Federations sent $189m to the ADL, the AJC and two others. Almost none of it became grants.

The American Jewish Committee, the JCRC of New York, the Anti-Defamation League and the Secure Community Network took $189m from the federation system over eleven years. A federation gives most of what it raises to somebody else; these four keep it, and between 52 and 57 cents of every dollar they spend becomes salary. What the salaries buy turns out to be four different jobs at four institutions that share one line in a category table and very little else.

Gavriel Brown · August 2026 · Federation grant data 2014 to 2024 · recipient financials from IRS extracts through 2023, filed returns for 2024, ADL audits through June 2025

First, what is the relationship between each organization and the federations?

Not one relationship. Four points on a single axis, and where an organization sits on that axis governs almost everything else about it.

The chart below places each organization twice over. Across the bottom is how much of its money comes from the federation system at all. Up the side is how concentrated that money is, measured as the share arriving from its single largest funder. An organization low and to the left has a broad constituency that happens to include federations. An organization high and to the right has a patron. One term needs care throughout: the roster includes federations, the foundation arms that sit beside them holding donor-advised accounts, and the national body, and those three are not the same kind of decision.

Figure 1. From a broad constituency to a single patron, and only one of the patrons is a federation

Grants from the federation system as a share of the organization's revenue, 2018 to 2022, against the share of those grants arriving from its single largest funder

Fig. 1 Read the bottom left first. The Anti-Defamation League takes 3.9 percent of its revenue from the system, spread across 67 funders, the largest of them at 18 percent. The American Jewish Committee sits just above at 6.3 percent from 45 funders. Now jump to the top right. The JCRC of New York takes 69 percent of its revenue from the system and 91 percent of that from UJA-Federation of New York alone, which is the one case here where the patron is an actual community federation. The Secure Community Network sits at 61 percent with 84 percent arriving through the Jewish Federations of North America, a national body passing money onward rather than a community deciding locally. Note what the y axis is actually measuring at the two bottom points: the largest single funder of both AJC and ADL is the Jewish Communal Fund, a donor-advised sponsor whose grant line aggregates an unknown number of separate donor recommendations. Strip it out and the largest funder that is itself a federation is Detroit at 30 percent for AJC and Philadelphia at 12 percent for ADL. The ordering across the four holds either way; the height of the two left-hand points does not.

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So what happens to a federation dollar after it arrives?

It becomes salary. That sounds obvious until you set it against what a federation itself does with a dollar, which is give most of it away to somebody else. These four keep it. The American Jewish Committee passes 6.7 percent of its spending onward as grants, and the Secure Community Network and the JCRC of New York report none at all. The Anti-Defamation League needs its two entities separated: the League itself passes on 0.7 percent, while the ADL Foundation beside it granted out $15.6m in 2022, four fifths of what it spent. The filings do not say how much of that went to the League rather than to outside organizations, so neither the 0.7 percent nor the consolidated 13.6 percent should be quoted without that caveat.

Figure 2. Between 52 and 57 percent of every dollar is payroll. Almost none of it moves onward.

Total functional expenses by nature of expense, most recent complete year, Form 990 Part IX. The Anti-Defamation League row is the League alone, without the ADL Foundation. The final band is the amount the return does not itemize.

Fig. 2 The blue band on the left of every bar is payroll, and it runs from 52 percent at the JCRC of New York to 57 percent at the Anti-Defamation League. Look for the near-black grants band and you will struggle to find it anywhere except the American Jewish Committee. Then compare the amber band, outside professional fees. At AJC it is 14 percent of everything spent, $11.8m in one year, the largest such line of the four both absolutely and proportionally. At the Secure Community Network the band to watch is teal, information technology at 23 percent, which no other organization here approaches. One band deserves its own sentence. The pale band at the right of the JCRC of New York bar is 29 percent of its spending that the return does not itemize on any line, and it has run between 25 and 29 percent every year since 2018. Nothing here shows what is in it, which is why no claim in this piece about where JCRC's money goes should be read as complete.

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What kind of payroll?

An increasingly senior one. Headcount grew at all four, and at all four the number of people earning more than $100,000 grew faster than the headcount did. The windows are not identical, because the most recent year available differs by organization, and each row below is labeled with its own.

Figure 3. The share of staff earning six figures rose at all four, and rose by half or more at three

Employees reported as receiving more than $100,000 on Part VII, as a percentage of total employees on Part I line 5. Hollow dot 2018, filled dot the most recent year available, which is 2022 for the Anti-Defamation League and 2023 for the others.

Fig. 3 The JCRC of New York moves furthest, from 27 percent of its staff earning six figures to 51 percent, on a payroll that went from 22 people to 35. The Anti-Defamation League adds 68 staff between 2018 and 2022, a rise of 14 percent, while the number earning over $100,000 goes from 90 to 157, a rise of 74 percent, though neither series moves in a straight line: League headcount runs 485, 496, 439, 501, 553, and the six-figure count runs 90, 120, 139, 129, 157. The Secure Community Network was 11 people in 2018 and 105 in 2023, so its line describes a start-up filling out rather than an existing body reweighting. The American Jewish Committee moves least, from 30 percent to 32.

