The Institute for Jewish and Community Research has released FOLLOWING THE MONEY: A Look at Jewish Foundation Giving, a summary that examines giving characteristics of selected Jewish foundations with approximately $20 billion in combined assets who made grants of $1.4 billion to Jewish causes.

The data reveals that perhaps the most important decision private foundations have made is to continue to provide significant support toward traditional centralized organizations while also seeding innovative Jewish projects and organizations. This “and/both” instead of “either/or” approach provides the Jewish community with support for core programs while maintaining the ability to research and develop new programs that meet contemporary needs.

The major findings include:

• Nearly one quarter (24%) of total dollars donated by Jewish foundations, or $335 million, went to Jewish causes, showing a small (3%) increase from the previous IJCR study.
• Thirty-six percent ($119 million) of total dollars donated by Jewish foundations to Jewish causes went to Israel related organizations.
• The average grant to Israel related organizations was over 60% larger than those to other Jewish organizations.
• Jewish foundations are committed to centralized funding in America and Israel.
• Israel advocacy, including trips to Israel, accounted for 24% of all dollars to Israel.
• The percent of Jewish foundation dollars donated to Israel related organizations has increased from 32% to 36% since the previous IJCR study.

FOLLOWING THE MONEY: A Look at Jewish Foundation Giving, is available for download.

The complete study will be available later in 2012.