Outcomes We Work Toward

The Foundation’s funding efforts are designed to create a healthy and strong Cincinnati Jewish community. In particular, the Foundation focuses on Jewish Engagement, Jewish Education, Jewish Social Services, and Jewish Communal Infrastructure. Foundation funding supports local agencies, congregations, and immersive Israel and overnight Jewish camp experiences, while also leveraging expertise from national organizations and local start-ups. We strive to achieve these outcomes:

  • Jewish Cincinnatians can find options for local Jewish learning and engagement that are meaningful and meet their needs.
  • Participants in Jewish learning and other community  experiences gain a deeper connection to their Jewish values, heritage, and identity.
  • Through participation in local Jewish organizations, congregations, and grassroots initiatives, Jewish Cincinnatians expand and strengthen their Jewish social networks.
  • Basic physical, psychological, and emotional well-being needs of Jewish Cincinnatians are being met

Engaging New Audiences

In addition to those outcomes, the Foundation identifies new and experimental funding opportunities to build broader connections with individuals who often are on the periphery of organized Jewish life. This strategic funding is focused on supporting efforts to:

  • Create meaningful connections to the Jewish community for individuals with diverse expressions of Jewish life and practice
  • Create new ways to deliver services that meet the needs of the plurality of the Cincinnati Jewish community.
  • 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.

Research and Learning About Our Community

The Foundation strives to be a data-driven organization. Learning about the Jewish opportunities, experiences, and needs that matter most to Cincinnatians enables us to fund the organizations and initiatives that can deliver in those areas.  We aim to use our resources efficiently and effectively, using our best judgment about current communal priorities. Just as we want to use the resources we have now to meet local Jewish community needs today, we want future Foundation leaders to have the same opportunity to invest in local Jewish life to meet the needs that they see at that time.

After the 2019 Cincinnati Jewish Community Study, The Jewish Foundation, in coordination with Federation, dove deeper into the learnings. The data indicated that almost half of Jewish adults sought greater connection to Jewish life and practice. We learned about and developed funding strategies to better engage interfaith families with children, families with young children ages 0-5, and young adults without children. In particular, focus groups with these three audiences and conversations with local organizational leaders helped the Foundation better understand how we can utilize funding to welcome these people into local Jewish community life. 

More information about the Community Study can be found in this infographic and on the Community Study website.

Jewish Foundation & Jewish Federation Community Planning Partnership

The 2030 Community Vision identified pressing social-structural concerns in the Jewish community, including lack of total alignment and coordination on community funding priorities between the Jewish Foundation (TJF) and Jewish Federation of Cincinnati (JFC), misalignment between community needs and donor funding interests, opportunistic rather than strategic fundraising, and a need for comprehensive community planning. TJF and JFC responded by joining forces in community strategic planning efforts, strengthening the Federation’s role as the lead planning and fundraising body, and enhancing collaboration between the two main institutional funders. 

This new initiative, which we are calling Connecting Philanthropy to Community Priorities, or, “CP2” will facilitate strategic planning, research, development and implementation, aligning community priorities, fundraising, and allocations. Using collective impact models to mobilize resources toward defined outcomes, we will implement the vision of Cincinnati 2030 and continue to create meaningful, measurable change in our Jewish Community.