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Each of the four spends its money on something the other three do not. That is the finding, and it is the reason the aggregate number tells a reader nothing.

What is the American Jewish Committee buying?

Communications, at a pace that outruns everything else in its budget. AJC names three programs in its filings, and the smallest of them in 2022 is the largest in 2024.

Figure 4. AJC's Communications program grew six times over in two years and became its largest

Program service expenses as reported on Form 990 Part III, millions of dollars as filed

Fig. 4 Follow the amber bars across. Communications runs $4.6m, then $10.9m, then $27.3m, and AJC describes it as the department that exists to educate its advocacy targets and to ensure brand awareness. Now follow the blue bars, Government and International Affairs, the work most people picture when they picture AJC: $23.6m, then $29.4m, then $26.1m. It did not simply get overtaken, it fell $3.3m while the department beside it rose $16.4m. That is also the pattern you get when cost is reclassified between two lines, and nothing in the return separates the two explanations.

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Three numbers sit underneath that chart and are worth stating plainly. AJC's total spending grew 65 percent in two years, from $62.0m to $102.3m. Its outside professional fees went from $3.20m in 2022 to $11.79m in 2023, and CharityWatch puts the 2024 figure at $24.2m. And its reported program share rose from 75 percent to 80 percent while all of that was happening.

CharityWatch, which had graded AJC B+ on its 2021 accounts, withheld a grade for the year ended 31 December 2024. It said it was concerned the charity could be including certain fundraising expenses in reported program expenses, pointing to $24,236,105 of other professional fees and $7,853,745 of conferences and meetings sitting in the program column. It wrote to AJC on 24 March 2026 and had received no reply by 13 April. Among the contractors AJC names, three are described as media communications suppliers: Talbot Digital at $6,950,000, Attn: Inc. at $4,624,091 and Global Strategy Group at $3,446,650.

None of that establishes that anything was misallocated, and there are ordinary reasons a program share can rise during rapid growth, starting with administrative costs that do not scale with the budget. What exists in public is a watchdog's question and, so far, no published answer. AJC's account of how it draws the line belongs in any story that uses these numbers, and this piece does not have it.

What is the Anti-Defamation League buying, and can it keep buying it?

Public awareness, increasingly, and less education than it used to deliver. Its audited statements are the cleanest disclosure any of the four produces, and they show the mix moving while the total holds still.

Figure 5. ADL's program mix moved toward public awareness, and its surplus went with the fundraising surge

Left: program services from the audited statements, years ended 30 June, millions of dollars. Right: revenue against expenses, League and Foundation combined throughout, December year ends to 2022 and June year ends thereafter.

Program services

Hollow dot FY2024, filled dot FY2025

Revenue and expenses

League and Foundation combined. Year end moves from December to June after 2022.

Fig. 5 On the left, two programs grew and three shrank inside a total that moved 1 percent. Public Awareness rose $3.0m and International Affairs rose 44 percent, while Education fell a fifth, from $12.3m to $9.8m. ADL now spends roughly twice as much telling the public about antisemitism as it does delivering the anti-bias and Holocaust education programs it runs in schools. On the right, watch the gap between the two lines rather than either line, and read across the dashed rule with care, because the year end moves from December to June there. Revenue fell 20 percent in the year ended June 2025 while expenses held flat, so an operating surplus of $37.0m became $3.7m in a single year. Two qualifications keep that honest. FY2025 revenue of $137.6m is still above the $128.1m the two entities took in 2022, so the fall is from the war-year peak rather than below where ADL started. And a surplus this thin is not unprecedented: 2018 was $2.7m and 2022 was $8.4m. What is new is the combination of a cost base built at the peak and a revenue line that has stopped rising.

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One reporting caution before anyone quotes the right panel. The FY2025 audit restates the FY2024 comparatives, raising Development, total supporting services, total operating expenses and total operating revenues each by $1,681,937, with the explanation that certain prior year amounts were reclassified for consistency. The FY2024 points plotted above use the restated figures. Total program services, which is what the left panel shows, was not restated. One consequence worth knowing if you go to the audit yourself: ADL's Development spending falls 11 percent between the two years on the restated base and 3.8 percent against the number first published.

What is the Secure Community Network buying?

Software and analysts. The organization the federation system built to look after the physical security of Jewish buildings now spends more on information technology than on anything except wages.

Figure 6. Information technology went from under 1 percent of what SCN spends to 23 percent

Total functional expenses, 2018 to 2023, millions of dollars as filed, with staff count above each bar

Fig. 6 The bars grow almost twelvefold, from $1.8m to $21.4m. Inside them, watch the teal band. Information technology is $16,511 in 2018 and $4.92m in 2023, which is 23 percent of everything the organization spent that year, against 7.5 percent three years earlier. Staff went from 11 to 105, and 46 of those 105 earn more than $100,000. SCN discloses exactly one program service, described as monitoring the threat landscape, at $17.6m, so its program column and its program description are the same number. That is the thinnest disclosure of the four, and it means the line items are the only place a reader can see what the work actually consists of.

