Koret has worked in the Bay Area and broader Jewish community for over four decades, and we’ve strived to maximize the impact of our support by cultivating meaningful relationships with our grantees. Our mutual trust and shared sense of responsibility gives our grantees the space to do what they do best: serve their communities.

The social and economic contexts in which our grantees exist are never static, and so they need the flexibility to respond to new realities. In times of crisis—most recently October 7th and the ongoing Israel-Hamas war—our grantees have risen to the challenge, stepping up, doubling down, and showing their nimbleness. IsraAID, for example, swiftly redirected their resources towards humanitarian efforts within Israel, while USC Shoah launched a new partnership with the National Library of Israel to make survivor testimony publicly available. On the other side of the coin, our flexible funding to organizations like those in the Koret Food Program helps grantees maintain their core offerings and shift resources as needed while confronting the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic, lingering inflation, and other external challenges.

Koret’s emphasis on relationships allows grantees to focus on the efficacy and reach of their work. Our trust-based approach to grantmaking is about investing in people, ideas, and organizations, and empowering our grantees to employ resources where they are most needed.

Swords to Plowshares: 50 years of vets helping vets

Swords to Plowshares (Swords)—a pillar organization in the Bay Area veteran community—is celebrating 50 years of service this year. Swords was founded by six Vietnam veterans who wanted to help their peers navigate the challenges of healing their trauma, re-entering civilian life, and leveraging the benefits due them from the Department of Veterans Affairs. Swords’ ethos is simple and powerful: vets helping vets. Koret spoke with two Swords ambassadors about the challenges of re-entering civilian life, and the successes of the organization’s approach to building trust and developing community. Read the full grantee story here.

Thoughts & Opinions

“There’s sort of this false impression that the pandemic is over, but food security is very important.” Ashley Rodwick, Senior Program Officer at the Koret Foundation, spoke with the San Francisco Chronicle about the Foundation’s recent $2.2 million investment in food banks and programs addressing food insecurity in the Bay Area. Read the full article, titled “Bay Area food banks struggling to keep up with demand receive critical charitable donation.”

Koret Grantees in the News

Recent findings support investing in Bay Area Jewish preschools Earlier this year, Koret partnered with Rosov Consulting and EarlyJ to survey the Jewish early childhood education landscape in the Bay Area. EarlyJ has now expanded a pilot program to fund local Jewish preschools. One preschool in San Rafael used this funding to support three new Israeli families. Read more.	University of Haifa and UCSD Archaeologists excavate submerged prehistoric site Marine archaeologists from the University of California, San Diego and the University of Haifa—a collaboration supported by the Koret Foundation— are excavating a submerged prehistoric site in the Mediterranean Sea, off the Carmel coast of Israel. Read more.	Shalom Hartman’s Yehuda Kurtzer speaks at at UC Berkeley Yehuda Kurtzer, president of the Shalom Hartman Institute, recently spoke at the Helen Diller Institute for Jewish Law and Israel Studies at UC Berkeley. He discussed the “Golden Age” of American Judaism and the transition point that American Jews currently find ourselves in. Read more.