Jim Joseph passes away and is buried by his family in the Jewish tradition in Israel. Jim was a husband, a father, and son of Margaret and Joseph Lipschutz. Throughout Jim’s childhood, his parents instilled in him a strong sense of Jewish heritage and pride that influenced him throughout his life.

Jim had a highly successful career acquiring and developing commercial and residential property for his company, Interland Corporation. As he built his business, Jim donated generously to a wide variety of Jewish institutions and organizations. He also served on a wide range of charitable boards, with a special emphasis on educating Jewish youth and assisting the Jewish elderly. Jim formed the Jim Joseph Foundation in 1987, a philanthropic foundation to support intensive Jewish education in America.

View the list of Jim Joseph Grantees By Year

© Jim Joseph Foundation 2018. All rights reserved.

Reuse of images is not permitted without permission. The Jim Joseph Foundation thanks the Joseph family and grantees that contributed images and videos.

The Foundation is established as a private foundation, classified legally as a California Public Benefit Corporation.

Dvora Joseph Davey, daughter of Jim Joseph, becomes a member of the Foundation's Board of Directors.

At a Board retreat, the Foundation welcomes significant leaders in the Jewish world to offer their expertise to the Foundation’s Board and professional staff. These madrichim (guides) help the Board to become better informed about opportunities for strategic grantmaking in support of education of Jewish youth in the U.S. The conversation was candid and thought provoking.

The Jim Joseph Foundation developed a Theory of Change to help develop and guide grantmaking strategy.

    

The Foundation awards a special, one-time capital grant of up to $14,070,252 for the state-of-the-art Shimon Ben Joseph Building for Jewish Education at Bar Ilan University in Ramat Gan, Israel (the Foundation’s policy is to not fund capital campaigns). This building serves as the University’s School of Education, the largest school of its kind in Israel.

Connected to this grant, on February 9, 2009, the Foundation awards up to $2,068,659 to fund two cohorts of 14 Jewish educational leaders to participate in the Jim Joseph Foundation Fellows program at Bar Ilan University. Fellows represent four major areas within the world of Jewish education--day schools, camps, congregations, and JCCs.

This two-year professional development experience provides participants with leadership development, enriched Jewish learning, and in-depth training in how to build online communities of practice.

The Pardes Institute of Jewish Studies North America receives the first of four grants to establish its Pardes Educators Alumni Support Project (PEASP) to support alumni in their first years teaching in Jewish day schools. This award of up to $1,957,025 would be followed by additional grants in 2012, 2013, and 2014, all totaling $6,694,304. The 2014 grant helped to support the Pardes Center for Jewish Educators (PCJE), which combines education, enrichment and training for formal and experiential Jewish educators with professional support and development as they begin their careers and thereafter.

The Foundation continues to draw on important lessons from “Mapping Jewish Education,” as the JData team prepares for pilot tests in Boston and San Francisco in 2008-2009.

In partnership with the Charles and Lynn Schusterman Family Foundation, the iCenter for Israel Education is established with a Foundation grant up to $1,500,000. The iCenter goes on to become a leader in the emerging and maturing field of Israel education, forging important partnerships with organizations like Foundation for Jewish Camp, Birthright Israel Foundation, and universities across the country.

Hillel International is awarded a five year grant up to $10,692,432 for its Senior Jewish Educator/Campus Entrepreneur Initiative (SJE/CEI), part of Hillel’s bold new strategy to increase the number of students engaged in Jewish campus life—premised on the idea that meaningful relationships and skilled educators are keys for Jewish student engagement, Jewish learning, and for developing Jewish leaders.

Driving this new direction was SJE/CEI, piloted at ten colleges across the country. The initiative recruited and trained student interns to engage their campus peers in Jewish conversation and activities. Whether a student was involved in the Greek system, intramural sports, or nearly any other activity, it made no difference. Students could talk to their peers, with whom they already shared a common interest, and introduce them to Jewish activity and opportunities. The Senior Jewish Educators then engaged the network of peers in deep Jewish learning and helped them explore Jewish life in ways comfortable to them.

