Annual Report 2024

Letter from the Board Chair & the Executive Director

Over the many years since the inception of The Jewish Fund, our priority of addressing the health and welfare needs of Metro Detroiters has remained constant.  However, as our society changes, needs evolve, and methods to make improvements change, our grantmaking strategy also adapts and evolves.

Health-focused philanthropic foundations like ours have a unique opportunity to drive transformative change by funding programs that address the social determinants of health. These types of investments not only improve individual health outcomes but also contribute to more equitable and resilient communities. In recent years, but especially this past year, we have directed many of our grants toward these root causes. 

As many of you know, social determinants of health include socioeconomic status, education, access to healthcare, neighborhood environment, and social support and they significantly influence health outcomes. 

While The Jewish Fund continues to value and support direct healthcare services, we recognize the impact of programs that take creative and unique approaches into account to respond to these underlying factors. Our board of directors has directed grant funding to numerous community organizations that address issues such as poverty, education and housing, ultimately improving health outcomes.

This more holistic impact ensures that interventions are not just treating symptoms but are working to eliminate the root causes of health inequities.  Here are some examples:

Long-Term Health Improvements:  Our grant to Brilliant Detroit to address literacy needs for families with young children aims to provide early resources to build vocabulary at an early age through an evidence based learning initiative.  Our grants to the Downtown Boxing Gym and S.A.Y. Detroit recognize that individualized mentorship and learning programs outside of the school day strengthen self-confidence and learning in a health promoting social environment that includes exercise and nutritional snacks and meals.

Reduction of Health Inequities: Our grant to Affirmations to expand access to mental health through the addition a tele-health mental health therapist followed the organization’s reliance on tele-health during the pandemic.  The ease of access not only served to engage more patients locally, but significant numbers of people identifying with the LGBTQ+ community living out of the area, also engaged with Affirmations for this service.  Our grant to Yeshiva Beth Yehudah played a significant role in the expansion of inclusion supports for students with special needs so that they have every opportunity to succeed to the best of their abilities in a Jewish day school. This is also the case with our recent grants to the Jewish Community Center’s Opening the Doors inclusion support services for students with special needs.

Cost-Effectiveness: A grant to Jewish Family Service to hire a dedicated case manager to provide intensive support for families with profound needs has likely prevented the disruption of family households, domestic abuse, truancy, hunger and homelessness.

Community Empowerment: Our grant to Hope Village Revitalization is a perfect example of assisting a community with identifying its residents’ goals and aspirations and creating the pathways to achieve them. 

Enhanced Collaboration and Innovation: Our participation and support of a funder collaborative that focuses on Black-led organizations’ expansion of services to include resource and referrals to mental health organizations for their participants presenting a need for this type of support.

In recent years, we have also developed an especially talented board of directors who bring expertise, both professional and personal, to our work.  They participate in board learning in order to best consider and award grants, they engage in site visits and report on these visits to their board member colleagues, and they are not shy in expressing their views as we join together to do our work.

 While we are a foundation with a very small professional staff, we have diligently worked to provide value and assistance to our grant partners, beyond the grant dollars.  This past year, we expanded our grant partner training opportunities and are continuing these this year.  We provided one-on-one consulting to several grant partners, at no charge, with consultants from NEW, Non-Profit Enterprise at Work, and routinely reach out to foundation colleagues to encourage their support of our grant partners.  This year, we plan to informally educate family foundation members about organizations and programs that warrant their support.  Our goal is to do whatever is within our power to support the work of our partners.

Our Teen Board, an educational philanthropy program of The Jewish Fund, is now in its 11th year of operations.  We are so proud of the teens and their interest and enthusiasm for learning of community needs and how philanthropy can support efforts to improve the lives of the people in our community.  

As we move forward into 2025, we plan to continue with these initiatives and to grow them to reach our optimal engagement with the community.  We will continue to be nimble and flexible, to listen and respond, and to initiate change when that is the best path forward.

Jeffrey Schlussel, Chair

Margo Pernick, Executive Director