Last Tuesday, Dec. 16, H. Glenn Rosenkrantz stopped responding to text messages, sending the nonprofit world and his friends into panic.

Rosenkrantz wasn’t traveling or involved in a time-consuming project. The previous Thursday, he had fallen and broken his leg, making it harder for him to get around, but his fingers still worked fine. Immobile, he splayed out on his couch in the Upper West Side of New York City, messaging friends, many of whom were leaders in the nonprofit world, and revising annual reports while listening to showtunes. And then suddenly, silence.

The lack of a reply was so out of character that his friend of 38 years, Chris Kent, who had met Rosenkrantz during his days working as a journalist in San Francisco, caught a northbound train from her home in Baltimore to check on him.

“As the day went on, I felt the percentage of my hope that he just hurt himself or is unconscious or running a fever, that was shrinking,” Kent told eJewishPhilanthropy. She just felt something horrible had happened. “I’m sorry I was right. More sorry than I’ve ever been.”

Rosenkrantz served the Jewish community for over 25 years, transitioning from journalism to public relations in the late 1990s, working as senior director of media affairs at the Jewish Federations of North America from 1999-2009 before going independent, supporting the organizations he most revered, even working pro bono or on a sliding scale. Organizations he helped included The Covenant Foundation, The Andrea and Charles Bronfman Philanthropies, Birthright Israel Foundation, Elluminate and The Good People Fund.

Friends and nonprofit leaders describe Rosenkrantz as a man who was brought to tears at every Broadway show he saw and channelled that same empathy and emotion into his work. His passion for the organizations he supported, leaders said, fueled their own. 

Born on July 20, 1961, Rosenkrantz grew up in Bellmore, Long Island. After losing his father during his teenage years, Rosenkrantz’s mom took on the role of sole caretaker to him and his older sister, Amy, and Rosenkrantz returned the favor later in her life, becoming his mother’s caretaker after she fell ill before dying in the 2010s.

After graduating from George Washington University in Washington with a bachelor’s degree in political science and journalism, Rosenkrantz made the leap to the West Coast, serving as a news reporter from 1989 to 1999 for the Contra Costa Times, which has since become the East Bay Times.

Rosenkrantz’s final years in journalism overlapped with his first foray into public relations, when he became the inaugural communications director for The Jewish Community Endowment Fund of the Jewish Community Federation of San Francisco from 1997-2000, a fund that today manages over $2.4 billion in assets.

After moving back to the East Coast in 1999, Rosenkrantz became senior director of media affairs at the Jewish Federations of North America from 1999-2009, before he set out on his own.

Melanie Roth Gorelick met Rosenkrantz in 2023, when he was writing the press release announcing her appointment as the next CEO of Elluminate, a nonprofit supporting Jewish women nonprofit leaders and their organizations. Rosenkrantz became the “comma king” of the organization, helping draft Elluminate’s newsletter, annual report and managing its public relations, including its connections with news outlets like eJewishPhilanthropy.

Gorelick frequently asked Rosenkrantz to invoice for his services, but he never did. The organization never paid him a dime. “He would just say that he [was] so honored to be doing this work,” she told eJP.

Gorelick recalled late-night collaborations, their cursors and keyboards dancing across a shared Google Docs as they worked on press releases and other writing projects together. Last Monday night, they danced together one last time as they edited the organization’s annual report, Gorelick said.

“He really supported having a space in the Jewish community for Jewish women’s leadership that was working for social change and was also championing having an equitable and inclusive Jewish community, not only for Jewish women of color, but for LGBTQ+ and the diversity of the Jewish community,” Gorelick said, adding that Rosenkrantz’s belief in the importance of Elluminate’s work increased her confidence as a leader.

Naomi Eisenberger, executive director of The Good People Fund, told eJP that losing Rosenkrantz feels like “somebody has cut my fingers off.”

Eisenberger, who said that Rosenkrantz charged the bare minimum for his work, said that he was a true confidante. “It’s very weird to have somebody in your life in that way where you share your deepest thoughts on paper,” she said.

The Thursday before Rosenkrantz died, Eisenberger was texting him in the middle of the night, shortly after his fall. She knew he needed a diversion while in the emergency room. Over the next several days, she recommended a neurologist to him, asked what groceries he needed her to bring and tried to talk him into accepting help. “I said to him, ‘Glenn, this is not going to be easy for you,’” Eisenberger said. “‘You have to allow yourself to rely on other people to help.’”

She never expected him to die.

