History
The Jewish Foundation of Cincinnati was established in 1995 with about $70 million in assets from the Jewish Hospital of Cincinnati. In 2010, the Foundation sold Jewish Hospital to Bon Secours Mercy Health, and the proceeds increased the Foundation’s asset base, which currently exceeds $500 million.
A Tribute to the Original Trustees of The Jewish Foundation of Cincinnati
Our Work Today
We work to create a healthy and strong Cincinnati Jewish community by supporting local Jewish institutions and national organizations with a local presence. Our grantee partners provide opportunities for people to deepen their connection to Jewish values, heritage, and identity, find meaningful Jewish education and engagement experiences, and expand and strengthen their Jewish social networks. Our grantees also help meet basic physical, psychological, and emotional well-being needs of Jewish Cincinnatians. The Foundation invests more than $20 million annually in the Cincinnati Jewish community in order to help meet immediate and long-term community needs.
Grantmaking Categories:
Jewish Engagement
Jewish Education
Jewish Social Services
Jewish Communal Infrastructure
Our Value Proposition
The Jewish Foundation of Cincinnati’s unique characteristic as a private foundation, accountable to its bylaws and governed by 11 trustees, means we can be nimble in decision-making and take appropriate risks or experiment with new approaches to solve complex challenges. We also do not have the same limitations of some fundraising organizations that need to raise annual dollars. Instead, our funding is designed to address larger scale level Jewish communal challenges. This includes attracting and retaining professional talent, engaging families with young children, and strengthening our early childhood Jewish education ecosystem. We generally invest in capacity-building, high-impact, and transformational initiatives of local partners.
Our Grantmaking Philosophy and Funding Principles
We strive to be a relational grantmaker, developing partnerships with grantees based on trust and open communication. We have confidence that grantees know how to make our community stronger and healthier because they know how to best engage their audiences. We also try to support our grantees by understanding challenges they might encounter in their work.
We turn our philosophy into action by following three core funding principles:
- Cincinnati-focused: Our funding focuses on individuals in the Cincinnati Jewish community through investments aimed to support a local ecosystem with myriad options to strengthen Jewish heritage and identity, foster well-being, and engage in meaningful Jewish life.
- Capacity building: Our funding helps ensure that Cincinnati Jewish communal organizations operate efficiently and effectively to address the needs of the individual.
- Building broader connections to Jewish community: Our funding catalyzes touchpoints to Jewish life and community that reflect the diverse experiences and expressions of Jewish life—and the various backgrounds of individuals who want to engage.
Partnership with the Jewish Federation of Cincinnati
While the Foundation is a separate organization, legally independent from the Jewish Federation of Cincinnati, we work very closely with our partners there. The Jewish Federation is the backbone organization that catalyzes our community in a common purpose. As the community-driven convener, the Federation mobilizes diverse groups toward collective action, raising funds and allocating resources where they’re most needed. The Federation leadership represents a cross-section of our community and community partners and aspires to be a participatory congress for our community. The Federation is accountable to the community and to the thousands of individual donors who contribute. Among our many robust partnerships and funding relationships, the Jewish Foundation is an enthusiastic investor in the Jewish Federation’s Annual Campaign through a dynamic gift matching program. The Jewish Foundation does not raise funds on its own, and is not a Community Foundation with Donor Advised Funds. We are a private, grantmaking-only foundation.