A research initiative of Divine Mercy University

Melete

What it costs to prove this simulation platform actually makes helpers better.

Melete is the spoken-conversation practice platform DMU built for counselors, coaches, and spiritual directors. The software works. This three-year campaign funds the research that turns it into a published instrument: expert panels, validated scenarios, trained human raters, predictive-validity studies — across eleven methodologies, plus the coaching and spiritual-direction tracks no one else covers.

$3,000,000–$5,000,000 campaign over three years · 11 named-gift opportunities

At a glance

Goal: $3–5M over three years
Disciplines: 11 methodologies + coaching + spiritual direction
Output: Published instruments DMU owns
Status: Software is running; research program is ready to start

The opportunity

Helpers get better by practicing the real conversation and finding out how they did. That part of training is the hardest to get. Live clients can’t be experimented on. Supervised role-play is expensive and irregular. For non-clinicalhelpers — coaches, mentors, spiritual directors, lay ministers — there’s almost no formal practice infrastructure at all.

Melete is the platform we built to solve that. A trainee holds a spoken conversation with an AI client, then reviews structured feedback on what happened. The software is built and running. Operating costs are low.

What’s missing is the measurement. To say a trainee improved, you need a published instrument: validated scenarios, a scoring rubric that trained raters agree on, AI scoring that tracks expert judgment. Building all that — across eleven methodologies, integrated with DMU’s Catholic-Christian Meta-Model of the Person — takes three years and most of the budget. That’s what the gift funds.

Why the measurement is the real work, not the AI

The temptation is to think the AI is the asset. It isn’t. AI is cheap and getting cheaper. What an AI cannot do on its own is tell a licensing board, defensibly, that a trainee’s empathy improved — or that a coach stayed in scope, or that a spiritual director discerned well. Defensible claims need a validated instrument.

Building and validating one psychological scale takes more than a year and several hundred participants. There’s good precedent that the work is worth doing: therapists’ Facilitative Interpersonal Skills, scored from responses to simulated clients, have been shown to predict real client outcomes years later (Anderson 2009; Anderson et al. 2016). The Melete program runs that same kind of validation work, methodology by methodology.

The matrix is large. Eleven methodologies— CBT, DBT, ACT, Motivational Interviewing, EMDR, Interpersonal, Psychodynamic, Emotion-Focused, Solution-Focused, Person-Centered, plus coaching and spiritual direction — each crossed with the CCMMP, each with its own panel, scenarios, and scoring. Nobody has done it. Once it’s done, the published instruments belong to DMU.

What Melete is, and what it isn’t

Other simulated-practice tools are showing up. That confirms the bet; it doesn’t change it. None of them do what Melete does: a spoken conversation, across eleven disciplines, scored against the CCMMP.

Eleven methodologies, one whole-person frame

CBT, DBT, ACT, MI, EMDR, Interpersonal, Psychodynamic, Emotion-Focused, Solution-Focused, Person-Centered, plus coaching and spiritual direction. Each crossed with the CCMMP. Each scored on its own rubric.

Trains the helpers no one else does

Existing practice tools train licensed-track clinicians. Melete also trains coaches, spiritual directors, and lay ministers — people the Church forms in large numbers and that no validated platform serves today.

The validated science is the moat

Not the AI. AI is cheap; another vendor can match the model in a quarter. The published instruments tied to the CCMMP are what let the platform claim improvement on the record — and three years of validation work can't be shortcut.

What three years of work produces

Four things DMU owns at the end of the grant period.

A library of validated practice scenarios for each methodology and discipline — “clients” reviewed by methodology experts for clinical accuracy and internal consistency.

Scoring rubrics that trained human raters agree on, with the platform’s automated scoring calibrated to expert raters at a published threshold (ICC ≥ 0.75). Without that calibration the AI scoring is just an opinion.

A CCMMP integration that has been reviewed clinically and theologically. The whole-person layer is anthropologically sound, non-moralizing, and cleanly toggleable so the same engine serves secular partners.

Predictive-validity studies that show whether practice performance on Melete tracks real-world competence. That’s the evidence faculties, licensing boards, and follow-on funders need.

The research is published as it lands.

Indicative budget — $3–5M over three years

Most of the budget pays for people and time, not software. The ranges below are early estimates. The detailed budget gets built with the research team once a lead commitment is in place.

Investment area	Indicative range
Research leadership and psychometrics (PI, psychometrician, coordinators)	$1.0–1.4M
Expert methodology panels — 11 disciplines (Delphi, convenings, honoraria)	$0.5–0.7M
Scenario development and content validation	$0.4–0.6M
Human-rater corps — recruitment, training, calibration, reliability	$0.5–0.8M
Validation studies — samples, reliability and predictive validity	$0.6–0.9M
CCMMP clinical + theological review board	$0.2–0.3M
IRB, data infrastructure, dissemination	$0.2M
Platform maintenance (modest — the software exists)	$0.1M
Total	$3.5–5.0M

Sponsorship opportunities

11 named-gift levels

A lead gift anchors the program. Sponsorships fund the parts. The $500k Methodology Sponsor tier is the one that multiplies — eleven methodologies plus the coaching and spiritual-direction tracks, so a coordinated donor group can underwrite the full breadth one track at a time.