“I should be paying you for this privilege,” he used to tell her about working with The Good People Fund. Every February, Good People Fund employees visit Israel to meet with grantees and scout new ones. In 2020, Rosenkrantz made the journey with the organization, stopping by a gathering at a bar that had been organized by the fund’s grantee Lavo B’tov (“Come happily”), which empowers individuals with disabilities. After he said his goodbyes to attendees, one of the organization’s founders saw him outside, weeping.

“Was Glenn perfect?” Eisenberger said. “No.” She once called him “the poster child for procrastination.” But when coworkers fretted about him possibly missing a deadline, she’d tell them, “Get smart. Give him a deadline that’s two days before.” Then she’d remind them that “He’s never disappointed us. We’ll get it, and when we get it, it will be better than anything anyone else could produce.”

Aside from his marketing work, Rosenkrantz also served as a content producer for more than six years and 60 episodes of the Plaza Jewish Community Chapel’s podcast, “Exit Strategy,” where he collaborated with Stephanie Garry, the chapel’s executive vice president.

Their entire relationship was based around end-of-life conversations, and together, on Monday, they edited his final episode, which aired last Thursday and is dedicated to him. It was titled, “The Intersection of Grief and AI.” While working, Rosenkrantz and Garry joked with each other about creating virtual avatars of each other if they died.

“I said to him, ‘Okay, so if I die, I’d like you to have an avatar of me when I was 36. I don’t want you to have a current avatar of me,” she said. But he told her he didn’t want her to have an avatar of him. In the end, they both agreed that they wanted to be remembered as people, not soulless bots.

For Rosenkrantz, theatre was “his form of therapy in this world,” Garry said. They connected over their shared passion. For more than 20 years, in her past life, she made her living as an actress. The first time she had a Zoom meeting with Rosenkrantz, Garry noticed a purple and orange album cover of the Broadway show “Company” in the background of his screen.

“I see in your background you have a ‘Company’ album,” she said to him.

“Do you know about ‘Company’?” he replied.

“Do I know about ‘Company’?” she said. “I played the role of Amy in 1972 in Des Moines, Iowa, where I was a theater major.”

For Rosenkrantz, it didn’t matter if someone starred on Broadway or on a college stage. Garry instantly became Amy to him. “That sealed the deal for us,” she recalled.

Friends said that Rosenkrantz’s passions for theater, traveling and people are what made his marketing storytelling magical. He traveled the world, not to visit museums, but to meet locals. Since Rosenkrantz’s death, Kent has been contacted by neighbors and family members whom she didn’t realize had ever met him, with whom he had briefly interacted but made indelible impressions.

“He could get very close to them and have a deep conversation very quickly,” Kent said. “That’s probably why he was so good at what he did, because what he was doing was telling stories about all these nonprofits and what they were doing and you have to have that kind of empathy when you start to speak to somebody and you’re trying to get that story out of them.”

A few years ago, Rosenkrantz invited Kent to a Good People Fund conference. “I felt better about life,” she said about learning about the initiatives he was supporting. “No matter what is going on in the world, in Washington and by the people pulling the levers, all of these people like Glenn were taking care of their communities.”

His dedication to the organizations he loved was deep and true, because he was “a true friend to those whom he let into his life,” said Drew Chacker, a friend of 11 years. Chacker recalled being set up with Rosenkrantz by a friend.

On their first date, Chacker shared that five months prior, his partner had died of a heart attack. “Glenn just welled up inside and put his hand on my knee and just kept it there,” Chacker told eJP. “I didn’t know what the future would bring, but I just felt that this was a person whom I wanted to know more about.” The date turned into something more: a friendship, with Chacker becoming Rosenkrantz’s Broadway partner, both bawling in the audience of every show.

“He just had this inner strength and inner beauty. [It] was something to behold,” Chacker said. “And I was lucky,” he said, pausing as he stifled tears. “I was lucky to have experienced it all these years, so I’m sad and grateful.”

Rosenkrantz is predeceased by his parents, Doris and Lawrence Rosenkrantz, and is survived by his sister, Amy Derrick. A memorial service is being planned by Garry in partnership with friends and family to be held in Manhattan after the new year.

“I’m not only mourning my dear friend and colleague, but I’m assisting the family in litigating his end-of-life wishes,” Garry said. “It’s interesting and an incredible privilege for me to be in this spot in his life that we talked about so often.”

On Dec. 7, Rosenkrantz hit the New York theater scene for one final show: “Gotta Dance”  a revue featuring numbers from “A Chorus Line,” “Pippin,” “Singin’ in the Rain” and his all-time favorite, “West Side Story.”

“It definitely pushed all of my buttons,” Rosenkrantz wrote about the musical on Facebook. “And I’ll likely go back for a taste of delicious motion and expression.”