A Message from the President and Executive Director of The Jewish Foundation of Cincinnati

Shalom! It is our privilege to be sending you this 2020 Annual Report from the Jewish Foundation of Cincinnati.

We would cherish the opportunity to have a live annual meeting, as we recognize the importance of our community connecting in person with one another. Although it’s not possible this year due to the ongoing Coronavirus Pandemic, we are eager – when it is safe to do so – to return to hosting live events.

In this year of unprecedented public health, economic and social crises, our goal has been to serve as a trusted resource to support our community as we weather the storm. Through our connections with our closest institutional funding partner, the Jewish Federation of Cincinnati, along with our community’s agencies and congregations, we have focused on keeping our finger on the pulse of local needs, and this report documents how we used our grant funding to buttress our community while continuing to advance the Foundation’s strategic initiatives.

Looking back more broadly over the past three years, it was a primary goal to build collaborative relationships with existing and new partners, and to foster a culture of openness to both small and large grant recipients in our growing network with an eye towards expanding the base of engaged Jewish community members.

In the service of that goal, we have worked with our friends at Rosov Consulting to develop a more strategic approach to these new ways of investing. With expert guidance from Wendy Rosov and her team, our Trustees and staff have refocused efforts on establishing clearly defined goals and outcomes so that we can then explore and employ evidence-based strategies to achieve those objectives. This will require grant funding, of course, but also the kind of technical assistance in the field of measurement and evaluation, as well as facilitation of communal learning that will keep us all moving forward together towards shared successes and even greater collective impact.

Until very recently, a huge missing piece of that puzzle was relevant data about our Jewish community. With that in mind, one of the most significant developments of the past year was the completion and rollout of the 2019 Cincinnati Jewish Community Study, which provides us with an exciting opportunity to learn more about the changing Jewish engagement and human services needs of the members of our shared community. While it will be an ongoing process to understand how different segments of our Jewish population seek to connect to our community, we are committed to a continuation of our support for the programs and initiatives that are already engaging so many people, even as we invest in new ideas and experiments intended to broaden and expand the base. We are confident that under John Stein’s astute leadership, our shared work with so many important partners will continue to thrive, and we will look forward to reporting on our progress in the term ahead.

As we conclude our work in 2020, and look ahead to 2021 and beyond, we acknowledge and pay tribute to two luminaries retiring this year from the Jewish Foundation Board. Mike Oestreicher and J. David Rosenberg came on the board during the final months before the sale of the Jewish Hospital, which means their two terms as Trustees span the entire new era of the Jewish Foundation. As President, Mike helped establish a new culture and new principles for how the Foundation could best serve as a trusted, high-impact investor in the Jewish community, and his leadership helped set the tone for an entire decade of dynamic activity and accomplishment. As Vice President of Investment and Finance, David skillfully stewarded our community’s most precious resource through volatile financial markets, and made a lasting contribution with his focus on excellence – within the Foundation, and throughout our grantee community. We are grateful for both of them, and we will sorely miss them around the Foundation table. In equal measure, we are excited to welcome Sandy Kaltman and Walter Solomon, two accomplished community leaders, onto the Foundation Board as our newest Trustees. We are confident that Sandy and Walter will honor the legacy that Mike, David and their predecessors leave behind, and that they will also inspire new thinking and fresh ideas around the Board table.

It has been an honor to work with our entire Board of Trustees and professional staff team. These individuals are not only bright and thoughtful, but they invest countless hours to understand and care for the needs of our community. A sincere thank you to each board member for their commitment of time and talent on behalf of the Jewish people. And, thank you to our partners for sharing our vision and values for the future Jewish community. It will continue because of all of you.

Inaugural Message – John Stein

I am honored to serve as the next President of the Jewish Foundation of Cincinnati. It is a great privilege to work with the Foundation’s committed board, talented staff, and many excellent agency and congregational partners to sustain and build a vibrant Jewish Cincinnati. It is humbling to follow in the footsteps of Bret Caller, Beth Guttman, Mike Oestreicher, Gary Heiman, and all that they and the other trustees have accomplished to strengthen this community.

I want to particularly thank Bret Caller for all that he has accomplished over these past three years as the President of our foundation. He has been an inspirational leader whose love of Judaism, passion for philanthropy, and optimistic vision of the future has inspired both our board and the broader community. Under his leadership, we have made tremendous progress in better understanding who we serve in Cincinnati, and we have continued to expand our funding to benefit more of our community. He has been both a friend and a mentor for me, and I look forward to working with him as we go forward.

