Mel King Institute

The Mel King Institute for Community Building fosters vibrant and thriving Massachusetts communities by advancing the skills, knowledge and leadership ability of professional practitioners and volunteer leaders in the community development field.We leverage collaborative educational partnerships that increase access, encourage innovation, and promote and institutionalize systemic success. Through the ongoing dialogue the Institute facilitates, organizations align their work towards the field’s common vision, and adapt to the changing world.

Community development leaders in Massachusetts formed the Mel King Institute in 2009 to ensure that the field stayed on the cutting edge of new information and had an entity to provide thought leadership. Its namesake, Mel King, is an important leader in the Commonwealth’s political activism and community organizing history. In the mid to late 1970s, Mel led the effort to grow the emerging CDC field with financing and technical assistance. A believer in education, he also taught as a Professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and created its Community Fellows Program. Today Mel runs the South End Technology Center which he founded to improve community and youth access to technology. The Mel King Institute intends to keep this learning and growing alive.

The Institute enables Community Development Corporations and other non-profit organizations and their partners to build more homes, create more jobs, grow more businesses, nurture more community leaders, and pursue more comprehensive community building strategies that also address issues such as transportation, public safety, green space development, workforce development and youth development.