Jewish Women's Foundation - A committee of the Jewish Federation of Palm Beach County
WHO WE ARE
JEWISH WOMEN’S FOUNDATION OF THE GREATER PALM BEACHES
The Jewish Women’s Foundation of the Greater Palm Beaches (JWF) is dedicated to improving the lives of women and girls through social change grant-making. Our grants are strategically invested in activities that are designed to challenge and overcome the social, economic, political and legal inequities faced by Jewish women and girls around the world.
GRANTS
The Jewish Women’s Foundation of the Greater Palm Beaches funds social change projects and programs. Our interest is in the areas of research, issue awareness and advocacy and cutting-edge initiatives that will ultimately change community practices and programming, public policy and laws relating to Jewish women and girls.
SHOW YOUR SUPPORT
The Jewish Women’s Foundation of the Greater Palm Beaches provides an opportunity for women to leverage leadership and financial resources to make a direct difference in the lives of Jewish women and girls whose vital needs are often overlooked by other philanthropic organizations.
The JWF was founded in 2002 as a committee of the Jewish Federation of Palm Beach County. As we begin our sixth year, we proudly number 137 trustees and plan to distribute up to $200,000 in annual allocations. We are a vital part of the ever-growing women’s funding movement that is dedicated to redressing the paucity of philanthropic dollars spent on women and girls.
Open to all Jewish women who live and play in the greater Palm Beaches*, we operate the JWF in a distinctive model of “trustee ownership” that affects who and what we fund, and the egalitarian way we conduct our philanthropic business.
Every fall, we begin our annual grant review cycle by educating ourselves on issues adversely affecting the lives of women and girls around the world.
Then, utilizing a democratic committee process, trustees consider the many funding requests received. Grants are assessed in terms of their ability to identify emerging issues or their ability to eradicate or lessen one of the many hardships that beset Jewish women and girls, here or around the world.
The grant committees recommend their choices to a gathering of all the trustees, where each recommendation is again discussed and voted on. It is in this very pragmatic forum that the final decisions are made to invest in grants that we believe will change the circumstances of individual women, as well as the attitudes, behaviors and practices of systems and communities.
OUR VISION
We believe that…
… the key to strong and equitable Jewish communities is to ensure that women and girls are physically safe and empowered to achieve their potential.
… investing our influence and resources in social change will make a difference in the lives of women and girls locally, nationally and internationally in ways that are consistent with the Jewish value of tikkun olam, a call to all Jews to help make the world a better place.
… advocating for an increase in funding for services that alleviate the hardships faced by marginalized woman and girls is critically important, given the chronic under-funding of such programs.
… social change is a complex process that generally takes place incrementally over time and we will support work over three timeframes – immediate, medium and long-term.
… the long-term outcome of our work will be changes in community practices and programming, public policy, Jewish education and practice, laws and the practice of philanthropy.
OUR MISSION
Our mission is to improve the status of Jewish women and girls through funding female-centered social change initiatives. We realize our vision and mission by funding four interdependent approaches to social change:
- Increasing public awareness of issues that directly and adversely affect the lives of women;
- Funding research that identifies and examines the impact of that issue on the lives of women and girls;
- Supporting leading-edge initiatives that are designed to change the attitudes, behaviors and practices of individuals and systems;
- Advocating for changes in institutional or community practices, social policy and the law.
*Palm Beach Gardens, West Palm Beach, Palm Beach, Wellington, Royal Palm Beach, Boynton Beach, Lantana, Lake Worth, Greenacres, Lake Park, North Palm Beach, Juno Beach, Tequesta.
Grant requests are now being accepted for 2009-2010.
Click here for grant process information.
Click here to see previous grants awarded.
©2008 Jewish Women's Foundation of the Greater Palm Beaches
A committee of