Gifts of $11,000 or less can be made online through our secure donation form. Larger named-gift commitments start with a phone conversation with the advancement office — please express interest below and we’ll be in touch.

$1,500,000

Founding lead gift

Anchors the campaign. Names the program. Pays for the founding research leadership — the principal investigator, the psychometrician, the core staff who hold three years of work together. A gift at this level is what tells methodology experts, academic partners, and follow-on funders that Melete is real and worth committing to.

Recognition: Name the initiative in perpetuity (e.g., the *[Donor] Center for the Measurement of Formation*). Lead-patron recognition in every published study, conference presentation, and instrument release tied to the program.

Express interest in sponsoring →

$500,000

Methodology Validation Sponsor

Underwrites the full validation arc for one methodology: the expert panel, the practice scenarios, the scoring rubric, the human-rater calibration, the inter-rater agreement studies. The output is the published instrument for that methodology. The tier multiplies — eleven methodologies plus the coaching and spiritual-direction tracks — so a single donor or a coordinated group can fund a discipline at a time, or all of them.

Recognition: Underwrite the full validation of one major methodology track — named in perpetuity on every published study, scenario library release, and platform release tied to that methodology.

Express interest in sponsoring →

$250,000

Research Fellowship

Endows a post-doc fellowship attached to Melete — a psychometrician or research methodologist who runs validation studies and writes papers. Fellowship gifts are for donors who want the gift to live in the careers of named scholars.

Recognition: Endow a named fellowship (e.g., the *[Donor] Research Fellow in the Measurement of Formation*). The fellow's affiliation carries the named-gift attribution in every publication.

Express interest in sponsoring →

$100,000

Scenario Library benefactor

Funds the validated scenario library for one discipline — the practice clients trainees actually rehearse with. Methodology experts review each scenario for clinical accuracy and internal consistency. Worth particular attention on the non-clinical side (spiritual direction, coaching, lay-minister formation), where no validated practice corpus exists at all.

Recognition: Named benefactor of the validated scenario library for one discipline (e.g., the *[Donor] Scenario Library for Spiritual Direction*). Recognition on every scenario in the library and in each accompanying methodology paper.

Express interest in sponsoring →

$50,000

Rater Calibration Corps

Pays for the human raters whose agreement is what makes the AI scoring trustworthy. They score practice sessions independently; their inter-rater reliability sets the floor for any claim about trainee improvement. Without them, the AI scoring has nothing to calibrate against.

Recognition: Named sponsor of the human-rater training and calibration program. Recognition in the reliability and inter-rater agreement papers published from the program.

Express interest in sponsoring →

$25,000

Founding supporter

The broadest entry into the campaign. For donors who want to back the program from its first year, and for those whose major-gift commitment will come later but want to be on record now.

Recognition: Named in the Melete founding circle on the program's permanent acknowledgments page and in the inaugural research publications.

Express interest in sponsoring →

$10,000

Methodology paper benefactor

Underwrites the full publication costs for one peer-reviewed methodology paper — statistical software licenses, journal submission fees, figure preparation, open-access charges. Academic publishing isn't free; this gift puts a single study into the open literature where the rest of the field can read and cite it.

Recognition: Named in the acknowledgments of one peer-reviewed Melete methodology paper, alongside the funding-disclosure statement.

Donate $10,000 online →

$5,000

Pilot study cohort sponsor

Covers participant honoraria, screening, and consent administration for one pilot study cohort — roughly twenty to thirty trainees or practitioners going through a measurement protocol. Pilots are how a methodology gets a first signal before the full validation study.

Recognition: Named in the acknowledgments of the resulting pilot-study publication and on the cohort-specific page of the Melete project site.

Donate $5,000 online →

$2,500

Conference travel grant

Funds one Melete researcher to present at a major academic conference — APA, APS, NCME, AERA, or the comparable convention for the methodology being presented. Conferences are where new instruments get vetted by the people who will eventually adopt them.

Recognition: Named on the conference paper or poster and on the program's annual research-dissemination recap.

Donate $2,500 online →

$1,000

Founding friend of Melete

The concrete entry-point into the campaign for donors who want a meaningful named acknowledgment without a major-gift conversation. Eligible for the online donation form below.

Recognition: Listed by name on the Melete founding-friends page in perpetuity. Annual update by mail on what your gift helped accomplish.

Donate $1,000 online →

$500

Inaugural circle supporter

The first ring of supporters whose names appear at the program's launch. Especially fitting for friends, alumni, parishes, and small groups who want to be on record at the start.

Recognition: Listed in the inaugural-circle of Melete supporters on the program's launch acknowledgments page.

Donate $500 online →

The ask

$3–5M over three years to build the measurement science under Melete — to prove, on the record, that practice on the platform makes helpers better across the disciplines that train them. The software is built. The research is what turns it into something publishable that DMU owns.

Happy to walk you through a live session and the research plan in person.

Other ways to support DMU:

St. Dymphna Chapel Introduction to General Psychology All giving options

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