My family’s roots in Cincinnati go back over 150 years. My parents and grandparents were all deeply involved in our community organizations. I grew up in Amberley, attending JCC pre-school, Yavneh (Rockwern), Wise Temple, Camp Livingston, and NFTY teen programs. Through these experiences, I came to believe strongly that Judaism is a great operating system for modern life. Learning and engaging with Jewish tradition and history, while living in community and relationship with other Jews, and working with them to create a relevant and meaningful Jewish future improves all of our lives and the world at large.

When I moved back to Cincinnati some 25 years ago, the community was quite different than the one I left as a teenager. Most of the same institutions were here, but they had all evolved and changed to meet new challenges and needs. Broader geographic spread, wider diversity of religious practice, changing composition of families, and changing lifestyles all required continual changes in Jewish life and institutions. Fortunately, our leaders recognized this, and our institutions adapted. We built new schools, a new JCC, formed new congregations and social service programs, and left behind some good programs and institutions whose time had passed.

The result has been a community which continues to welcome and include new members and provide support for a wide range of needs, while honoring our traditions. My own family represents some of the changes; my wife Jen was raised Catholic in New Jersey, my niece was adopted from China, but both have felt welcomed and supported by the warmth and strength of this community. Diversity can be one of our great strengths, and I hope the Jewish Foundation can continue to support and welcome a wide range of Jews into the process of creating our community.

While we can all be proud of what has been accomplished so far, much work remains to be done. New challenges, like the COVID pandemic, have emerged; and old challenges, like virulent Antisemitism, have reemerged. Meanwhile, our community continues to change and evolve. Cincinnati has been welcoming new members and building on its strengths for nearly 200 years, while always addressing the challenges of the day. As we look to the future, we are fortunate to have a community blessed with talented professionals, committed and generous lay leaders, strong institutions, creative individuals, and substantial financial resources.

2019 Cincinnati Jewish Community Study Overview

We began this year of so much change with an important project: the 2019 Cincinnati Jewish Community Study. This study was commissioned by The Jewish Foundation of Cincinnati and the Jewish Federation of Cincinnati to provide a fresh portrait of our local Jewish community.

A diverse group of volunteer and professional leaders who served on the Community Study Advisory Committee helped select the Maurice and Marilyn Cohen Center for Modern Jewish Studies (CMJS) and the Steinhardt Social Research Institute (SSRI) at Brandeis University to conduct the 2019 Cincinnati Jewish Community Study. The Cohen Center is a renowned research institute that has worked with more than a dozen Jewish communities to develop studies like ours, using its cutting-edge methodology illustrate the characteristics, attitudes, and behaviors unique to Jewish Cincinnati.

Since the rollout of the study earlier this year, the Foundation, in coordination with Federation, has engaged in further analysis of and reflection about the results. The data indicate that many people in our community seek greater connection to Jewish life and practice. We also know that people experience different barriers to connection. While these trends are relevant to the entire community, they play out in meaningful ways with particular populations, including interfaith families with children, families with young children ages 0-5 and young adults without children.

Our work is now focused on gathering more information through qualitative research. The goal is to develop an unvarnished diagnostic of what these population segments are experiencing in their lives holistically—where they find meaning and challenge—and overlay this with how they view the Jewish community and opportunities and barriers to connection. This research is part of a broader learning agenda that over time, will include more diversity in age and life stage. Our learning will build on the work of the Federation’s Beyond 2020 focus groups which previously engaged many of these segments.

The Foundation seeks to leverage this information and use it to inform its development as a strategic funder. This includes defining its goals and outcomes and pursuing new funding opportunities inspired by the learnings from this fresh research. At the same time, the Foundation remains committed to core communal institutions and the individuals who frequent them, and will apply a strategic lens to this work, as well. Taken together, with the new initiatives in tandem with the current grant portfolio, the Foundation intends with respect to these new areas of learning and investment, the Foundation will be guided by the following focus areas:

1. Create a broader connection to the Jewish Community for individuals with diverse expressions of Jewish life and practice.
2. Create an expanded delivery system of services that is relevant to the plurality of the Cincinnati Jewish community; this will involve thinking creatively about the delivery mechanisms that currently exist along with those that can be newly designed or reimagined.
3. Act where significant investment of capital makes a difference. The Foundation is in a unique position to allocate time and distance to think strategically, long term and holistically and commit financial resources to make scale-level investments intended to bring about extraordinary impact – and evolution when needed.

We look forward to continuing to discuss the Community Study with you. A high-level overview of the basic findings in the study can be found on the next page.

