthCoast. She previously oversaw a 20-community initiative with the Hartford Foundation to help meet their most pressing needs.
Each of the committees in those communities received $100,000 to be held in a fund at the Foundation. Half the money was endowed to continue to make a difference while the other half went into current use.
“Those communities worked together to both identify what the most pressing needs were in their communities and then to think collectively about how to invest that money,” she said. “Half of those dollars became endowed so they could continue to produce resources into the future and the other half went into current use, so it was an incredible thing to watch.”
Then they still decide how to set up the grant funds and other decisions. Then there are the discussions about ensuring equity by having representatives from the communities speak to the need and making the rest of the community aware.
“Very quickly you start to realize that it becomes much more about making a connection together as a group and elevating and having difficult discussions about all the competing needs and the challenges and how you direct resources in a way that’s going to be most impactful,” she said.
She said she knows it’s not easy bringing people from different life experiences together.
“It requires a lot of facilitation and diplomacy and helping people to see and hear one another,” she said. “At its heart, it really is about inclusion. It’s an inclusive effort to make sure that the money and those resources are getting to the places that can be more impacted.”
She also wants to make sure that people feel a sense of connection to philanthropy by helping to instill in people the sense of community responsibility and connection. She said one small commitment can really make an impact, and people working together can have more of an impact.
“It’s about giving of your time, your resources and your experience, so I really hope during my time here we can really raise the profile of philanthropy and what it can accomplish and how it becomes a way of life,” she said.
Reaching out to the Foundation
She hopes that anyone interested in learning more about the Foundation and how they can contribute and invest in the community will reach out because anyone willing to give their time and experience or who wants to leave a legacy behind can give back.
In her experience, the nonprofits are the closest to the community and would open the door to help the people who reached out to them to pursue opportunities in life.
“The nonprofit sector was the closest thing for me,” she said. “It just seemed to make the most sense. It was right there. I knew it better than anything else from being both on the receiving end and getting my start there.”
Standard-Times staff writer Kathryn Gallerani can be reached atkgallerani@gannett.com. Follow her on Twitter: @kgallreporter. Support local journalism by purchasing a digital or print subscription to The Standard-Times today.
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