Foundation History

In the Foundation’s first annual report, Alexander Holstein described a vision of “a Jewish community that makes everyone feel like they are part of a great big family, an integral part of a growing community:   where   Jewish agencies   and  synagogues will be financially stable with sufficient rainy-day funds to carry them through good times and difficult ones.”   He noted that the Foundation was created “to help preserve and create strong institutions – Hebrew schools, family and human service agencies, the Federation and synagogues” but that it needs to be a joint venture that would require “many, many people from all walks of life to say, ‘I want to give something back to my community.’”

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By the end of its second year, the Foundation could boast of more than 50 individuals and families who had created funds or donated to the Foundation since its inception. But Alex continued looking forward. “This is a wonderful beginning,” he wrote, but pointed out that “currently, the monies raised annually for the immediate needs of agencies and synagogues are applied to the here and now – the present. But the present soon becomes the future. Therefore, we need to create endowments to insure the future financial stability of our local Jewish and community organizations so that the generations that follow will have a better tomorrow”.  

Twenty years ago, the Foundation declared, “We are on target towards our goal of  $2 million in assets under administration.”  Twenty years later, the Foundation was the proud administrator of more than ten times that amount, with $25 million in assets under management.