Good Friday morning!

Steven Spielberg and Kate Capshaw launched a new L.A.-based foundation yesterday whose mission is to fund films that reveal the complexity and diversity of the Jewish experience. Roberta Grossman, a documentary filmmaker with a focus on Jewish history, will serve as producing director at Jewish Story Partners, and Caroline Libresco, formerly Sundance Catalyst’s director, will serve as artistic director. 

Spielberg and Capshaw have donated $1 million in initial funding through their Righteous Persons Foundation, and Jewish Story Partners has $2.5 million in financing due to a matching grant from Maimonides Fund and support from Jim Joseph Foundation, according to a statement from the group.

The organization will soon announce $500,000 in grants to support U.S.-based, feature-length documentaries. International filmmakers and makers of fiction films will be able to apply in coming years as the foundation plans to expand its grantmaking and eligibility requirements.

The Network of Jewish Human Services Agencies (NJHSA) will be co-hosting its annual conference this year with Neshama: The Association of Jewish Chaplains, a new member of the network, NJHSA CEO Reuben Rotman told eJewishPhilanthropy. 

About 1,700 people have signed up for the conference, which will run online April 19-22. The event will include a plenary by Rabbi Susan Berman Stone, who will speak on “moral injury,” the witnessing or enacting of behaviors that contradict one’s values. A common problem of soldiers, moral injury has affected health care workers during the pandemic.

Four historically Black medical schools will receive $6 million from Bloomberg Philanthropies to expand coronavirus vaccination outreach in minorities communities. The foundation will give $2.1 million to Morehouse School of Medicine in Atlanta, $1.6 million to Charles R. Drew University of Medicine in Los Angeles, $1.6 million to Howard University College of Medicine in Washington and $869,000 to Meharry Medical College in Nashville.

A new report from Wealth-X, a provider of data and analytics, titled “Very High Net Worth Handbook 2021” shows that the global population of very high net worth individuals who have between $5 and $30 million rose 1.3% to 2.7 million people worldwide in 2021, with the biggest increases happening in Asia and North America. In both Asia and Europe, the top hobby among high net worth people is sports, while in North America, it’s philanthropy. (h/t @TeddySchleifer)

FUNDING MECHANISM

Funders gather on Zoom to discuss racial justice

Courtesy Jordan Daniels

Moved by the racial justice protests last summer in the wake of the killing of George Floyd in police custody, a group of foundations and federations has met online regularly since the fall to discuss racial equity and inclusion in the Jewish community, and in some cases to make related grants. The Racial Equity and Inclusion (REI) Funders Circle consists of about 35 individuals representing as many as 25 funders and grantmaking organizations, including the Jim Joseph and Leichtag foundations, the Lippman Kanfer Foundation for Living Torah, Charles and Lynn Schusterman Family Philanthropies and UJA-Federation of New York. The online brainstorming and discussion sessions were inspired by last summer’s protests and the national reckoning on race in America that they sparked, said Hindy Poupko, deputy chief planning officer at UJA-Fed NY. “We are trying to figure out how we can make a contribution in this space. Lots of other people are in the same boat,” said Aaron Dorfman, president of the Lippman Kanfer Foundation. “Is racial justice a program area? Is racial justice a lens that should be applied to all work? Probably both. Probably there are other ways of thinking about it, too.”

How to help: The conversations focus on how organizations that don’t have racial justice as their core mission — unlike the Jews of Color Initiative, a San Francisco-based nonprofit whose mission is to support Jews of color through grants, research and education — can do racial justice work, Dorfman said. Ilana Kaufman, executive director of the Jews of Color Initiative, has been an essential interlocutor of the REI Funders Circle, Dorfman added. “I think it’s great that some funders are connecting around racial justice themes. Next to the kavod that we all feel about it, there are a bunch of questions,” she said, using the Hebrew word for respect. “Symbolism matters. What does it mean that core community funders, if they want to talk about non-white Jews, have to take the margin?”

Defining the field: These funders are some of the most influential in the country, she pointed out, and the Jewish Funders Network (JFN), a support organization for Jewish foundations that give a minimum of $25,000 annually, could be a home for these conversations. The Harry and Jeanette Weinberg Foundation is also part of these informal conversations and supports this collaborative effort to advance important and meaningful work in the field, the foundation said. Andres Spokoiny, JFN’s CEO, praised the convening and said that it could be done under JFN’s auspices if that would be useful. “JFN supports every initiative that brings funders together,” he said. “What JFN brings is a toolkit, an expertise in facilitating. The first issue is to define the field, and what is Jewish about it, and what the goals are.”

Read the full article here.

