At this year’s Jewish Funders Network International Conference, which kicks off Sunday in San Diego, over 600 funders will grapple with one overarching question: How does the Jewish community operate under uncertainty and successive crises?

Since the COVID-19 pandemic, the Jewish world has been in a chronic state of tumult. The past 2 1/2 years — beginning with the Oct. 7 massacres, followed by Israel’s war in Gaza and a 12-day bombing campaign against Iran last June — have been a blur of terrorist attacks on Jewish institutions across the world, the latest occurring yesterday at a Reform synagogue in suburban Detroit. Amid the current U.S.-Israeli war against  Iran, philanthropy needs to both react to breaking events and also plan for the future, funders observe.

JFN’s annual conference is where philanthropists can gather to cultivate the ideas that pair “urgency with imagination,” Barry Finestone, president and CEO of the Jim Joseph Foundation, one of the sponsors of the conference, told eJewishPhilanthropy. But this year’s conference is marked by an air of uncertainty, as roughly half of the Israeli attendees are unable to attend due to restricted travel because of the war (including eJP Managing Editor Judah Ari Gross), and the Israelis who will attend are going to great lengths to make the trek.

“Philanthropy mirrors the world, and the world is in a relatively serious and defining period,” Finestone said. “There is a great deal of pressure to address immediate challenges, and rightly so, but there’s a growing recognition that philanthropy cannot just live in reaction mode.”

Following a JFN-hosted Shabbaton with scholar-in-residence Rabbi David Kasher, the director of Hadar West Coast, the conference kicks off on Sunday afternoon with an opening plenary featuring philanthropists, actor and activist Jonah Platt, Iranian American businesswoman Mandana Dayani and investor Marc Rowan, discussing how their giving has changed over recent years, with a new focus on rebuilding Israel and fighting antisemitism. This year, eJewishPhilanthropy will serve as the conference’s official media partner, creating a bespoke daily newsletter for attendees, alongside our normal coverage. (Sign up for it here.)

Attendees are expected from nine countries and include individual funders and representatives of family foundations and large grantmakers. The event is co-chaired by local philanthropist Elaine Galinson, chair of the San Diego Jewish Women’s Foundation, and the Israel-based Ronny Douek, president and chairman of Sheatufim, an Israeli organization that addresses social challenges through multi-sector collaboration.

Even with travel out of Israel nearly halted, “it would be ridiculous, probably flat wrong, to have a conference where Israeli voices are absent,” Andrés Spokoiny, president and CEO of JFN, told eJP. He estimates that half the Israelis scheduled for the conference will be present, many traveling through Sharm El-Sheikh in Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula and navigating a web of stopovers. “Israelis want to be present, either physically or remotely,” he said, and those who cannot be at the conference in person will present via Zoom.

“Sadly, it’s not the first time that we have to rejigger and replan a conference,” Spokoiny said. “We did it twice during COVID. It’s kind of funny, during COVID, we were the first conference to cancel in March 2020, we were the first to come back in March 2022, and now we are [one of] the first major gatherings that is happening during the war [with Iran]… It’s more important than ever to gather now, precisely because the situation is what it is.”

After the Oct. 7 massacres in Israel, Jewish philanthropy earmarked for  Israel nearly doubled, rising from $2.5 billion to $4 billion, and the increase is continuing, Spokoiny said. “Markets have been good, that’s a factor of it, so those increases happened in a context of abundance. Also, a lot of people shifted secular giving to Jewish giving.”

Israel is on the top of attendee’s minds, especially rebuilding the country “in a way that learns from the fragilities and issues that were exposed during the war” against Hamas in Gaza, Spokoiny said.

One of the top conversations in the post-Oct. 7 Jewish philanthropic world has been how to combat antisemitism. But in the past year, the discussion has shifted to grappling with the reality that while there are a myriad of organizations and initiatives focused on the issue, few of them have shown concrete and significant results, as rates of antisemitic attacks and incidents remain high — as seen, most recently, on Wednesday and in the multiple violent attacks on synagogues in North America and Europe in recent weeks. According to Spokoiny, “passion isn’t enough.” So a topic at this year’s conference will be how to make antisemitism initiatives more effective. Additionally, he said, attendees want to discuss how to create social cohesion in Israel and how to break the taboo against philanthropists operating in politics. (Spokoiny himself has become an outspoken commentator on politics, both national and within New York City, where he has been a staunch critic of Mayor Zohran Mamdani.) 

Although nonprofits are not supposed to operate in politics, Spokoiny said, “it’s more of a mindset. The shocks to the system from the success of anti-Israel or antisemitic candidates to the threat to democracy or to social programs, all demand political involvement of some sort.”

Conferences today need to do more than just provide content, Finestone said, because content is easily available outside the conference, especially online. “The reasons why we go is [the conference gives] perspective,” he said. “Yes, the sessions are great, and the breakfast and the plenaries, but it’s also a place where you can have honest conversations with colleagues.”

The Jim Joseph Foundation has been a sponsor of the conference since the inaugural event in Chicago in  1991, which was attended by 59 funders less than a year after JFN’s founding. “Getting together with colleagues and supporting communal infrastructure around philanthropy is just a part of what we believe in,” Finestone said.

“Philanthropy is full of many different types of funders,” he said. “It is full of large, private, staffed foundations like the Jim Joseph Foundation, and it is also full of individual funders who are giving at all sorts of different levels, some small and some very large. The reality is, having an ecosystem that provides some type of learning community where people can not just work together and collaborate, but could actually be in learning with one another is critically important, just the same as it is for any association, so to speak. It speaks to the opportunities for professional development. It speaks to the opportunities of just continuing to learn all the time.”

Attendees are trying to do “our best versions of Wayne Gretzky and trying to skate where the puck’s going to be,” Finestone said. The most important connections occur over coffee at breakfast, snacks between sessions or drinks at night. That’s where participants will build relationships with people whom they can call up when an emergency comes up six months down the line, when everyone needs to bring their minds together.

There are many areas that Spokoiny hopes get extra attention during this year’s event. In 2020, JFN formed Canvas, a collaborative fund that pools funds into the arts, based on the knowledge that the Jewish community yearns for arts and culture programs but struggles to fund them. This is still a desperate need in the community, Spokoiny said, and arts and culture initiatives are an essential aspect of building Jewish identity and fighting antisemitism.

He also hopes there is discussion at the event about how to better support vulnerable populations in Israel, who have become more vulnerable in wartime, including Arab Israelis, the elderly and people with disabilities. “If you were at risk before the war, your risk skyrocketed,” he said. Additionally, he hopes participants discuss adult Jewish education, poverty in the Jewish community, which has been exacerbated due to the Trump administration’s social service cuts and the lack of affordability of Jewish life, which is “not a new issue, but now there are a set of new opportunities in this issue, from tax credits to renewed interest.”

The conference will feature a conversation with Sarah Hurwitz, a speechwriter for former President Barack Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama, sessions on AI, publishing after Oct. 7 and revamping the rabbinate, as well as a post-conference cruise with the Jewish Climate Trust, where the organization will share copies of its forthcoming Jewish Guide to Climate Philanthropy.

“What I always want from the JFN conference is that people realize that the way to work effectively is working together, not everybody funding together, but coordinating and having a comprehensive map of the field,” Spokoiny said. “People in philanthropy will tell you that [philanthropy is] the most meaningful thing they do in their lives, and I want people to experience that.”