The Jewish Foundation’s Grantmaking in 2020

As the extraordinary year of 2020 began, prior to any indication of how much the world would change, the Foundation made or renewed several grants intended to explore new areas of community support and engagement. These included grants funding second Cincinnati cohorts of the acclaimed Wexner Heritage Program and Honeymoon Israel experience, as well as a second round of funding for the groundbreaking ish Jewish & Israeli Arts and Cultural Festival. The Foundation also awarded first-time or pilot grant funding to the JCRC’s Leaders in Light fellowship, Chabad of Blue Ash’s Friendship Circle program and the Jewish Fertility Foundation’s expansion to Cincinnati.

In addition, the Foundation continued to fund its signature operating grant initiatives, including the Annual Campaign Match and six community services programs run by its partners at the Jewish Federation of Cincinnati, Programming & Engagement at the Mayerson JCC, Engagement and Education grants at 11 local Congregations, vital services and aging services initiatives at Jewish Family Service, capacity building grants at JVS Career Services, Cincinnati Hillel, Miami University Hillel and Chai Tots, as well as community engagement and service learning initiatives at HUC-JIR’s Cincinnati Campus.

2020 has also been a year in which the Foundation has challenged itself and its partners to consider new ideas and different modalities for broadening the impact of some of its grants. The congregation-based Supplementary Education programs, Jewish Teen Education & Engagement initiative and Rockwern Academy are all in the midst of efforts – with grant support from the Foundation – to build on innovation efforts to date and further “re-imagine” ways to meet their respective missions, and to possibly serve even more of the community.

The Civic & Cultural Fund received a number of exciting requests this year, and the Foundation was proud to fund arts and culture initiatives with Jewish themes at the Cincinnati Ballet, Cincinnati Museum Center, Playhouse in the Park, as well as the Cincinnati debut of the InHEIRitance Project’s “Exodus in America” production. Although several of the performances were put on hold due to the pandemic, we look forward to their presentation, hopefully sometime next year. The Foundation also made several COVID-related grants from its Civic & Cultural Fund, including participation in relief funds run by the United Way of Greater Cincinnati, Jewish Hospital of Cincinnati, Freestore Foodbank.

Finally, as the contours of this pandemic began to take shape this year, COVID Response comprised a significant amount of the Foundation’s time, support and funding in the Jewish community. Its first response, back in March, was to listen to what its partners were experiencing and to try to understand their needs as they navigated new imperatives for serving individuals and families in our community. The Foundation then offered tangible ways to extend that support, while keeping lines of communication open throughout the year. The Foundation joined the Jewish Federation and Jewish Home of Cincinnati, in partnership with generous individual donors contributing to the Federation’s COVID Relief Fund. The Foundation, Federation and the Mayerson JCC also partnered together to ensure safe operations with minimum disruption to the J’s programming this year. In partnership with Jewish Family Service and Havayah, the Foundation helped launch a new Mental Health First Aid Training initiative. And in a year in which so many overnight Jewish camps were forced to cancel their summer programs, the Foundation made an emergency grant to Camp Livingston to help weather the storm.

The full list of distributions can be found here.