INSIGHT: The SJE/CEI pilot was designed to minimize risk and maximize quality; for example, the Jim Joseph Foundation and Hillel invested significantly in hiring Jewish educators—a costly input. But scaling the program without reducing these costs would not be feasible. Hillel was thus challenged to find ways to address this new hurdle without diminishing the impact of its program.

INSIGHT: Embrace a network-centric approach to build Jewish life. Young adults organize themselves through a multiplicity of social networks, both online and off. Organizations that are porous and allow fluid involvement will be more successful at diversifying and growing those engaged in Jewish life.

Hillel receives a grant up to $2,000,000 to build on the SJE/CEI model. Over the next several years Hillel will evolve and expand so that more than 100 colleges benefit from the talents of a Jewish educator who is trained in the SJE methodology and a networked approach to engagement. In some instances, SJE/CEI will look exactly as the pilot models. In other instances, it will be a “lighter-touch” version that remains true to the initiative’s strategy and core goals. These efforts are expected to impact nearly 200,000 Jewish students. The grant also includes the development of a comprehensive business plan and efforts that are part of Hillel’s three pillars for future growth of the organization—Excellence on Campus: Supporting and Measuring Quality; Excellence in Recruiting and Developing Talent; and Excellence in Resource Development. Another grant in the fall of 2015 for $16 million—the largest the Foundation ever awarded—would be the first major gift in Hillel’s Drive to Excellence Campaign.

The Foundation holds its second convening of Madrichim to further shape its strategic grant-making vision and to receive more input from leaders in the field of Jewish education.

As families throughout the country face extreme pressure with financial decision-making, the Foundation awards a six year grant up to $12,700 to the Jewish Federation of Greater Los Angeles for the LA High School Affordability Initiative (LAHSAI). As a demonstration model (www.LAHighShoolAffordability.org), the grant provides resources for coaching and training in development, builds schools’ development infrastructure, creates a culture of giving, and provides middle-income tuition assistance—all while the high schools raise endowments to sustain these tuition grants.

The five high schools in the Initiative—Milken Community High School, New Community Jewish High School, Shalhevet High School, Yula Boys High School, and Yula Girls High School—would go on to raise $17 million towards their own endowment funds, with the Simha and Sara Lainer Day School Endowment Fund providing a $4.25 million in additional endowment matching funds.

Repair the World would go on to engage tens of thousands of young Jewish adults in Jewish ser-vice-learning programs; train hundreds of educators; and develop related curriculum and pedagogy.

Recognizing the continued hardship many are facing with the economic recession, the Foundation awards up to $11,000,000 in Education Emergency Grants to five Federations over two years to Combined Jewish Philanthropies of Greater Boston, Inc.; Jewish Community Federation of San Francisco, the Peninsula, Marin and Sonoma Counties; Jewish Federation Council of Greater Los Angeles; Jewish Federation of the North Shore, Inc.; and The Jewish Federation of Greater Washington.

Administered by the local Federations, the grants provide needs-based scholarships and tuition subsidies for Jewish children attending Jewish day and high schools, Jewish early childhood programs, and Jewish residential summer camps. A small oversight committee at each Federation ensures that funding helpsJewish families overcome the challenging economic times. At the end of the two-year grants, 6,123 children had received funding for Jewish engagement and education.
SEE TABLE ABOVE

In an ambitious grantmaking endeavor, the Foundation awards a six year “Education Initiative” grant to Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion, The Jewish Theological Seminary, and Yeshiva University—a total of $45 million. The landmark grant brings together three venerable institutions to develop more educators, create new certification programs, and collaborate in new and innovative ways. Programs in the Education Initiative cover everything from early childhood education, to Israel education, to use of new technology in classrooms, to experiential education. By the end of the grant period, more than 1,200 new educators will have been trained and more than 13 new educator programs will remain viable at the institutions.

