Foundation News —Chip Edelsberg

Foundation News
—Chip Edelsberg, Executive Director

July 2008

After two years of grant making, the Jim Joseph Foundation (JJF) looks forward to a summer in which many grantee beneficiaries will participate in programs of JJF funded initiatives.

This past week, sixteen young BBYO professionals engaged in intensive Jewish study at Boston’s Hebrew College as members of the first cohort in JJF’s supported BBYO’s Professional Development Institute. In the western United States, hundreds of young campers began their first ever residential camping experience courtesy of JJF’s funding for the Foundation for Jewish Camp’s (FJC) JWest Campership Initiative. FJC anticipates over a thousand youngsters will enjoy this experience by summer’s end.

Birthright Israel NEXT and Hillel have selected key personnel to direct their Birthright alumni and campus entrepreneurs/campus educator initiatives, respectively, both funded by JJF. Each of these groups of impressively credentialed professionals will receive training later this summer as they prepare to launch their iniatives this fall in five communities (Birthright – Chicago, Denver, Miami, Philadelphia, and San Francisco) and on five campuses (Hillel – New York University; University of California, Berkeley; UCLA; University of Maryland, College Park; and University of Texas, Austin). Hillel projects engaging 2000 students in 2008-2009 in the campus entrepreneurs/campus educators initiative. Birthright Israel NEXT predicts 10,000 young adults will have multiple alumni experiences during the next fifteen months.

In the Bay Area, home of JJF, the seeds of nearly $4 million in grants to support day school Israel education and early childhood education, including PJ Library, are sewn. Literally thousands of Jewish children and youth stand to benefit from enriched programs subsidized by JJF beginning as early as this summer with distribution of children’s books to Bay Area families.

Raw numbers of participants in initiatives funded by JJF are important indicators to the Foundation, given our interest in increasing the number of young Jews engaged in ongoing Jewish learning as an outcome of JJF’s funding and partnerships with grantee organizations. JJF asks its major grantees to carefully monitor numbers of participants in its programs -- inputs that serve as a baseline for JJF ultimately assessing its philanthropic effectiveness. We recognize, of course, that numbers alone are ultimately insufficient measure of JJF’s grant success.

In another area of the Foundation’s philanthropy, we continue to try to make contributions to the field. In this regard, many readers I trust have received/or seen a copy of the recently released Jewish Service Learning study produced by BTW informing change, under-written by JJF as well as the Cummings and Schusterman Foundations. We plan to issue a companion study this August. We also hope to share an assessment prepared by the Israeli-based consulting firm Platforma on the DeLeT Brandeis/HUC teacher education programs in the next 90 days. Finally, we have just begun to compile information that will be included in our first-ever annual report, which I anticipate we will publish for distribution later this fall.

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