Thanks to you and your generous support, we successfully raised more than $4 million through the 2019 Annual Campaign to support our community here at home, in Israel, and around the world.  This is the first time our community has reached this accomplishment since 2011!

With help from all of our generous donors, volunteers, and community members, we closed the Campaign strong, having raised $4.286 million to support the many needed programs and services provided by the Federation and our partner agencies and organizations. These are much-needed funds that touch the lives of more than 2,000 individuals each day in Indianapolis and countless others in Israel and around the world.

In addition to surpassing our goal of $4 million, this 11 percent increase over last year is the highest Campaign achievement for our community in the past decade! In 2019, we also reversed a trend in the Greater Indianapolis Jewish community that is prevalent in many Jewish communities around the country, where the number of donors has been in decline. We saw an increase of 9% in donors, which is an additional 99 donors, to the Annual Campaign, the first such increase in many years.

Because of you, we can offer vital funding to our community’s greatest priorities.

• Grants awarded through the Planning & Allocations process across all of our constituent and beneficiary agencies, according to Priority Area:
  • 26% went to Engagement and Community Development
  • 24% went to Israel & Overseas, with an additional 13% locally for Israel Engagement
  • 22% went to Jewish Education, Arts and Culture
  • 11% went to Support Social Services
  • 4% went to Leadership & Partner Development

With your support, we were able to allocate much-needed funding to key areas, such as:

• All of our partner agencies and organizations that receive funding through our community’s Planning & Allocations process for the vital programs and services they provide.
• Provide additional funds to enhance our community security initiative and for programming to combat antisemitism.
• Create opportunities for our community’s youth to come together to learn and live Jewish values through the Youth Philanthropy Indianapolis (YoPhI) program and other education initiatives.
• Sustain and develop new programs to support seniors and other populations in our community.
• Enable JCRC’s Civic Mission to take Indianapolis Civic Leaders on an impactful experience in Israel with the goal of building ongoing relationships.
• Provide a one-year leadership training opportunity through the Prystowsky ATID V program for  a talented group of our community’s future leaders.

We look forward to collecting and analyzing important data about our funded programs in the year ahead, and reporting back to you the wide-ranging impact your donations have on our community.

While we are happy to celebrate these successes, we still have many needs that we have not yet been able to fund.  While there is no shortage of needs in our community, we are constrained by limited resources; we received funding requests from our community partners of more than $1 million in excess of what we were able to allocate.  Given these needs, the Planning & Allocations Committee had to make some very difficult decisions, taking into account all of the funding requests, the needs of the community, the established funding priorities, and the funds available to allocate.

We are proud of the work and the difference that we all made together throughout 2019.  We are excited about the potential and the opportunities that 2020 holds for our entire community.  As we come together around our theme of “2020: A Vision for the Future,” we look forward to working together to continue to increase the resources available to address important community needs.

Reflecting back on where we have come from, taking stock of where we are currently, and looking ahead to where we are going and what the future holds, thank you for making an important difference and for making our community a better place for all.