Mechon Hadar launches Yeshivat Hadar—North America’s only egalitarian yeshiva— with a grant from the Foundation up to $1,375,000, much of which is a matching grant to spur new and increased donors. As a full-year immersive learning program—offering dozens of classes, seminars, week-long intensives and online learning—Yeshivat Hadar is a dynamic environment for young Jewish adults to delve into personal exploration and serious study of Jewish text. Open to men and women, students primarily in their twenties come from around the world to experience—and in some cases even to live—in an egalitarian community that values meaningful text study.

The Foundation challenge grant and funding from other organizations would help position the institution for long-term viability. More students chose to learn and live at Mechon Hadar, and the organization grew and cultivated a wide base of support. Rather than the expected five years, Mechon Hadar was able to meet the matching grant in just two. Today, Mechon Hadar has hundreds of students studying at Yeshivat Hadar each year. As each cohort graduates, the students find their own place in the world—to engage, lead, and learn with other Jews.

BBYO, Foundation for Jewish Camp, Hillel International, and NEXT: A Division of Birthright Israel Foundation convene for a weekend of learning and sharing.

The Foundation passes $200 million in grants awarded.

There are clear benefits to meeting Jewish teens “where they are” and making Jewish life accessible. With this strategy, the Foundation awards a grant up to $1,476,500 for three years to Jewish Student Connection, which establishes Jewish culture clubs in public and secular high schools, guided by full-time Jewish educator-advisors. By meeting teens on their schedule and and capitalizing on peer relationships, JSC is a catalyst for Jewish teens to take ownership of their Jewish future.

JSC clubs in Chicago, Westchester County, southern Connecticut, Denver, and South Florida, today have engaged thousands of teens. With unique programming, JSC brings together groups of teens from a range of Jewish backgrounds, including many with no previous Jewish involvement. JSC teens report that they value the opportunity to connect with a diverse group of their peers from their school to explore what being Jewish means to them.

JSC would receive additional grants on July 1, 2013 (up to $497,500) and February 9, 2014 (up to $497,500) to support its continued growth and expansion.

The people and activities at JSC club meetings are the main reasons teens come through the door. Teens are attracted to JSC by the people in it—their current friends and other Jewish teens in their school. They hear from others that it is a fun place to be and want to see for themselves. This reflects the student run approach of JSC, with student leaders taking responsibility for growing club membership.

By the end of 2010, although the economy slowly improved, all five communities that received Education Emergency grants still had extensive needs. The Foundation awards a $4,950,000 Jewish Education Challenge Grant to five Federations in Boston, Washington, DC, Los Angeles, San Francisco, and the Greater Boston Area. They all met the challenge in two years.

Administered by the local Federations, the grants provide needs based scholarships and tuition subsidies for Jewish children attending Jewish day and high schools, Jewish early childhood programs, and Jewish residential summer camps. A small oversight committee at each Federation ensures that funding helps Jewish families overcome the challenging economic times. At the end of the two-year grants, 6,123 children had received funding for Jewish engagement and education.

SEE TABLE ABOVE

With research demonstrating the importance of—and opportunity presented by—early childhood education, the Foundation awards a four year grant up to $643,341 to the Jewish Community Federation of San Francisco, the Peninsula, Marin and Sonoma Counties to launch the Jewish Resource Specialist (JRS) program within the Bay Area Jewish Early Childhood Education Initiative (ECEI). JRS is a demonstration project at five Jewish Early Childhood Education (ECE) sites in the Bay Area with intentions to replicate, adapt and/or scale.

JRS teachers are mentors and resources for staff and parents, developing relationships at their school site, reaching out to fellow teachers and parents, and deepening Jewish learning. The JRS conducts formal school events, family programming, meetings, as well as informal conversations and consultations with parents to create opportunities for parents to become more fully engaged in Jewish life.

Continuing the strong relationship with the Foundation for Jewish Camp, the Jim Joseph Foundation awards up to $1,648,000 to launch the pilot Nadiv program, in collaboration with The AVI CHAI Foundation, to create six new positions for Jewish experiential educators. Each educator is shared by a Jewish summer camp and a day or congregational school, maximizing the talent and the Jewish learning opportunities the educator helps to create. Developed in close coordination with the Union for Reform Judaism, Nadiv is an experiment in collaborative efforts to share ideas and best practices across multiple organizations and networks.