LANGUAGE LEARNING

Changing the focus: embracing a new approach to Hebrew language education

Screenshot: mfa.gov.il

“One of the many lessons that we have all learned from our global ‘experiment’ with online teaching during the COVID-19 pandemic is that technological tools are not the key to real success in education. Students cannot learn effectively if they are just bombarded with information,” writes Mickey Katzburg in an opinion piece for eJewishPhilanthropy.

Language learning: “It is important to understand how language is acquired, and particularly how children learn a second language. Whatever digital and paper resources are chosen for each class, the success of their Hebrew language acquisition will always depend on the teacher. If we want students to become literate in the Hebrew language, Jewish schools must invest first and foremost in properly equipping the most essential resource in the classroom: the teacher.”

Realigning teachers with technology: “The race to update Hebrew learning programs has been wasting an unfair proportion of the Hebrew department’s budget. We recognize that schools are already using the most advanced tools developed by the world’s leading technological companies, like Google Classroom and Microsoft Meet. So, rather than trying to invent new EdTech tools for Hebrew teaching, we should be focusing on training the teachers and finding the right curriculum materials to suit the needs of each school.”

Read the full piece here.

FULL CIRCLE

Forever a Young Judaean

Courtesy Young Judaea

“It is 1975. I am 18 years old and having Shabbat dinner in the home of a lively Moroccan family in Nazareth Illit, Israel. I have just completed the first two months of Young Judaea’s Year Course and my ability to speak Hebrew is minimal,” writes Mike Berman in an opinion piece for eJewishPhilanthropy.

Back in the day: “We had just finished studying the differences between Mizrahi and Ashkenazi communities in the classroom, and now each member of our program went to stay for a weekend with Mizrachi families in development towns. Spending an immersive weekend with a non-English speaking Moroccan/Israeli family was an experience I recall and reflect on to this day, 46 years later. During that weekend, the family took me in as one of their own. My Hebrew improved more in three days than in an entire semester of Ulpan.”

Fast forward: “It wasn’t until 2011, 25 years later, that my personal involvement with Young Judaea picked back up. The organization was moving towards independence from Hadassah at the time, and I joined a group of Judaean alumni to envision what the Young Judaea of the future would look like. During those early gatherings I found myself being transported back to my time as regional Mazkir, my summers at camp, and my time exploring Israel as an 18-year-old.”

Read the full piece here.

Worthy Reads

Big Plans: President Joe Biden’s $2 trillion infrastructure plan includes provisions such as $400 billion to help with elder care, $88 billion for work-force development and others that will help populations served by nonprofits, Dan Parks writes in the Chronicle of Philanthropy. However, leaders in the sector are also keeping a wary eye on the program, because past infrastructure plans, such as those that built highways, have had negative impacts on neighborhoods of color. Independent Sector, a national coalition of charities and foundations, has created a new advocacy group focused on infrastructure and is pushing for the White House to create an Office on the Nonprofit Sector. “The administration has really reached out to us,” said Dan Cardinali, CEO of Independent Sector. [ChroniclePhilanthropy]

Growing Down: Lachlan Markay and Stef W. Kight report in Axios that a Texas nonprofit called Family Endeavors that hired a Biden official received a contract worth as much as $530 million to help handle the surge of migrant children at the southern border. The official, Andrew Lorenzen-Strait, had served at U.S. Immigrations and Customs Enforcement and then on the Biden-Harris transition team. Family Endeavors’ most recent available tax filing showed an annual budget of $43 million. [Axios]

Next Gen: Donors in their 20s, 30s and 40s redefined “impact” as they tried to use philanthropy to help address the problems created by the coronavirus pandemic, write Sharna Goldseker, Michael Moody, and Holly Honig in a blog post on the Dorothy A. Johnson Center for Philanthropy’s website that draws on a survey fielded this winter. Previously, they would not have been able to assess impact without results; this year, impact meant disbursing money quickly and letting partners on the ground decide how to use it. They also became more politically active. “I think that the cracks in the system are showing more than ever and that we have a great opportunity and responsibility to actually have a part to play,” one donor wrote. [DorothyAJohnsonCenter]

Check List: James Mueller offers seven recruiting tips for nonprofit boards in a post on PhilanTopic that urges board members to do a lot of due diligence before they reach out to a possible candidate. A new member must have integrity, skills and connections to possible donors, but he or she must also be a good fit for the existing culture of the board and the organization. “It’s imperative that members of the governing board know how the organization is wired, and they have a special responsibility to ensure it continues to run, and run well, over time,” Mueller concludes. [PhilanTopic]

Pic of the Day

Urban Adamah

A young child enjoys the spring sunshine at Urban Adamah, a farm in Berkeley that hosts an afterschool program.