Foundation News —Chip Edelsberg

Foundation News
—Chip Edelsberg, Executive Director

June 2007

As we enter the summer months, the Jim Joseph Foundation (JJF) anticipates a series of conversations and negotiations that could result in several additional significant grant collaborations.

Foundation Directors have urged JJF professionals, building on the JJF – commissioned Brandeis research (report coming soon), to seek out major opportunities in the following areas: expanding the field of Jewish camping; supporting innovative ways to engage teens and young adults in meaningful, modern day, Jewish educational experiences; preparation of Day school leadership.

Concurrently, the Foundation is working with its grantees – Bar Ilan University, BBYO, birthright israel, Brandeis University, JECEI, the San Francisco Federation and The Curriculum Initiative among others – to ensure JJF grant dollars are used in ways that directly serve the purpose(s) for which the funds were awarded.

The Foundation’s emerging style for conducting its philanthropy necessitates developing a close working relationship with major grantees. One of the valuable lessons the Foundation has learned early in its work is that there are existing organizations which, in executing their strategic priorities, are vital agents in the Foundation’s pursuit of its mission and vision.

JJF professionals routinely study the literature on both Jewish education and philanthropic practice in order to deepen our understanding of the field. Recently, by way of example, we have gained new insights from review of The Impact of Day School: A Comparative Anaylsis of Jewish Students; Recent Trends in Supplementary Jewish Education; The Foundation; Reconnecting Education and Foundations; the Irvine Foundation’s Midcourse Corrections to a Major Initiative; and the updated report by Dr. Jonathan Woocher, Redesigning Jewish Education for the 21^st Century: A Lippman Kanfer Institute Working Paper. Collectively, this literature sensitizes us to complexities inherent in sustained grant making that achieves its intended impact while also alerting us to current well researched, thoughtfully considered grant opportunities.

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