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PEAK Grantmaking
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Melissa Sines

Programs and Knowledge Director

202-296-2489


Contact Melissa with questions about PEAK’s efforts to improve grantmaking practice or to share your ideas for more equitable and effective grantmaking practice.


As PEAK’s Programs and Knowledge Director, Melissa leads the organization’s work to identify equitable and effective philanthropic practices and advocate for their adoption by grantmakers. Melissa works with our members and sector leaders to support a diverse and inclusive emergent learning network with racial equity at the center. She is busy building a knowledge base of the current and changing state of philanthropic practice, and creating a vision for the strategies and partnerships that will create, iterate, and elevate this knowledge.

Melissa started at PEAK Grantmaking in 2018, in the role of Effective Practices Program Manager. Previously, she served as Education and Accreditation Director at Maryland Nonprofits and the Standards for Excellence Institute, where she oversaw nonprofit accreditation and the association’s learning community.

Melissa is currently a board member at the Maryland Center for Economic Policy, a member of the advisory board for the Business and Economic Department at the Notre Dame of Maryland University, and serves on the Funders’ Planning Committee for the Frederick County Nonprofit Summit. She has also served on committees for United Philanthropy Forum, Independent Sector, Maryland Philanthropy Network, the Frederick Giving Project, and numerous other nonprofits in her local community. She received her MPA from the University of Baltimore and her BA from Hood College.

Melissa is a self-professed nonprofit dork and accidental techie. She is passionate about organizing the people, projects, and knowledge that will create a more just and equitable world for all.