Foundation News —Chip Edelsberg

Foundation News
—Chip Edelsberg, Executive Director

January 2009

The Jewish world once again feels fragile. The unfolding of the scurrilous Madoff scandal, coupled with an unprecedented economic free fall, jeopardize hard earned progress the community has made to resource vital ventures in the education of young Jews.

The Jim Joseph Foundation need not vilify Madoff. He has his own demons to battle, having shamelessly fallen prey to a greed that vitiates the most fundamental tenets of the Jewish faith. What does concern JJF is the ravages emerging from financial rubble that according to one observer “has shaken the American Jewish community to its core—maiming institutions large and small….”

As I mentioned briefly in last month’s Update, this is a time for JJF to re-double its efforts to support grantees. As a relatively new Foundation that has granted approximately $125 million dollars, JJF already has several major grants which it views as investments that it should protect. Accordingly, one of the Foundation’s responses to the current financial crisis is to confer with grantees to see how they are faring in what we know can feel like an economic meltdown. Our intent is to be accessible, supportive, and explicit: we want grantees to know we are available; that they can rely on us for timely payment of grant commitments; and that we expect they will maintain their focus on execution of the particular initiative which JJF has funded. In this last matter, we urge grantees to share with us problems they might be encountering and, if so, how we might assist them in surmounting the challenge(s) they confront.

Our communication is a dialogue, a conversation with agents of JJF’s work whom we relate to as partners. We have a measure of accountability to grantees. Given the volatility of the times, we are reaching out to assure JJF’s major grantees that the Foundation is itself a fiscally responsible enterprise. JJF’s fiscal policies, investment guidelines, accounting procedures, systems of checks and balances, and internal controls are all in place, fully operable, and periodically reviewed. JJF has outside advisors on some of its key committees (the audit committee, as one example). Of special note is that we currently possess the liquidity to meet every single grant commitment the Foundation has made. JJF would like to believe that we can attribute this financial well being to prudent management of JJF’s assets.

Opportunity inevitably emerges from periods of crisis. Two such opportunities I suspect are likely to evolve from the recent events that have decimated institutional as well as personal fortunes and ruptured bonds of trust which are so essential to Jewish philanthropy.

First, I think high performing organizations will be rewarded with grantor support designed to move these 501c3s to a more sustainable, better capitalized future. Secondly, it is my hope that the field moves in the direction of greater grantor-grantee interdependence. One of the key lessons to learn in this current debacle is that the independent sector as a whole will benefit from a gradual rebalancing of power that creates a heightened sense of grantor/grantee reciprocity tethered to a shared responsibility for judicious, transparent use of precious philanthropic resources.

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