PEF Approved Charity Opens First Not-For Profit Social Bank in Israel
Today, Bloomberg reported that Ogen, a non-profit bank (previously called Israel Free Loan), will offer affordable credit to poor clients in Israel. According to Matthew Kalman, reporting from Jerusalem: Ogen, a non-profit bank, will offer affordable credit to poor...PEF Posts its 2016 Financial Statement and Form 990
PEF Israel Endowment Funds, Inc. posted its Financial Statement and Form 990 for 201. These documents may be found, along with downloadable copies of its IRS Determination Letter and statements and returns from prior years at the Reports/Filings tab on its website...
Charity focused on high-tech employment in NY Times
New York Times article showcasing efforts by Israeli Government and NGOs to train and place Israeli Arab Bedouins in high-tech industry highlights ITWorks. ITWorks won bids to operate a program which trains and helps place Arab graduates in tech companies. According...Read morePEF, in particular, is an enigma: The organization is extraordinarily big, with $69 million in grants made in 2013 — more than all but the largest Jewish federations. Yet it has just five employees and paid its top-compensated employee just $124,000. Largely run by volunteers, PEF is a mega-“friends of” organization that also manages endowed funds for major donors. The group maintains a list of more than 1,000 Israeli charities that it has determined are eligible to receive American donors’ gifts. According to its president, Geoffrey Stern, the group covers its overhead with fees charged to its endowed funds, and doesn’t take any expenses out of regular gifts.
Read more: How To Be a ‘Friend’ and Get a Tax Break in Return The Jewish Daily Forward December 16, 2014
Weinberg Foundation’s recent PEF grants
In it’s June e-news letter, The Harry & Jeanette Weinberg Foundation announced more than $13 million in additional new grants including the following recommended grants to PEF. P.E.F. Israel Endowment Funds Kivunim: New Directions for Special Needs Youth in...Read moreI personally visited the school a few years ago and found it to be quite advanced in it’s curriculum – both in religious studies, secular studies, and extracurricular activities. You can sense the happiness among the students as they spent time in music, art, and other liberal art type courses. The fact that many of the students come from impoverished and at times troubled homes did not deter them from having the passion to excel and be successful. It was a testament to the school and it’s faculty who spend enormous amounts of time and effort to continuously improve the school.
Record number of charities added to PEF approved list in 2013
Israeli charities (Amutot) continue to recognize that PEF provides a unique way for US taxpayers to make charitable contributions. In 2013 a total of 81 new Israeli charitable organizations were applied and were added to PEF’s approved list. This is double the...
Mavoi Satum Director makes the short list
Mavoi Satum is a PEF approved organization which provides support for “agunot” and “mesoravot get” (women denied divorce) in Israel. The organization is proud to announce that: The panel of judges appointed by the Maariv newspaper, including Yoav Sorek, Moshe Grilk,...
More than Meets the Eye
You can now easily search for a PEF approved charity by name, by key-word and by category. If you click on our “charity” tab, you can scroll to the bottom of the page and Browse by Category: If you are looking (e.g.) for an organization that is involved with service...
P.E.F. posts its 2012 Annual Report
Today PEF held its annual Trustees Meeting which included reports from our Treasurer and Chairs of our Investment, Grants and Nominating Committees. We were pleased to welcome Donn Weinberg, Executive VP of The Harry and Jeanette Weinberg Foundation as a guest...
A new beginning at a Woman’s Shelter
PEF supports many battered women’s shelters in Israel. Noach Korman, executive director of Bat Melech, a shelter for Orthodox women, shared the following story of new life and new beginnings… During the Chag a woman from our Bet Shemesh shelter gave birth...Hadassah Musher of blessed memory
It is with great sadness that we note the passing of Hadassah Musher, a PEF trustee and widow of Sidney Musher (PEF Chairman 1985-90). Hadassah was the last surviving daughter of Rabbi Mordecai and Lena Kaplan and died soon after celebrating her 101st birthday with...Read moreA huge MAZAL TOV to Keren Hanan Aynor alumni, Shimon Solomon on his victory in the recent Knesset Elections and his appointment as an MK for the Yesh Atid party!
As described in The Times of Israel article by Gabe Fisher on Jan. 23rd, 2013:
Shimon Solomon, 43, emigrated from Ethiopia in 1980 and focuses on Ethiopian and refugee issues in Israel. He was until recently educational director at the Aghozo-Shalom Youth Village, a rehabilitation center for traumatized orphans in Rwanda. From 2005 to 2007 he worked in the Israeli Embassy in Addis Ababa, and was later director of an immigrant absorption center in Beersheba.
Keren Hanan Aynor is proud to count Shimon among our very talented alumni and scholarship recipients!
Volunteerism in Israel – higher than the numbers show
I am always struck by the number of Israeli charities that depend…. really depend on volunteers. A quick search of PEF charities that include “volunteer” in their description comes up with over 40 entries. We always ask amutot whether their Israeli...
The New Philanthropy: American Jewish Giving to Israeli Organizations
We are happy to share with our PEF Family an important study out of Brandeis University by Eric Fleisch and Theodore Sasson entitled The New Philanthropy: American Jewish Giving to Israeli Organizations dated April 2012. The study recognizes that while the Federation...
Recent approved grants from the Weinberg Foundation
PEF was pleased to approve four recommended grants from The Harry & Jeanette Weinberg Foundation totaling $500,000 for: Women For Women to fund the renovation of the Haifa Shelter for Battered Women, which includes construction of security rooms, 12 residential...
a trustee visit and a reunion
One of the core responsibilities of a PEF trustee is to travel to Israel (at our own expense) and to visit approved charities (Amutot). Such trustee visits are actually one of the biggest perks of the job! As a trustee we have an excuse to travel the country and...questioning a recommended grant…
Many of the recommended grants that we receive at PEF include a particular recommendation for a specific project or application of funds. Since PEF is not a pass-through, it is our practice to regularly query either the donor or the recommended charity about the...newly approved charity: Yad Zvi
PEF adds approximately ten new charitable organizations (amutot) every week to its approved charity list. Not all of these charities will appear on our Charities Index because we only list charities that have already received over $500 in contributions. Today we...
Amutah Spotlight – Israel Free Loan Association
For a donor wishing to maximize the impact of a contribution, a donation to a Free Loan Association makes a lot of sense. Recently the free loaning concept has been re-branded as microfinance and won notoriety, not to mention; a Nobel Prize. In the Jewish tradition...