Over the next few years, Nadiv educators would positively influence Jewish learning in both the camp and school environments.

But, even with some successes, the Nadiv model proved challenging to effectively implement. For a variety of reasons, schools and camps had difficulty collaborating and leveraging the Nadiv educators to their full educational capabilities. Still, all parties involved in the grant learned valuable lessons to continue shaping dynamic Jewish learning in camps and schools.

Each participating school develops a leadership team consisting of administrators and teacher leaders who plan a professional development program for their school as they create and implement a whole school approach to meet the needs of diverse learners.

Jump to Sep 1, 2012 The first cohort of B’Yadenu schools begins: Boston’s Jewish Community Day School (Watertown, MA); Gann Academy (Waltham, MA) and Kehilla Schechter Academy (Norwood, MA)

Jump to Sep 1, 2013 The second cohort of B’Yadenu schools begins: Maimonides School (Brookline, MA); Solomon Schechter Day School of Greater Boston (Newton, MA) and Striar Hebrew Academy of Sharon (Sharon, MA).

Jump to Dec 15, 2014 – As part of the model dissemination process, CJP welcomes in community representatives from Miami and Detroit to learn first-hand about the B’Yadenu model.

The iCenter for Israel Education launches the Goodman Camping Initiative for Modern Israel History to engage Jewish camps in North America in the development of an Israel Education Curriculum. From 2011 – 2015, 36 camps learn strategies to enhance and expand dynamic Israel learning experiences, enabling Jewish campers to have a deeper connection with Israel outside of camp. The initiative is a partnership between the iCenter and Foundation for Jewish Camp with generous support from The Lillian and Larry Goodman Foundations, with contributions from the Marcus Foundation and The AVI CHAI Foundation.

A five-year grant up to $4,846,000 is awarded to The Wexner Foundation to enhance the Wexner Graduate Fellowship/Davidson Scholars Program by strengthening alumni community building and by offering opportunities for networking, peer consultation, mid-career and executive training, mentoring, micro-grants, institutes, think-tanks, and strategies for outreach to new professionals.

Education Initiative The Jewish Theological Seminary (JTS) launches Kesher Hadash , a program in its William Davidson Graduate School of Jewish Education that offers students in Jewish Education the opportunity to spend a five-month semester in Israel to take academic courses delivered at JTS’ Schocken Institute and David Yellin Teachers College in Jerusalem. The students live and study in Israel while gaining expertise in Israel education.

The Foundation—through the Education Initiative—funds the program, helping to create more dynamic Israel and Jewish educators.

Education Initiative HUC-JIR and JTS launch the Jewish Early Childhood Education Leadership Institute (JECELI), a 12-month in-service training program for new Directors of Early Childhood Education Centers or educators working towards a leadership position in a Jewish Early Childhood Education institution.

This unique partnership between JTS and HUC—with academic support from Bankstreet College— offers cohorts the opportunity to learn together during three in-person seminars, including intensive academic study with faculty from JTS, HUC and Bankstreet. There also is one-on- one mentoring throughout the program, including work participants do at their host institution.

The Foundation joins with the Charles and Lynn Schusterman Family Foundation, Leichtag Foundation, Genesis Philanthropy Group, and Maimonides Fund to award Moishe House $6,000,000 to implement a new Strategic Growth Plan to broaden and deepen its impact on Jewish young adults in their 20’s.

Moishe House would grow from 46 residences in 14 countries that engage more than 50,000 attendees a year, to 75 houses in 17 countries that engage more than 80,000 attendees a year by 2015. Moishe House offers more opportunities for Jewish learning, more opportunities to build communities, and more opportunities for young adults to develop leadership and teaching skills.

The first cohort of B’Yadenu schools begins: Boston’s Jewish Community Day School (Watertown, MA); Gann Academy (Waltham, MA) and Kehilla Schechter Academy (Norwood, MA)

A second group of madrichim and community lay leaders convene for the second time to answer a major question: What “big idea” for supporting Jewish education would you propose the Jim Joseph Foundation fund?

