The Jack, Joseph and Morton Mandel Supporting Foundation has awarded a $90 million matching grant that is meant to boost the Jewish day school system in its home city of Cleveland.

With the matching funds, the Mandel Foundation’s contribution will help support five local Jewish day schools: Fuchs Mizrachi School, Gross Schechter Day School, Hebrew Academy of Cleveland, Joseph & Florence Mandel Jewish Day School and Yeshiva Derech Hatorah. If fully used, the grant would supply half of the total fundraising goal of $180 million for the Jewish Federation of Cleveland’s Day School Transformation initiative.

According to Jehuda Reinharz, president and CEO of the Jack, Joseph and Morton Mandel Foundation, the decision to make this contribution was rooted in research that highlighted the role the Jewish day schools play in creating a long-lasting Jewish identity. “Today’s day school graduates are tomorrow’s Jewish community leaders,” Reinharz said in a statement. 

Paul Bernstein, CEO of Prizmah: Center for Jewish Day Schools, hailed the foundation’s investment, saying it reflects a growing interest in Jewish day schools nationwide. “[The Jewish Federation of Cleveland], the Mandel Foundation and other supporters are taking a visionary stance in really investing in a major way,” Bernstein told eJP. “We think that these kinds of investments will have major impacts on excellence, on affordability and ultimately in growing enrollment in the schools.”

Of the $180 million that the initiative looks to raise, $100 million will be used to establish an endowment across the five schools. This will be the first day school endowment fund in Cleveland, according to Jeffrey J. Wild, chair of the Jewish Education Center of Cleveland and the federation’s initiative. The remaining $80 million will be used for capital improvements. Fundraising for the project will continue through December 2026.  

According to Rachel Lappen, the Jewish Federation of Cleveland’s chief development officer, the initiative has been in the works for several years, halting briefly during the COVID-19 pandemic. It was inspired by other community-wide fundraising initiatives, such as the Toronto Federation’s Generations Trust scholarship. 

“Part of Mort Mandel’s philosophy was investing in leaders,” Lappen told eJewishPhilanthropy. “The Mandel Foundation was ready to help make this investment, knowing that that significant amount of money leveraged as a match would really create an opportunity for our community to step up. Even in our early conversations with community donors, we’ve seen some of the largest commitments that any of the families have ever made.”

The endowments will cover a broad list of needs: security; enabling smaller class sizes; creating specialized extracurricular opportunities; strengthening Hebrew and Israel education; creating educational opportunities for students’ families; supporting students with varying financial and learning needs; and allowing schools to better recruit and retain high-level educators.

“We really wanted to just launch one huge comprehensive campaign that supported all of our schools in the community, so no one felt as if they were in competition,” Lappen told eJP.

The Mandel Foundation’s contribution will also help cover capital improvements, which will vary by school. According to Lappen, with increased enrollment in recent years, several of Cleveland’s day schools are outgrowing their spaces, while other schools want to create more specialized learning environments through STEM labs and technological enhancements.