Foundation News —Chip Edelsberg

Foundation News
—Chip Edelsberg, Executive Director

June 2008

The Jim Joseph Foundation is now actively engaged in several major initiatives, working intensively with grantee partners and consultants to develop frameworks for monitoring and assessing JJF-funded initiatives. JJF Directors have awarded approximately $50 million in aggregate to BBYO, Birthright Israel, the Foundation for Jewish Camp, and Hillel. For each initiative, articulating a theory of change, developing a logic model, designing an evaluation plan – these are basic structural elements of JJF’s grant making architecture.

At its May 18-19 Board meeting, JJF Directors added four significant new grants to the Foundation’s portfolio. JJF is now sponsoring two pilot projects – a Bay Area-wide Israel education project for eleven Bay Area day schools and a JCC North Shore (Massachusetts) Jewish Youth Initiative. Directors also made a multi-year commitment to New York University to award full scholarships to 8 doctoral and 16 master’s program students who pursue dual degrees in education and Judaic Studies. These twenty-four young scholars will be granted admission to NYU as Jim Joseph Foundation Fellows. In continuing its strategy of funding projects that support experiential education of Jewish youth and young adults in communal spaces, JJF Directors awarded a grant to the Contemporary Jewish Museum of San Francisco for it to establish an Innovation Fund.

As for research JJF supports, the Foundation is working in partnership with the Cummings and Schusterman foundations to conduct a landscape analysis of Jewish Service learning. We expect to post this report later this spring.

JJF is trying to develop a set of distinctive practices, which when consistently applied to its philanthropy, communicates a clear message about the goals and aspirations of the Foundation.

Please continue to follow our progress on this site and feel free to communicate directly with us if you have observations to share on our grant making.

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