The Foundation releases a Summary Report detailing major grantee accomplishments from 2008-2012.

Jewish LearningWorks launches a website documenting BASIS—an initiative that began with a $7,000,000 grant awarded August 28, 2009 that brought together 11 Bay Area Jewish Day Schools, from Sacramento to San Jose, and reached over 2000 students. The schools and their educators devoted four years to making Israel education part of the whole school experience for their students.

By showcasing Israel’s arts and culture, twinning with schools in Israel, traveling to Israel, and integrating Israel education with learning taking place in general studies courses, BASIS puts students and teachers in direct contact with what is happening in Israel today.

The Foundation releases “Effective Strategies for Educating and Engaging Jewish Teens: What Jewish Communities Can Learn from Programs that Work.” The report examines strategies and best practices both inside and outside of the Jewish world to educate and engage teens.

The report is the catalyst for the formation of the Jewish Teen Education and Engagement Funder Collaborative on April 24, 2013, a coalition of national and local funders with plans to co-invest in up to ten new community-based teen education initiatives in the United States. To support these communities with ongoing strategic guidance, the Foundation establishes the National Incubator for Community Based Jewish Teen Education Initiatives, led by The Jewish Education Project.

Insights From the report

Scholars and practitioners widely acknowledge the fundamental importance of a talented staff to successfully engage teens. The significance of opportunities for teens to build substantive relationships with adults also echoes through the literature. Through their active investment in both the content of a program and its participants, young staff members can be effective engagers and mentors.

Insights from the collaborative

Customize Around Community Needs —While each local funder in this collaborative shares common goals and challenges, each one has different resources, different approaches to decision making, different strengths and different timelines. We must listen to every partner’s needs individually and respond in a customized way, even though that means less uniformity across the cohort.

HUC-JIR, JTS, and YU together launch the eLearning Faculty Fellowship to cultivate creativity and knowledge- sharing surrounding the effective use of educational technology in Jewish higher education. 18 faculty members of Cohort 1 participate in the first of five live sessions to learn strategies, tools, and approaches for using educational technologies to improve student engagement and learning. All five live sessions and five additional online workshops are created and led by the Columbia Center for New Media Teaching and Learning (CCN-MTL) at Columbia University.

The eLFF would have a total of 33 participants in its two cohorts, whose faculty reach and engage thousands of students in vibrant Jewish learning.

Opportunities for Jewish and Israel Studies markedly increase at UC Berkeley with the continued expansion of the UC Berkeley Institute for Jewish Law and Israel Studies. The Foundation awards the Institute a five-year grant up to $1,200,000 to provide capacity support as the Institute transitions to sustainability, and to support even more opportunities for Jewish and Israel learning on campus and in the community.

Since its launch in 2011, the Institute has transitioned from exciting start-up to a permanent and productive part of the Berkeley campus. Students have more access to engage faculty as mentors and student advisors, more course offerings in Jewish and Israel studies, and increased access to Israel study abroad options for both undergraduate and graduate students. Beyond this, the Institute contributes to campus discourse with its guest speakers, visiting scholars program, and a monthly Israel Studies Colloquium.

Between 2013 and 2015, the Institute would host speakers and conferences focusing on a variety of areas, from water technology and law in the Middle East, to Talmud and gender diversity issues, to the 70th anniversary of the Nuremberg trials.

Yeshivat Chovevei Torah and Mechon Hadar share the strategies they employed to move from infancy to being positioned for second-stage growth.

Insights

How do start-ups move from infancy to the next stage? Quality programming, a strong brand, skilled leaders (lay and professional), and media presence are all critical. But an obvious, if sometimes overlooked, ingredient is major investment of philanthropic dollars. In the cases of two young educational organizations, Mechon Hadar and Yeshivat Chovevei Torah, major grants transformed and positioned them for second-stage growth.

