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Ive become aware of a despicable anti-Jewish organization and would like to determine exactly who finances them.
Can anyone advise on this?
Sorry, it’s not public record.
If this is a virulent anti-semitic group, the ADL may know. If it is a group trying to convert Jews to Xtianity or “pseudo-Judaism”, Jews for Judaism may know. However, in both cases, I doubt if the Jewish groups that I mentioned would release the information about who does the funding because it could hurt their future plans of dealing with these hate groups.
If it is registered as a tax exempt organization, you can get information off it’s form 990. Depending how it classified you will get varying degrees of information. Certainly the board of directors will be disclosed and if it is a PF, contributors are also public information. You can either ask them for a copy and they are legally required to let you see it and provide a copy for a reasonable fee. Otherwise you can get it from guidestar.org or the foundation center website which has a 990 finder.
If they are registered in NY, you can also get that information and more from the AG web site.
Just to follow up, there is no public record as to where an organization gets it’s funding from. If you suspect that they get it from a specific source, you can investigate that source to see whether thay gave funds to that organization.
Your best bet is to get their 990 and do a web search on the names you find, it won’t nessasarily tell you who funds them but You’ll get an idea who they’re associated with.
As Bezalel said, no private non-governmental organizations — even tax-exempt organizations — are obligated to report to anyone who funds them or how much funds they raised. The *only* exception are certain organizations engaged in political fundraising to benefit a candidate for political office.
If this organization has anything to do with feet, then yes, the Federation is the main sponsor. I’ll tell more once I am sure that I am on the right track – however, the Federation is the main culprit at this point and the other info doesn’t mean much.
The federation finances this organization , and unless you are giving money to them you have no right to tell them how to spend their money.
If more religious jews would give to them then they would give to those organizations that cater to more religious jews
The donors to the Federation barely know where their money is going because it is spread so thin. Few really have any ideology; they just want their name somewhere and the Federation is still the best place to be a macher based only on money.
The Federation will be irrelevant anyway in 30 years, but that is even worse because the reason it will be irrelevant is that its secular donors’ children are marrying out and have no interest at all in anything Jewish.
That organization is a sad story. The founder’s father became a BT and her grandmother was very resentful. The grandmother, who is now deceased, had money and gave it to the granddaughter for this feet thing both to spite her son and to dodge various taxes (probably legally). The founder herself went off because she spent time with secular relatives in EY and decided she wanted an easy, carefree life. Had she not had her grandmother’s money, she’d have just quietly gone off herself.
The founder is no longer in the picture and is studying law; now it is in the hands of non-Jewish counselors. When the original founder ran it, she tried to retain respect and/or she wasn’t very successful in brainwashing people – her own brother went back to Yiddishkeit after some time away. The non-Jews who do the day-to-day work are just paid employees who indeed consider it a success when they talk someone out of Yiddishkeit as opposed to just helping someone get a GED and giving them a place to hang out.
The answer is more options within our world. However, the Federation is supposed to support Jewish survival – and plenty of frum Jews do give to it if only for professional and business reasons. My very Chassidishe friend’s father-in-law, a Chassidishe yid from “der alter heim” who is a big wholesale jewelry dealer, was very active in the Federation when he was younger because his retail customers were members. Again, wait a generation and it will either disappear or become a funding source for day schools etc only. My guess is the former – the state of Israel hardly needs donations, Soviet Jews are free, and secular American Jews are vanishing. There goes the need for the Federation.
Chalila- Why dont you reveal the name of this organization if you are trying to spread the word? Or is that against YWN policy?
If you give enough to the federation you can make the board, that is where the real power is (As it is in any organization)
Say someone gave $10 Million dollars, You bet they have a say in where the money goes
As far as I know, the Federation where I live, investigates each organization that they fund very thoroughly. I will say that we have an extremely small frum population and I don’t know of any that are involved in the Federation’s board or as CJA volunteers, nor do I know if any local frum organizations are Federation beneficiaries.
There is a list of major donors and sponsoring organizations right on their website. It doesn’t appear to be a big secret.
The size of this organization versus the Federation budget and their list of other donors (al ele ani boichiyo) leads me to believe they purposely request too small an amount for the Federation to have to make more than a routine, administrative-level decision.
Nevertheless, if they left the picture, the rest of the assimilationists would still fund it. The answer is to steal their thunder and provide real alternatives for those who are questioning or who don’t fit into the community mold.
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