PEF Israel Endowment Fund - excerpt from Lee O'Brien, American Jewish Organizations and Israel, 1986
This page is an extract, reproduced with permission, from Lee O'Brien, American Jewish Organizations and Israel, Washington DC: Institute for Palestine Studies, 1986. [1]
- Year established: 1922
- President: Sidney Luria
- Chairman: Sidney Musher
- Address: 342 Madison Avenue, New York, NY 10173
General Background and Structure
In 1922, Justice Louis Brandeis and a small group of American Zionists formed the Palestine Endowment Fund (PEF) as a charitable organization to channel funds to the Yishuv in Palestine. After the creation of Israel, the PEF changed its name to PEF Israel Endowment Fund.
The PEF is a tax-exempt ‘public charity’ corporation registered in the state of New York; it also has tax-exempt status in Israel. The organization is governed by a national board of trustees, with 34 members who reside in Israel and the United States. None of its nine officers and trustees receives compensation. The PEF employs only one full-time and two part-time staff members. In Israel, a group of five volunteers supervises its activities. As a result, it has minimal overhead expenses; in 1981, these were only 1.5 percent of total receipts.
Flow of Funding
PEF's goal is to service Israeli institutions by helping American contributors obtain tax exemptions. Prospective donors may contribute to the PEF with a recommendation that their contributions go to a specific institution or purpose. Before consenting to forward the grant, the PEF investigates each institution through consultations with its volunteers in Israel. It accepts small (a minimum of twenty-five dollars) or large gifts and bequests. It maintains extensive files on a wide variety of nonprofit organizations in Israel. Potential recipient institutions in Israel may approach the PEF for advice on funding, and they may recommend that a contribution go through the PEF.
Since its inception, the PEF has forwarded over $45 million to Israel. In 1982, PEF's total receipts were over $6 million, of which over $5 million was distributed to 300 educational, research, religious, health, and other institutions in Israel. There is generally no deduction from the contributions for administration; the small administrative cost is absorbed by the PEF. According to its 1982 annual report, about 77 percent of the total receipts of over $6 million came from ‘contributions and bequests’; the rest came from ‘interest and dividends’ and ‘gain from investments.’ PEF's net worth by November 1982 was over $13 million.
Some of the institutions the PEF supported in 1982 were: the Hebrew University in Jerusalem ($345,664), the secondary school scholarship program ($252,684), the Association for the Welfare of Soldiers ($283,357), and the Association of Americans and Canadians in Israel ($47,450); $89,428 was distributed to 146 other institutions, each of which received less than $2,000.
The PEF has established special funds of $100,000 and over, from which the interest and/or the principal is disbursed to specific institutions. In 1982, PEF had 25 such funds, nine of which paid out interest and/or principal to the Hebrew University in Jerusalem. [2]