Charitable Purpose Awards Made Against Spend 2019 and 2020

GRANTS	TOTAL	17,319,915	17,090,869
American Jewish Committee	Simon Lazarus Awards Program	27,500	2,500
Camp Livingston	COVID Emergency Grant	–	190,000
Camp Livingston	Scholarships, Operations and Capital Improvements	90,000	40,000
Camp Livingston	Health Center/Infirmary	33,750	101,250
Chabad Center of Blue Ash	Friendship Circle	–	37,500
Chai Tots Early Childhood Center	Scholarships and Capital, Operating, and Marketing Support	150,000	155,000
Cincinnati Ballet	Ohad Naharin’s Bold Moves Performance	–	36,000
Cincinnati Children’s	Israel Fellows Community Engagement Program	195,000	205,000
Cincinnati Community Kollel	Capacity Building	100,000	50,000
Cincinnati Hebrew Day School	Operating Support for 2018/2019, 2019/2020 and 2020/2021 School Years	1,604,992	1,519,842
Cincinnati Hillel	Campus Superstar 2019	25,000	–
Cincinnati Hillel	Engagement Initiatives	50,000	100,000
Cincinnati Museum Center	You Are Here Permanent Exhibition	36,000	36,000
Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra	Artist in Residence	25,000	–
Cincinnati USA Regional Chamber	REDI – Cincinnati/Israel Economic Development Partnership	105,000	25,000
Congregations	Educational Programming	310,000	313,600
Congregations	Congregational Excellence, Engagement and Sustainability	875,650	1,205,159
Freestore Foodbank	COVID Response	–	25,000
Havayah	Out of the Bayit Initiative	25,000	–
Hebrew Union College – Jewish Institute of Religion	Jewish Foundation Rabbinic Fellows Program and Office of Recruitment/Community Engagement	808,975	742,825
Hebrew Union College – Jewish Institute of Religion	Movement of the Klutznick Collection to the Skirball Museum	50,000	–
Hillel at Miami University	Director of Student Life and Capacity Building	47,500	27,500
In”HEIR”itance Project	Exodus in America: Cincinnati	–	10,000
ish	2019 festival and 2020 off-season programming	18,000	25,000
Jewish Family Service	AgeWell Cincinnati	400,150	452,529
Jewish Family Service	Barbash Family Vital Support Center Operating	107,000	110,000
Jewish Family Service	Private Duty Home Care Business Division	70,700	76,000
Jewish Family Service	Strategic Plan and Capacity Building	146,620	–
Jewish Federation of Cincinnati	Annual Campaign Matching Contributions	1,500,000	1,457,920
Jewish Federation of Cincinnati	Cincy Journeys – Israel Travel and Overnight Jewish Camping	1,451,931	673,500
Jewish Federation of Cincinnati	Community Property and Maintenance	802,000	810,490
Jewish Federation of Cincinnati	Emergency Relief Fund	–	250,000
Jewish Federation of Cincinnati	Honeymoon Israel	70,000	–
Jewish Federation of Cincinnati	JCRC, Leaders in Light Initiative	12,500	95,000
Jewish Federation of Cincinnati	SAFE Cincinnati Community Security Initiative	542,760	619,147
Jewish Federation of Cincinnati	“Strengthening Individual Giving” Fundraising Capacity Building Initiative	1,294,837	1,194,717
Jewish Federation of Cincinnati	Shared Business Services	1,036,000	961,000
Jewish Federation of Cincinnati	Talent Management Plan Development and Software System	129,000	129,602
Jewish Fertility Foundation	Cincinnati Pilot Program	25,000	–
Jewish Hospital	Cincinnati Regional COVID Relief Fund	–	7,200
JVS Career Services	2019 & 2020 Capacity Building	573,676	629,628
Mayerson JCC	Operating Support	1,176,190	1,106,000
Mayerson JCC	Cincinnati Jewish Teen Collective	564,248	551,025
Mayerson JCC	COVID-19 Emergency Support	–	$250,000
Moishe House	Cincinnati House – Programming	25,000	25,000
Music Hall Revitalization Company	Music Hall Revitalization	20,000	20,000
Playhouse in the Park	Production of Becoming Dr. Ruth	–	30,000
Rockwern Academy	Operating Support for 2018/2019, 2019/2020 and 2020/2021 School Years	2,573,059	2,457,508
Shomrei Olam	Cut-a-ton Toolkit, Energy Saving Program	1,500	–
Union of Reform Judaism	Regional Coordinator for NFTY	36,877	41,427
United Way	2019 and 2020 Annual Campaigns	36,000	36,000
United Way/Greater Cincinnati Foundation	Emergency Response Fund	–	25,000
Wexner Foundation	Wexner Heritage Leadership Development Program	87,500	175,000
Xavier University	Public Policy Student Leadership Trip to Israel	60,000	60,000
PROGRAMMING	TOTAL	484,322	288,783
Community Study		186,606	95,427
Congregational Outreach		61,034	41,598
Adult, Day School and Supplemental Jewish Education Research and Facilitation		8,000	52,500
Jewish Community Building Assessment, Maintenance and Insurance		220,790	99,258
Senior Services/Aging 2.0		7,892	–
GRAND TOTAL	TOTAL	17,804,237	17,379,652

