Each year, Natan members pool their charitable contributions and make all of Natan’s funding decisions collectively – supporting entrepreneurial organizations that demonstrate an innovative approach to addressing the challenges facing Jews around the world. These are the areas of focus for 2010 grants:

Advancing Inclusiveness in the North American Jewish Community

Supporting organizations that are revitalizing the mainstream Jewish community by making it a more tolerant and welcoming place for groups that have traditionally been marginalized, including women, intermarried families, gays and lesbians, and racial/ethnic minorities, in order to avoid dis-affiliation among these populations.

Core Grantees

Supporting a highly selective group of organizations that Natan has funded for more than three years. Core Grantees are those organizations most closely aligned with Natan’s grantmaking mission. Their exceptional leadership develops programs with significant and measurable impact, and they have the potential to transform the field in which they are working.

Economic Development in Israel

Supporting innovative approaches for giving underserved Israelis the tools and guidance to lift themselves out of economic hardship. In 2010, Natan is prioritizing programs in the Negev that strengthen the economy in a particular municipality or region, provide vocational training for residents in strategically important fields, attract new residents to the region and economically empower existing residents, and, ideally, incorporate principles of environmental sustainability.

Economic Empowerment of Jews in North America

Supporting innovative approaches for giving North American Jews in socioeconomic need the tools and guidance to life themselves out of economic hardship.

Emergent Jewish Communities in North America & Israel

Supporting the burgeoning movement of grassroots, transdenominational, independent communities of young Jews who are creating new forms of Jewish religious and communal life in North America and in Israel.

Jewish Peoplehood

Natan’s Jewish Peoplehood grants support innovative organizations that build connections between young Jews across national, ethnic, denominational, and ideological borders; that foster a sense of mutual responsibility between Jews; that emphasize the Jewish People’s collective responsibility to heal the world; and/or that grapple with the special role that Israel plays in contemporary Jews’ identity.

For more information, check out Natan’s How to Apply.

hat tip to AH