The Giving Ledger
Your own federation, then ten stories about where Jewish charity money comes from, where it goes, and what it costs to keep the buildings open.
Jews give a lot of money to charity. Most of it goes to organizations, and once it gets there, almost nobody follows it.
A finder and ten stories do. They use the tax filings every charity has to publish, and they say in plain numbers what happened to the money.
A finder, ten stories, and three reels.
The reels carry the organizations that Jewish charity money passes through: the funds that hold it, the federations that hand it out, and the shuls, schools, camps and kollels that spend it. The first pull finds your own federation, and after that the reels stop on the organizations each story is about.
Your own federation files a tax return every year, and this reads it for you.
Every federation and community foundation on file sits on one map. Choose the one nearest you and the page opens its own return: what it took in, where its grant dollars went, what it spent running itself, and how it stands against the twelve federations closest to it in size and kind. Money that leaves for the national body in New York is followed through that body’s returns as well, so the Israel figures count what was actually passed on.
Jews give four times as much to charity as their neighbors with the same income.
We compared 29 Jewish neighborhoods with similar neighborhoods that earn almost exactly the same. The Jewish ones report about four times as much in charitable gifts on their tax returns. Wealth alone does not explain it, because some observant neighborhoods with modest incomes give a bigger share than wealthy ones do.
Most of what America’s biggest Jewish foundations give away goes outside the Jewish world.
We read all 25,199 grants in three consecutive filings from fifty of the largest Jewish family foundations, $9.20 billion in all. Of the money we could trace in the latest year, two dollars in three went to universities, hospitals and museums rather than to Jewish organizations. American higher education is the single largest destination, ahead of everything going to Israel.
A kollel makes a town grow, but it takes about ten years.
For fifty years, American Jewish communities have set up kollels, groups of men paid to learn Torah full time, hoping the town would grow around them. We checked 266 communities, and for the first five years nothing changes. In the second decade, the day schools in kollel towns grow about twice as fast as schools in towns without one.
A kollel costs about $500,000 a year, and donors have to pay it again every year.
We read sixteen years of tax filings for community kollels. A typical one spends about half a million dollars a year, nearly all of it from donations, and ends the year with almost nothing left in the bank. Bigger towns have bigger kollels with bigger bills, and only the largest ones ever build up savings.
Give $100 to a federation and about $87 reaches a charity that actually does something with it.
We put $100 into a Jewish federation and followed it through the tax filings of every organization that touched it. About $87 ends up at a charity that runs a program, like a food bank or a school. About $12 goes to salaries and fundraising along the way, most of it at the federation itself, and the rest goes to addresses nobody wrote down properly.
Federations sent $189m to four advocacy organizations, and almost none of it moved on again.
A federation gives most of what it raises to somebody else. The American Jewish Committee, the Anti-Defamation League, the JCRC of New York and the Secure Community Network keep it: between 52 and 57 cents of every dollar they spend is payroll, and the most any of them passes onward as grants is 6.7 percent. At the JCRC of New York, 29 percent of spending is not itemized on any line of the return.
When a federation raises less money, it spends more to raise it and sends more of it out of town.
In 33 communities, the annual federation campaign fell by more than a fifth over ten years, after inflation. Those federations did not get smaller to match. Fundraising and overhead went from $72 to $108 for every $100 raised, grants to local charities stayed flat, and grants to national and out-of-town groups rose by nearly three quarters. Money for elder care went down while money for advocacy groups went up.
Mail your Israel gift straight to the cause and about $8 more of it gets there.
Take a $180 gift for Israel. Sent through a federation, it passes through four organizations before it lands. Sent straight to an Israeli charity's American arm, it passes through two, and about $8 more arrives at the door. The federation route spreads the money across many causes and lets professionals decide where it goes. After October 7, giving straight to the causes grew more than four times as fast as giving through federations.
Keeping a Jewish family of six safe costs $853 a year, and small towns pay the most.
We priced guards, cameras, doors and security staff for every Jewish building in 143 communities and divided the bill by the people they protect. In 2016 it came to about $94 a year for a family of six, and today it is $853. Small towns pay the most, because they need the same buildings as big cities with far fewer families to split the cost. Almost half the bill protects day schools, which serve about three percent of American Jews.
Small Jewish communities spend four times as much per person on their day schools as big ones do.
We read ten years of federation grant lists for 35 communities. Almost every federation gives its day schools something. In communities under 50,000 Jews, the federation spends about $46 a year per Jewish resident on the schools, and in communities over 150,000 it spends about $12. In a few small towns, the federation check still decides whether the school has a good year or a bad one.
What the reels can't show.
A slot machine pays out at random, and a federation does not: somebody decides, and every story here is about who. The other thing the reels can't show is the giving that never touches a tax filing, like the cash handed to a neighbor, the meal dropped at a door, and the small shul that never files at all.
Four things the filings can't tell you
Every number above comes from a public document. These four do not, and anyone who gives you a confident number for them is guessing.
What the money does in Israel
Tax filings stop at the border. Once a grant reaches an Israeli charity, the American paperwork says nothing about what happened to it.
What synagogues spend
Synagogues do not have to file, so the most common Jewish institution in America leaves almost no public record of its budget.
Who gave through the donor-advised fund
Fund sponsors report their grants in bulk. The person behind each gift, and why they gave, are not on file.
Whether any of it worked
The filings count money in and money out. No public record says what a grant did for the person at the end of it.
The finder and all ten stories
Grouped five ways, in the order the money travels.