New Israel 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: 1979
- President: Jonathan J. Cohen
- Executive Director: Jonathan Jacoby
- Chairman of Israeli Committee: Richard Laster
- Address: 111 West 40th St., New York, New York 10018
General Background, Structure and Role
The NIF is the youngest of all pro-Israel fundraising organizations in the United States and represents a significant departure from its predecessors. Established in the San Francisco area as a protest against traditional fundraising organizations among American Jewry, and especially against perceived links with Israeli government policy, the NIF is more closely allied with the Israeli peace camp.
The NIF is governed by a board of trustees, working in conjunction with one committee in Israel and another in the United States. The U.S. committee is responsible for development of policy, fundraising, and educational outreach; the Israeli committee shares responsibility for development of policy and constitutes NIF's review and allocation committee. The Israeli committee also receives and reviews all requests for grants and assumes a supervising and evaluating role for projects once they are funded.
The NIF is registered as a tax-exempt public charity organization in the state of California and as a foreign, nonprofit institution in Israel. In 1982, NIF's U.S. advisory committee was composed of 61 members; the eleven-member Israeli committee included a number of veteran social activists. The 1981/1982 chairperson, for example, was professor Eliezer D. Jaffe of the social work faculty at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, who recently wrote an article in Ha'aretz criticizing the continued ‘Zionization’ of the JA and the overall politicization of Jewish philanthropies. [2] The NIF is staffed by one part-time worker and twelve volunteers.
According to its own literature, the NIF ‘complements other philanthropic efforts by involving many individuals who otherwise show little or no inclination to give either to Jewish or to Israeli causes through traditional channels.’It pays particular attention to those projects that ‘fall through the cracks" of traditional Jewish philanthropy. The NIF ‘offers a unique and innovative partnership between American Jewish resources for the people of Israel...It establishes a structure for exchange of information and involvement among Israelis and Americans committed to a healthy, secure State of Israel.’ The NIF emphasizes that it does not fund "any activity that originates outside the 'Green Line'.’[3] There is a noticeable emphasis on grassroots projects and those with social policy orientation, such as the Association for Civil Rights in Israel. The NIF awards grants of up to $10,000 each to nonprofit and nongovernmental groups only.
Flow of Funding
NIF's grants consist of general funds or ‘donor-directed allocations’in which the NIF simply acts as a conduit for channeling funds to pre-designated organizations and institutions in Israel. NIF's grants are distributed in five general categories: civil rights, women's issues, Arab-Jewish relations, innovative services, and community action. In the first funding cycle (April 1980), 22 grants ranging from $1,000 to $5,000 were awarded. In 1982, the NIF doubled its donor base and the funds raised. According to its 1982 Annual Report, the cumulative funds raised totaled $332,500, of which $240,000 (72 percent) were allocated in grants. About one-third of the allocations were in the category of ‘donor-directed’ grants. Close to 28 percent of the funds raised during 1982 was spent on fundraising and development, educational programming, and technical assistance, outreach, and administrative costs in Israel.