The Jewish Foundation of Cincinnati

Board of Trustees

John Stein
President

Edward Frankel
Vice President of Investment

Sandy P. Kaltman
Treasurer of Finance and Audit
Committee Chair

Guy Peri
Secretary

Bret Caller
Immediate Past President

Robert Brant
Trustee

Arna Poupko Fisher
Trustee

Beth Guttman
Trustee

Gloria Lipson
Trustee

Leslie Newman
Trustee

Walter Solomon
Trustee

Staff

Brian Jaffee
Executive Director

Mike Boberg
Director of Impact Assessment

Mike Boberg
Director of Impact Assessment

Eric Dauer
Director of Operations

Teri Haught
Director of Finance

Kim Newstadt
Director of Research & Learning

Lauren J. Seal
Executive Assistant

Honoring Pandemic Responders

Photo Captions:
1. The JCC offered a safe location for students to participate in their classes virtually when they were unable to attend school in-person.
2. Volunteers drop off donations at the Heldman Family Food Pantry during JFS’s Sukkot food drive.
3. Members of Temple Sholom’s Social Action Project team partnered with Avon-Miami Charities to prepare over 50 meal kit boxes, which totaled 1000 lunches, that were distributed to a number of community service agencies.
4. JFS has experienced a 25% increase in requests for food assistance through its food pantry since the pandemic began.
5. Rabbi Pirate David Burstein delivered a “treasure trove” of holiday education items to students in Beth Adam’s Our Village program.
6. Since March 13th, the J’s Meals on Wheels team has prepared, packed and delivered over 55,000 meals to 416 unique clients, which is twice as many as the same time period last year.
7. JFS received donations of fabric masks from a local business owner, who is the daughter of Holocaust survivors. JFS staff distributed them to local survivors and older adults to help keep them safe during COVID-19.
8. While they may not be able to gather in person, the students from Cincinnati Hillel continue to virtually connect with each other for both fun and support, including a Harry Potter-themed Shabbat event.
9. Wise Temple volunteers helped pack diapers to benefit the Sweet Cheeks Diaper Bank, one of many donation drives run by the temple throughout the spring and summer.
10. Camp Livingston staffers offered virtual programming, from crafts to sing-alongs to shabbat to their campers this summer.
11. Students attending programs at Rockwern, CHDS, Camp Chabad, and Jewish day camps came masked, ready to protect the teachers, staffs and each other from the virus.
12. The groundskeeping crew of Jewish Cemeteries of Greater Cincinnati prepare the final resting place for a loved one.

The Jewish Foundation of Cincinnati

In a year during which our community lost so many of its luminaries, the Jewish Foundation mourned the passing of two of our Founding Trustees, as well as a dedicated member of our professional staff. Our hearts are full as we reflect on the impact they had on our shared work, and the immense legacy each of them leaves behind:

Philip T. Cohen
One of the longest-serving Jewish communal leaders in Cincinnati’s history, Phil Cohen was also an original Trustee of the Jewish Foundation. Phil helped establish the modern Jewish Federation that we know today, and he was also involved in leadership roles at the Jewish Hospital, Rockdale Temple and Camp Livingston and Jewish Vocational Services, among many other agencies and causes. Phil was a veteran of the U.S. Armed Forces and served in World War II before returning to Cincinnati where he and his wife, Helene z”l, raised their family. As a Trustee of the Jewish Foundation, Phil was instrumental in the development of the current Mayerson JCC property and helped the Foundation transition into its new era following the Jewish Hospital sale. Phil was a keeper of memory for our organization and our shared community, and we are grateful for his many contributions.

Bernard Dave
Bernie Dave was the first Chairman of the Jewish Foundation Board of Trustees, and a tireless leader with an unfailingly positive vision for the Cincinnati Jewish Community. Like Phil, Bernie served our country during World War II, and he and wife, Roz z”l settled in Cincinnati and made a home here while Bernie built his business. Bernie took great pride in the work of the Jewish Hospital and Jewish Foundation, and was a devoted member of Rockdale Temple, as well as a supporter of Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion and the Jacob Rader Marcus Center of the American Jewish Archives. Having benefited from the Cardiac Rehab Unit at Jewish Hospital, Bernie became one of the unit’s most enthusiastic volunteers. Bernie attended every meeting that he could and loved engaging in discussion about the priorities and outcomes of the Foundation’s grants. His voice continues to resonate around our Board table.

Beth McKinney
Beth McKinney was one of the first employees hired by the Jewish Foundation following the Jewish Hospital sale and in her eight-year tenure served as Director of Finance and Senior Financial Advisor. Beth brought an extraordinary mix of expertise, professionalism and commitment to her work and her dedication to learning about – and contributing to – the Jewish community were hallmarks of her time with us. She worked with all our grantee organizations and cared deeply about helping to make them as strong as possible. To that end, Beth was particularly involved in the development of the Shared Business Services initiative, and advocated for their work throughout her time with the Foundation. Beth took great pride in her children, grandchildren, and extended family, and always wanted to hear stories about the loved ones in her colleagues’ lives. She will be greatly missed.

May we remember Phil, Bernie and Beth – and all those we’ve lost – and may their memories always be for a blessing.