The second cohort of B’Yadenu schools begins: Maimonides School (Brookline, MA); Solomon Schechter Day School of Greater Boston (Newton, MA) and Striar Hebrew Academy of Sharon (Sharon, MA).

Repair the World launches “Repair the World Communities” in Baltimore, Detroit, Philadelphia, and Pittsburgh—an opportunity for young Jewish adults to link their passion for service with their Jewish identity. Up to ten fellows in each Repair the World Communities pilot city volunteer, study, and recruit other young Jewish adults to create change in low-income neighborhoods and to engage in Jewish learning. The fellows receive training to be leaders, community organizers, and peer-educators with the skills to inspire others and to understand service as part of their Jewish identity.

Shortly after, on December 15, 2013 , the Foundation awards Repair the World its second grant up to $3,000,000.

A five-year grant is awarded to NYU’s Berman Jewish Policy Archive for the creation of the Jewish Survey Question Bank (JSQB), an online resource designed to drastically improve future Jewish social research and serve as a resource for academics, leaders of Jewish organizations, and Jewish educators by helping them craft their own surveys.

JSQB is a compilation of more than 15,000 survey questions and response options used in Jewish social research.

After an initial grant in 2011 the Foundation sees a major opportunity to help advance the field of Jewish Education by awarding a six-year grant up to $1,528,000 to Stanford University to further develop the Consortium for Applied Studies in Jewish Education (CASJE) . The grant, awarded in coordination with The AVI CHAI Foundation, helps CASJE continue its groundbreaking and coordinated scholar-practitioner-funder efforts to produce high quality, applied research that assists Jewish education practitioners to improve their work.

The Consortium includes a host of scholars from over twenty universities, hundreds of practitioners in an array of Jewish education venues and organizations, and a small but growing contingent of funders from across the Jewish world. Together, they focus on areas such as the development of educational leaders in Jewish Education, Teaching and Learning about Israel, and the Financial Sustainability of Jewish Education.

The Foundation welcomes three new board members: Alisa Robbins Doctoroff, Dan Safier, and Joshua Joseph.

The Foundation awards a $250,000 expedited grant to Jewish Jumpstart for its Sefaria Project—taking Judaism’s sacred texts and building an online living library. From Tanakh to Talmud to Zohar to modern texts—and all the volumes of commentary in between—Sefaria is building the future of Jewish learning so that students and scholars around the world can learn, discuss, question, and explore old texts in new ways.

The Foundation awards its first local grant (up to $1,400,000) within the framework of the Jewish Teen Education and Engagement Funder Collaborative to Combined Jewish Philanthropies to launch a four year teen initiative in the Greater Boston Jewish Community. The Foundation anticipates making as many as ten such grants in partnership with local funders over the coming years.

The Foundation releases a model documentation of the North Shore Teen Initiative (NSTI), a pilot project in the North Shore of Boston that brought together 23 previously siloed communities to create more opportunities for Jewish teen education and engagement. NSTI was launched with a Foundation grant up to $981,043 in 2009.

Beginning in 2008, the Foundation awarded a series of grants totaling $1,756,043 through 2015 to pilot NSTI. By February 1, 2014, the Foundation had invested $79.6 million in Jewish teen education with the goal of fostering effective learning experiences for Jewish teens, ages 13 to 18.

As part of efforts to identify, learn about, and share information relating to new opportunities for Jewish education, the Foundation joins with the Leichtag Foundation, The Morningstar Foundation, Rose Community Foundation, Schusterman Family Foundation and UJA-Federation of New York to release Seeds of Opportunity: A National Study of Immersive Jewish Outdoor, Food and Environmental Education (JOFEE).

The Foundation awards two more grants as part of its Jewish Teen Education Funder Collaborative:

A teen initiative grant up to $2,256,015 over four years is awarded to Rose Community Foundation to design and implement a robust community-based Jewish teen education and engagement initiative in Denver, CO to deepen Jewish learning experiences and to increase the number of Denver teens engaged in them.

