Miriam and Sheldon Adelson take part in an Aug. 12, 2009, event in Jerusalem with Birthright Israel participants. Courtesy of Birthright Israel Foundation
A new matching grant program by the Birthright Israel Foundation will provide a dollar-for-dollar match on any increase in donations to the foundation based on 2008 gifts.
That means if a donor gave $100 in 2008 and gives $120 in 2010, the foundation would match the $20 increase.
Private philanthropists, the Jewish federation system, the Jewish Agency, and the government of Israel fund the Birthright program. The foundation oversees the private money given to the program, which makes up the vast majority of the Birthright budget.
The foundation has up to $20 million to use for the matching grants, which are being funded by a $10 million gift from casino mogul Sheldon Adelson and another $10 million from a small group of other donors.
The Adelson money is the second installment of a $30 million pledge he made in 2008.
According to Birthright, the foundation is in the middle of a huge push to broaden its donor base.
In 2008, the foundation had 2,823 donors. The number nearly tripled to 8,370 in 2009 as it rolled out a national grass-roots campaign. The foundation aims to have 50,000 donors by 2015.
The matching grant program came out of a late January summit of 49 major donors held by the foundation in Las Vegas and hosted by Adelson, although he was not in attendance.
Of the 49, only three of the 15 original private funders who helped launch Birthright — Michael Steinhardt, Charles Bronfman, and Lynn Schusterman — were present in Las Vegas, according to the foundation’s CEO, Bob Aronson.
Among the 15 original donors, only eight are still giving to Birthright. The rest have dropped off either because of changed economic circumstances or philanthropic focus, or death.
This trend, Aronson said, highlights the need to build a much broader donor base.
According to Aronson, funding for the trips has held steady. In 2008, the foundation raised $55 million to $56 million, and in 2009 it brought in $57 million — even as the mega-gift from Adelson dropped by $10 million.
Fund raising, when subtracting Adelson’s mammoth gift, rose from $26 million to $37 million.
By 2015, Aronson wants to be raising some $49 million per year without Adelson money. Anything Adelson would pledge at that point would be gravy.
JTA
This article was adapted from JTA’s philanthropy blog, TheFundermentalist.com.
WASHINGTON – Rick Santorum’s near-win in Iowa and his fourth place finish in New Hampshire ahead of former House Speaker Newt Gingrich have made him the GOP’s latest “not Romney” candidate to beat. His status as the GOP right’s champion will be put to the test Jan. 21 in South Carolina’s Republican presidential primary. He may have his work cut out for him, however, in attracting Jewish support in the general election if he eventually manages to wrest the nomination from bruised frontrunner Gov. Mitt Romney.
Pro-Israel insiders say the Santorum campaign is now aggressively reaching out to Jewish givers who helped him when he was a U.S. senator from Pennsylvania.
Henry Goldberg loves this country. The businessman’s Polish-Jewish parents escaped Nazi Germany and made their home in South Carolina. His father began work as a janitor and eventually became a business owner. These were the opportunities that America offered, and not a moment went by when the elder Goldberg was not thankful for his survival.
This is the background that shaped Goldberg’s Republican views. As the years went by, he and his brother expanded their father’s company, Palmetto Tile Distributors, in Columbia. In the 1950s and 1960s, this was a truly wonderful country, Goldberg said. Doors were left open at night, keys were left in the car, the country was strong militarily, and it was not in debt. Since then, he has seen the country decline into what he views as a welfare state that gives too much of its dollars to such programs as Medicare and Medicaid.
From Bibles to novels, English-language Judaica from Israel accounts for much of the inventory on American Jewish bookstore shelves.
A case in point: For the first time in his 27-book run, Rabbi Shmuley Boteach has chosen to work with an Israeli publisher: Gefen will produce the Englewood writer’s forthcoming book, “Kosher Jesus.”
Shoppers at the Feb. 5-26 Seforim Sale at Yeshiva University, the largest Jewish book sale in North America (see sidebar), will find Israeli publishers well represented.
Rabbi Yaacov Haber, a former Monsey pulpit rabbi and co-founder of the year-old Mosaica Press in Jerusalem, says there are practical and emotional reasons for this trend.
WASHINGTON (JTA) -- Rep. Anthony Weiner resigned and apologized in the wake of a scandal in which he lied about sexually explicit exchanges on social media outlets.
“I am here today to apologize for the personal mistakes I have made and the embarrassment that I have caused,” Weiner (D-N.Y.) said at a news conference Thursday at a home for the elderly in Brooklyn where in the past he has announced his intention to run for office.
WASHINGTON – From accolades like “compelling” to accusations like “Auschwitz borders” to radio silence, to label the Jewish response to President Obama’s speech on Middle East policy as diverse understates matters.
The very breadth of the Middle East policy speech — 5,600 words and covering the entire Middle East and decades of history — helps explain the wildly divergent responses from Jewish groups and opinion shapers, even among some who are otherwise often on the same page.
One could as easily pick out points for Israel — slamming the Palestinian Authority’s pact with Hamas as well as its bid for unilateral statehood — as one could the demerits — for many, the most explicit endorsement of the pre-1967 lines as the basis for future borders by any American president.
WASHINGTON – President Obama said the future state of Palestine should be based on the pre-1967 border with mutually agreed land swaps with Israel.
In his address Thursday afternoon on U.S. policy in the Middle East, Obama told an audience at the State Department that the borders of a “sovereign, nonmilitarized” Palestinian state “should be based on 1967 lines with mutually agreed swaps.”
Negotiations should focus first on territory and security, and then the difficult issues of the status of Jerusalem and what to do about the rights of Palestinian refugees can be broached, Obama said.
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