The Hadassah Foundation hailed a quarter century of activity on Monday night, drawing hundreds of supporters and grantees to the Center for Jewish History on the edge of Manhattan’s “Ladies’ Mile” Historic District (so called for not particularly feminist reasons, namely that it was an area designated for shopping).

The foundation, a subsidiary of Hadassah, the Women’s Zionist Organization of America (HWZOA), was established in 1998 in the wake of a report by the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs that found that despite HWZOA’s work in Israel, many social needs remained unmet, Debbie Minkoff, a former board member of both organizations, recalled in her speech at the gala event. “As volunteers and philanthropists, we have really few outstanding proud moments when we know that what we do makes a difference in the lives of others, and this was one of those moments,” Minkoff said.

The Hadassah Foundation was established with the goal of using philanthropic dollars, less than 2% of which go to women and girls in the United States — even less in Israel —- to further gender equity. 

“In the 25 years since, we have doubled down on our commitment to the importance of working with women and girls around issues of equity and leadership,” Audrey Weiner, board chair of the Hadassah Foundation, told eJewishPhilanthropy. 

The event focused heavily on the foundation’s legacy, with several founding board members in attendance in addition to Minkoff. Dr. Joan M. Leiman, a founding board member, was awarded the Devorah Award, the foundation’s first alumni award, for her career in New York City public health, alongside Emmy Award-winning actress Debra Messing, who received the “Honor of Esther Award” for her work advocating for the Jewish community after Oct. 7. 

Prior to the main event, the foundation hosted three symposia highlighting the work of its grantees — a tour of the Eden Association’s art exhibit highlighting the experience and trauma of Israeli women this past year; the emergency response to women’s economic security featuring the Israel Women’s Network; and a session on empowering Jewish youth to navigate activism and leadership at a time of unprecedented antisemitism featuring Moving Traditions. 

Now the largest Jewish women’s foundation in the United States in terms of assets, the Hadassah Foundation has provided close to $12 million in grants to 110 organizations — 68 in Israel and 42 in North America. The Hadassah Foundation’s work has spanned both Jewish communities from some of its very first grants in 2000 and 2001, which included the American youth group Moving Traditions and the nonprofit Itach Ma’aki – Women Lawyers for Social Justice, both of which are still grantees. 

While the foundation’s mission has remained consistent, the process of grantmaking has developed over the years, said Weiner. According to Weiner, some of the organization’s biggest shifts took place with the extension of grants and with the introduction of a strategic plan in 2022 that divided grants into four categories based on amount and time span. This shift allowed The Hadassah Foundation to support organizations of varying sizes and stages differently — including visionary partner grants, which provide $130,000 to an organization awarded over five years; core grants, which provide $80,000 over three years; spark grants, which provide $20,000 over 18 months; and discretionary grants, which provide up to $5,000 in a one-time payment.  

“We’ve learned over the years that these relationships between us and our grantees are, in fact, relationships. And we want to support them. And we don’t want them to be spending time every year filling out grant applications,” Weiner told eJP. 

Looking back at the organization’s legacy, Weiner reflected on the number of people affected by the Hadassah Foundation’s grantees — millions by the organization’s estimation —- and meaningful policy changes that grantees have been able to accomplish, from the Ruth and Emanuel Rackman Center’s initiative to raise Israel’s legal age of marriage to 18, to the Israel Women’s Network’s labor court victory that ensured that the government cannot hold male-only training courses for civil servants. She also highlighted the network of organizations with which the foundation has nurtured long-standing relationships that allowed the Hadassah Foundation to act quickly in response to Oct. 7 and the ongoing wars in Israel. 

“We said, we want to be able to respond as quickly as possible to organizations that are doing important work and good work. We don’t even want them to apply,” Weiner told eJP. “We thought about which organizations that we had worked with before that we knew could expand their work quickly and respond to what had happened —- and we gave out a series of core grants immediately thereafter.”

The ability to respond rapidly and make measurable impacts on the lives of women and girls is a legacy Weiner hopes will continue beyond the war, and into the next quarter century. 

“Lots of organizations aren’t around for 25 years. And they’re certainly not around stronger and giving out more funds,” she told eJP.

Ed. note: An earlier version of this article stated that the Israeli nonprofit Yozmot Atid participated in the event. Despite being scheduled to, they were ultimately unable to attend due to “scheduling challenges.”