The Jewish Week has introduced “The Jewish GDP Project: Beyond the Dollars,” an effort to track and analyze the financial health of the Jewish nonprofit sector over time. Their initial report shows that Jewish nonprofits, still struggling long after the recession, were down $1 billion from 2007 to 2012:

“The wallop taken by the Jewish nonprofit economy – one that has reached into every corner of the Jewish community – was worse than the one absorbed by American nonprofits overall during the Great Recession and its aftermath, the study suggests. And the economic hit to the Jewish community was far worse than that to the American economy as a whole…

The results show an American Jewish communal sector still struggling to recover from the recession, three years after the downturn officially ended. The Jewish GDP for service providers dropped by over $1 billion, a setback in income equivalent to losing more than one dollar in every 10. As for financial intermediaries – the Jewish federations and foundations that fund so much of the work performed by the Jewish service providers – revenues fell by a larger amount and in larger proportion: a $1.29 billion difference equal to almost one-third of 2007 revenues. (For clarity all dollar amounts are adjusted for inflation and expressed in 2012 dollars.)”

For more, see “Nonprofits Still Seen Struggling Long After Recession” on the Jewish Week website.