Last year, the Jewish Foundation of Louisville launched the Community Impact Grants program to make funding from the unrestricted endowment available to Jewish community agencies to provide support for programmatic needs.
Peter Resnik, chair of the Foundation Committee, announced that a number of grants have been made, many of which focus on education. In evaluating grant requests, he explained, “the Foundation Committee considered an array of criteria including purpose, reach, extent of collaboration with other organizations and overall benefit.”
Grants have been made to:
• Louisville Beit Sefer Yachad for a technology enhancement project;
• The High School of Jewish Studies for a website;
• The Temple to provide assistance for learning disabled b’nai mitzvah students;
• The Jewish Community Center for J Forty-Fivers, a community-wide leadership development program for 4th- and 5th-grade students;
• The Temple to upgrade the sound system for Chavurat Shalom participants; and
• The JCC for an intergenerational garden for seniors and the Early Learning Center, the produce from which will be donated to the Jewish Family & Career Services Food Pantry.
The Jewish Foundation of Louisville and the Jewish Federation of Louisville are also offering scholarships for Jewish experiences this summer, including summer camp and trips to Israel.
An earlier round of grants, first announced in August provided safe storage shelving for the JFCS Food Pantry, scholarships for students in Louisville’s Melton program, funding to Keneseth Israel for its Big Rock Shabbat and a subsidy for Temple Shalom’s Shabbaton weekend.
“The committee’s expections are being met by restarting these grants for the benefit of the broad community,” Resnik added.
While all the funding for the originally announced Community Impact Grants program came from the unrestricted endowment, the Foundation is also reviewing existing designated funds to ensure that the allocable dollars from each fund are being used as the donors intended.
When it is determined that the purpose for which the original fund was established no longer exists, the fund is repurposed, with the intent of continuing to use the allocable dollars for the same kind of program for which it was created to support.
One such fund is the Rose Hansen Eliahu Academy Fund. Since Eliahu Academy closed, no allocations had been made from the fund. Since Eliahu Academy was a Jewish educational institution, the fund was repurposed to support Jewish educational experiences for children. The grants to Louisville Beit Sefer Yachad, the High School of Jewish Studies, The Temple for assistance for the learning disabled and the JCC for the J Forty-Fivers were made possible by the Rose Hansen Fund.
The fund review process is ongoing. Whenever possible, the people who established the funds or their families are consulted before the fund is repurposed. Everyone who establishes a fund has the opportunity to specify how the fund should be repurposed if the original intent can no longer be fulfilled.
The Jewish Foundation of Louisville Community Impact Grants program is ongoing, and grants are reviewed on a rolling basis. Requests for grants may be submitted to Jewish Community of Louisville President and CEO Stu Silberman at ssilberman@jewishlouisville.org.