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Who could absorb a bad year?

Net assets separate the four again, and not along the lines the rest of this piece would predict. Measured in months of operating expenses, the American Jewish Committee holds 38.7 months and the Anti-Defamation League, League and Foundation combined, holds 16.2. Inside that consolidated figure the split is stark: the Foundation holds 124.8 months and the League itself 3.8. The JCRC of New York holds 6.3 months and the Secure Community Network 2.9. Treat all of these as an upper bound rather than as cash: net assets include endowment and buildings, and AJC's 38.7 months rests on $266.8m that is mostly not available to pay next month's salaries.

Set the last figure against Figure 6. An organization whose costs grew almost twelvefold in six years, that drew 28 percent of its 2023 revenue from the federation system with 85 percent of that arriving through one channel, is carrying under three months of net assets against its expenses. Its funding is renewable rather than guaranteed, and the direction of that funding turned in 2024, when federation money to it fell from $7.2m to $4.5m.

So what is the story?

The four organizations that receive the most federation advocacy money are not four versions of the same thing. One is a national body that takes about a sixteenth of its revenue from the federation system, has put much of its recent growth into outside professional fees, and is being asked by a watchdog how it sorts program from fundraising. One is a national brand whose revenue has already fallen back from its post-war peak while its cost base has not, and which now spends more on public awareness than on classroom education. One is a security start-up that grew into a technology operation, dependent on a single national channel and carrying three months of net assets against its costs. One is a New York institution that takes two thirds of its revenue from the federation next door, and does not itemize where a third of its spending goes.

Written as a single line in a category table, all four look like the same decision repeated. Opened up, they are four organizations that would respond to the same shock in four different ways, and the shock has already started.

What each organization should be asked before publication

The reporting above rests on filings and audits. These are the questions the filings cannot answer.

American Jewish Committee. What is the allocation methodology that puts $24.2m of other professional fees and $7.9m of conferences in the program column? Did any part of the Communications increase from $4.6m to $27.3m come from work previously booked under Government and International Affairs? Has AJC responded to CharityWatch since 13 April 2026?
Anti-Defamation League. What was reclassified in the $1,681,937 FY2024 restatement? Is the fall in Education spending a decision or a timing effect? How much of the ADL Foundation's $15.6m of grants paid in 2022 went to the League rather than to outside organizations? With revenue down 20 percent and expenses flat, what is the plan for the year ending June 2026?
Secure Community Network. What does the $4.92m information technology line consist of, and how much of it is recurring license cost? Why is only one program service disclosed? What happens to operations if federation funding stays at its 2024 level?
JCRC of New York. With 91 percent of federation support arriving from a single funder, what governance separates the organization's priorities from UJA-Federation's? And what is in the 29 percent of annual spending that the return does not itemize on any expense line?
Jewish Federations of North America. Eighty-four percent of the federation money reaching SCN over the decade passed through JFNA, and 85 percent of it in 2023. On what basis is the amount set each year, and who decides it?

Sources and method. Grant figures come from 2,267 current Form 990 returns, tax years 2014 to 2024, filed by 234 of the 265 federations and foundation arms on the roster, aggregated by recipient EIN. Grants filed under the American Jewish Committee's EIN whose recipient names identify a different organization, chiefly the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee, are excluded, which removes $0.83m. Recipient financial figures come from the IRS Statistics of Income 990 extracts, which run through tax period December 2023 for calendar-year filers and June 2023 for June filers, supplemented by the organizations' own filed returns and audited statements for later periods. Figures drawn from the later sources are identified as such in the accompanying data files.

Figure 1 divides five years of grants, 2018 to 2022, by five years of the organization's own revenue over the same period, for all four. A common window is used because ADL's year end moved during 2023, leaving no comparable 2023 figure, and because a single-year ratio can exceed 100 percent purely on grant timing. ADL figures combine the League, EIN 13-1818723, with the ADL Foundation, EIN 13-2887439, on both sides of that ratio, and Figure 5 and the net-asset paragraph use the same combined basis. Figures 2 and 3 are the League alone, which is stated where they appear, because the Foundation reports the same employee counts as the League in 2018 and 2019 and none from 2020, so a consolidated headcount series cannot be built from the filings.

Payroll means officer compensation, other salaries, pension, other employee benefits and payroll taxes together, divided by total functional expenses. It excludes contract labor, which at AJC is the fastest growing line and would raise the payroll figure materially if counted as staff cost. Part IX line items are reported by nature of expense rather than by function, so a salary cannot be split into program and fundraising from the extract alone. The program, management and fundraising columns are each organization's own allocation, which is the thing CharityWatch is querying at AJC.

ADL's fiscal year end moved from December to June during 2023, leaving a six-month stub period with total expenses of $57.9m. It is excluded from every comparison here, and Figure 5's right panel is marked where the reporting basis changes. Employee counts come from Part I line 5 and are not available for AJC after 2023 or for ADL after 2022 from any source I could open; figures circulating on third-party sites are not used.