A teen initiative grant up to $4,403,119 over four years is awarded to UJA Federation— New York to support a community-based Jewish teen education and engagement initiative to increase the number of Jewish teens from the New York area participating in meaningful immersive or ongoing Jewish learning experiences during the summer months. These experiences also will include a year-round follow-up plan for engaging teen participants.

A new $1,750,000 grant for three years is allocated to expand from 5 to 15 Jewish Early Childhood Education (ECE) sites in the Bay Area, broadening this hands-on Jewish learning program to include hundreds of local children, teachers and preschool parents.

Teachers, even those with years of classroom experience and self-reported strong Jewish backgrounds, appreciate that JRS educators have created a school environment that offers richer Jewish tradition, values and culture. Teachers particularly value learning opportunities in which they, as adults, explore Jewish concepts. This helps them more effectively translate these concepts into their work.

Taglit Birthright Israel, in partnership with the iCenter, launches Taglit Fellows as an educational intensive for exceptional Jewish leaders and aspiring Jewish educators looking to staff Taglit-Birthright Israel trips. Funded by the Maimonides Fund, the program aims to train 1,000 Fellows to increase the quality of the Taglit-Birthright Israel experience, play significant roles in the ongoing Jewish journeys of young adults at home, and have a long-lasting, deep impact on the future of Jewish and Israel education.

For 13 years, Brandeis University and HUC-JIR’s DeLeT program has helped develop teachers into dynamic and effective educators. Whether DeLeT graduates teach general or Jewish studies, they all share a common characteristic—they view themselves as Jewish educators and understand how that identity informs their practice.

Since its launch in 2008, Kevah has helped hundreds of people come together in small Jewish learning groups led by trained teachers. Its groups like “Peninsula Russian young adults” and “Oakland hipsters,” meet monthly to examine relevant Jewish themes. And its Teaching Fellowship helps to create tomorrow’s innovative Jewish educators.

Now, with a second grant up to $750,000 over three years, Kevah is poised to increase the number of Kevah groups and Kevah educators in the San Francisco Bay Area, Boston and Denver.

Combined Jewish Philanthropies in Boston welcomes in community representatives from Miami and Detroit to learn first-hand about the B’yadenu model and the concepts supporting implementation, the project toolkit, and initial outcomes directly from those leading the project.

As part of the two-day dissemination, the Miami and Detroit representatives toured schools where B’Yadenu has led to change. They were able to see what the project actually looks like in implementation. By seeing something working, the planning process—while perhaps still daunting—feels incredibly worthwhile.

Education Initiative Yeshiva University’s Certifcate Program in Experiential Jewish Education (EJE)— an immersive training program for outstanding in-service Jewish educators with at least three years of experience—welcomes its 100th student as part of Cohort IV. Since its  first cohort in 2011, the EJE program has offered students the opportunity to learn about and apply the theories, methods, and guiding principles of Experiential Jewish Education.

Over the course of nine months, through three in-person seminars, online learning, one-on-one guidance, and work with mentors, program participants grow together as a strong cohort. To graduate, participants complete an Impact Project that integrates what they’ve learned during the program with their personal development and practice as experiential Jewish educators.

In its 13th year encouraging Jews to discover, question, imagine and create, Reboot is awarded its third grant from the Foundation, totaling up to $6,547,490. Since its founding, "Rebooters" (there are now over 500 in the network) have been the minds—and hands on the ground—behind Reboot's projects that have grown to engage hundreds of thousands of Jewish young adults around the country in projects such as Sabbath Manifesto/National Day of Unplugging; 10Q (for the Ten Days of Awe); Beyond Bubbe; Sukkah City; Unscrolled and a new project, reBar.

 These deeply passionate individuals formed this network of successful young cultural creatives to affirm the value of Jewish traditions and to create new ways for people to make them their own. Reboot provides a distinctive methodology, an open space for “Rebooters” to explore Jewishness and its place in their contemporary lives.

To mark the Foundation’s tenth anniversary, Board members and the professional team hold the June Board meeting in Israel, visiting grantee sites and paying respect to Jim Joseph, z"l.

