More than $1 million goes to L.A. innovators

Last week, the Jewish Community Foundation of Los Angeles (JCF) awarded more than $1 million to five new and innovative programs aimed at improving Jewish life in the Los Angeles area.

“These grants are made to ensure a vibrant Jewish community,” said Amelia Xann, JCF’s vice president for its Family Foundation Center and Grant Programs. The five projects demonstrate the breadth of offerings in the Los Angeles Jewish community, as well as JCF’s commitment to supporting programs across that wide spectrum.

“One of the ways that these grants are diverse is really in terms of the different populations they target,” Xann said. Synagogue-goers, for instance, should see JCF’s impact in the Federation’s Fed Up With Hunger/Netiya campaign: A $250,000 Cutting Edge grant will help mobilize Jewish communities to fight hunger in Los Angeles. Meanwhile, JCF hopes to reach unaffiliated young Jews by giving $200,000 to Jconnect, the organization behind the six-year-old Jewlicious Festival, which will use the funds to scale up that event and to launch more programs designed to attract young Jews from diverse backgrounds.

JCF also awarded grants to a program for parents and their young children (through $150,000 to the Federation’s PJ Library, which brings Jewish children’s books into homes); a program aimed at supporting Jewish artists ($250,000 to the Six Points Fellowship for emerging Jewish artists); and to a program that will help developmentally disabled Jewish young adults live independently ($200,000 to Etta Israel Center’s JCHAI: Jewish Community Housing for Adult Independence).

Cutting Edge grants are disbursed over three years and are capped at $250,000. JCF issued its first Cutting Edge grants in 2006, and has since awarded more than $6 million to 39 different recipient organizations, including American Jewish University (to create the Celebration of Jewish Books), LimmudLA (to establish the annual three-day conference of Jewish study and other learning sessions around the city), StandWithUs (to develop materials for public-school teachers to teach about Israel’s positive contributions to the world) and others.

JCF manages $706 million in charitable assets for Jewish philanthropists in Southern California. In 2009, the fund directed $62 million in donations to nonprofits around the world; of that amount, $5 million was allocated by JCF as an institution to Jewish and non-Jewish organizations in Los Angeles and to organizations in Israel — including last year’s two Cutting Edge grantees.

For Cutting Edge grantees, the benefits often go beyond JCF’s seed money. “Because of how rigorous the process is, it really does help our grantees to leverage the Jewish Community Foundation funding to find other funders who would like to participate,” Xann said.

The process, which takes just under a year, is set to start again on Sept. 20, with a Grantseekers Workshop. Social entrepreneurs or representatives of existing nonprofit organizations interested in applying for Cutting Edge grants in 2011 should consult JCF’s Web site (jewishfoundationla.org) for details.