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The Jewish Funds for Justice is a national public foundation guided by Jewish history and tradition. JFSJ helps people in the United States achieve social and economic security and opportunity by investing in healthy neighborhoods, vibrant Jewish communities, and skillful leaders. Our holistic approach to social change includes grantmaking and loans, service learning, leadership development, organizing, education, and advocacy.

JFSJ GRANTMAKING & LOANS
Low income neighborhoods across the United States are underserved and undercapitalized. Many residents have little power over their own lives. To address these problems, JFSJ provides grants to support community organizing and advocacy and provides loans to support community economic development.

TZEDEC: The Jewish Partnership for Community Investing offers Jewish philanthropists a new way to fight poverty and pursue economic justice. It pools their investments in community development banks, credit unions and loan funds which provide lending capital for affordable housing, small business loans and community facilities in low- and moderate-income communities.

JFSJ grantmaking provides essential funds to small, grassroots organizations in low income communities. Our focus has been on groups that assist new Americans, build community, pursue economic and social justice, invest in youth, and prioritize women’s empowerment.

JFSJ PROGRAMMING
Our programming compliments our work in grantmaking and loans. JFSJ introduces synagogues to congregation-based community organizing (CBCO), a proven model of congregational engagement in which synagogues are able to build powerful alliances across lines of race, class, and faith. As the national leader in synagogue-based organizing, JFSJ helps congregations to develop leaders, strengthen community, and affect the root causes of social and economic injustice.

Upon ordination, today’s rabbis face challenges and opportunities to engage their communities in the Jewish work of meaningful social justice. JFSJ is running a series of seminary programs to provide rabbinical students from four denominations with organizing and leadership development training through academic courses and synagogue internships.

Because the responsible stewardship of wealth and property is part of our covenantal responsibility as Jews, JFSJ has created a network of Jewish institutions committed to voting their proxies for shareholder resolutions. In our first year, institutions controlling over $1.3 billion in equity have joined this network.

The Selah Program for Jewish Collaborative Leadership engages a cross-section of emerging Jewish leaders representing a spectrum of both Jewish and secular organizations to create a network of agents for social change. The training method is innovative in its integration of personal transformation, organizational performance, collaboration skills, and social change theory within a Jewish framework.