Education Initiative The Foundation unveils the Year 4 evaluation of the Education Initiative, detailing the number of educators trained; the impact the new degree and certificate programs have had on the educators' careers; and the capacity building and collaboration between the three institutions—HUC, JTS, and YU.

Insights

The evaluation of the Education Initiative demonstrates that the initiative succeeded in promoting grantees’ ability to 1 harness state-of-the-art educational content and delivery formats to dramatically increase the number of qualified individuals who enroll in Jewish education degree and professional development programs; 2 support the growth of educational leadership skills of individuals working in diverse Jewish education settings; and 3 build informed, interinstitutional collaborations.

The Foundation shares its portfolio analysis, offering details on grants awarded, educators trained, and young Jews educated.

Thousands of Jewish nonprofits in the United States will hire new CEOs in this decade. At the same time, many of these organizations already face challenges that test their mission, their strategies, and strain their human and financial resources. Leading Edge’s CEO Onboarding Program will drive better outcomes for Jewish organizations and the community, by investing in new CEOs and their development during this critical transition period.

Signaling its continued growth and increased opportunities to support Jewish teens in ten local communities across the United States, the Jewish Teen Education and Engagement Funder Collaborative announces that it has hired Sara Allen to serve as its first full-time Director. The Collaborative is comprised of 15 national and local funders committed to learning together, to sharing best practices, and to investing in community-based Jewish teen education and engagement initiatives in these ten Collaborative communities across the country.

The Foundation welcomes Barry Finestone as President and CEO

The Foundation holds a Day of Learning in honor of Chip Edelsberg and his ten years of service as the Foundation’s Executive Director.

Dan Safier becomes Chair of the Foundation

In collaboration with the William Davidson Foundation, the Foundation releases Smart Money: Recommendations for an Educational Technology and Digital Engagement Investment Strategy. In addition to discussing funder considerations in Jewish EdTech, the report offers a detailed look at the current landscape of educational technology. Shortly after the release of Smart Money, the Foundation awards four new grants to support digital learning and engagement to BimBam; The Jewish Education Project; Let it Ripple; and 70 Faces Media. Later in the year, the Jim Joseph Foundation and William Davidson Foundation hold a convening with leaders and stakeholders in Jewish EdTech.

VR and AR can be used for virtual visits to Israel and historical and important Jewish sites and landmarks, or for virtual interactions with events in Jewish history or Jewish artifacts. These could serve as stand-alone experiences or ones that supplement others either as introductions to or follow-ups for programs such as Birthright Israel, camp, or Poland trips.

The Foundation releases The Hard Work Behind the Magic of Camp: Results & Learnings from the FJC Specialty Camps Incubator, the independent evaluation showing the success of Foundation for Jewish Camp’s specialty camps incubator. Six new specialty camps are being developed in Incubator III, scheduled to launch summer 2018.

When surveyed nearly a year after camp, over 80% of parents and campers report high levels of satisfaction with their camp experience, which shows that the positive experiences consistently stay with campers long after a camp session’s closing ceremonies. This is an impressive level of satisfaction for brand new camps, which can often be prone to problems as they work out the kinks in their relatively new systems.

The Foundation completes its first-ever open Request for Proposals in Educator Training and Leadership Development. Investments totaling $23.7 million are made in 21 organizations.

Following its winter 2017 Board meeting, the Foundation’s investments since its founding surpass the $500 million mark.

In partnership with the Early Childhood Family Engagement Initiative (ECFEI) of the Jewish Community Federation and Endowment Fund of San Francisco, the Peninsula, Marin and Sonoma Counties, the Foundation releases an updated model documentation of the Jewish Resource Specialist Initiative, which has helped raise the level of excellence of Jewish ECE in the Bay Area and welcome even more families into Jewish Life.

When surveyed nearly a year after camp, over 80% of parents and campers report high levels of satisfaction with their camp experience, which shows that the positive experiences consistently stay with campers long after a camp session’s closing ceremonies. This is an impressive level of satisfaction for brand new camps, which can often be prone to problems as they work out the kinks in their relatively new systems.