Cultivation: How the Grinspoon Foundation Is Helping Build a Jewish Future

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After a bout with cancer in the 1980s, real estate tycoon Harold Grinspoon experienced a “moment of clarity.” 

“Harold started exploring his Jewish roots. [He] learned from others that he comes from a beautiful tradition and heritage and the more he learned, the more he valued it, and the more he wanted to make sure that it continued on in a strong and vibrant way,” said Winnie Sandler Grinspoon, his daughter-in-law and president of the Harold Grinspoon Foundation (HGF). “Judaism added to his life, and he wanted to make sure that he passed it on.”

To do so, he turned to philanthropy. Grinspoon, who reportedly has a net worth of $500 million, is the owner of Aspen Square Management, one of the largest privately held property management firms in the U.S. In 1991, he and his wife Diane Troderman, a distinguished Jewish lay leader, established HGF with a mission to help people connect to Jewish values, faith, traditions and culture, and to build vibrant Jewish communities. Since the foundation was established, it has invested more than $320 million dollars in Jewish programming.

Grinspoon and Troderman signed the Giving Pledge in 2015. In his Giving Pledge letter, Grinspoon wrote: “In the 21st century, I believe that for Judaism to continue to have an impact on families and society, Jewish living and learning must be actively cultivated. That is why I am committing nearly all my assets to my foundation to pursue this goal. The sense of mission and accomplishment that I get through my philanthropy energizes me every day.” 

The couple signed the Jewish Future Pledge in 2021. “I want future generations to experience a world that allows them to embrace their Jewish roots, find meaning in Jewish living, and stand tall with pride,” Grinspoon said upon signing the pledge. “We must cultivate philanthropic giving to secure the future of the Jewish programs and organizations that are the fabric of our community.”

Early on, HGF focused its energies on funding Jewish communal life in Grinspoon’s native western Massachusetts. But over time, the foundation grew to provide funding to Jewish communities across North America and beyond through several signature programs: JCamp 180, PJ Library and Life & Legacy. All of these programs encourage Jewish continuity, l’dor v’dor, from generation to generation. By virtue of their collaborative models, they also encourage other Jewish philanthropists to join Grinspoon in moving money to Jewish causes. 

Making matches

“As he started to focus on supporting the Jewish community, [Grinspoon] looked for where he saw really bright spots and he discovered Jewish summer camp,” Sandler Grinspoon said. “He visited lots of summer camps. He spoke to people who went to camp and he realized that camp was a transformative experience for so many.” Indeed, Jewish summer camping can be one of the best ways to build Jewish identity and promote Jewish continuity.

At first, the Grinspoon Foundation’s camp initiative offered camperships — like scholarships, but meant to help kids attend camp — to Jewish children in western Massachusetts. In 2004, the program was reinvented as JCamp 180 and its mandate changed. Since then, JCamp 180 has offered free consulting services and grant-matching opportunities to affiliated nonprofit Jewish summer camps across North America, intended to enhance the long-term benefits of Jewish camping experiences.

Recently, the foundation announced JCamp 180’s Forward Together matching grant. The grant seeks to move $25 million in unrestricted support and facility improvements to more than 100 nonprofit Jewish summer camps. 

The Forward Together grant comes on the heels of another JCamp 180 matching grant called All Together Now (ATN), which dates to the beginning of the pandemic. ATN offered matching grants to ensure that camps could remain viable through 2020 when camps were closed, in 2021 when attendance was lower than usual, and in 2022, as camps recover from losses experienced during the pandemic. 

The foundation committed $20 million toward ATN over three years, and so far, its efforts have yielded a total of $58 million, including funding from HGF, matching grants and donations from funding partners. With the third year of the ATN grants still in process, totals for 2022 are not yet available. 

In addition to funding, HGF supplements both matching grants with services designed to “leverage the match to its fullest extent,” Sandler Grinspoon said. “We provide coaching and teaching, fundraising strategies, marketing, and we have a whole library of resources on our website for camp professionals to use.”

Building community with books

Speaking of libraries, the idea for another HGF program called PJ Library, which sends free Jewish-themed books, music and other resources to Jewish families, was hatched during Sandler Grinspoon’s Passover seder in 2005. 

Sandler Grinspoon recalled, “I had a tradition of handing out [Jewish] children’s books to the kids at the table for finding the afikomen (a piece of matzoh that is hidden during the Passover seder). And it wasn’t just the person who found the afikomen that got a book. [All the children] got books at my table.”

After a child found the afikomen and books were distributed to the children at the seder, Harold Grinspoon, a guest at the seder, was surprised to see how thrilled they were to receive them. He hadn’t known about Jewish children’s literature and he wanted to see the books. 

“We literally pulled the kids back to the table to show grandpa their books,” Sandler Grinspoon said. “Later, he asked me to go and buy $500 worth of my favorites at the local Jewish bookstore, which I did.”

Soon after, Grinspoon heard Dolly Parton interviewed on the radio about a program she started in 1995 called Imagination Library, which sends a book a month to children aged zero to five in participating areas of the U.S., U.K., Canada, Australia and the Republic of Ireland. 

“She created this funding model where her foundation operates the program, but other funders join her to support the cost of Imagination Library for kids in their local communities,” Sandler Grinspoon said. “So Harold called me and said, ‘I have a great idea. Let’s do a Jewish version of Imagination Library. Let’s copy the model.’”

The rest is history. “We just delivered our 50 millionth book,” Sandler Grinspoon said. “There are programs in 37 countries now, and we’re currently distributing PJ Library books in seven different languages. In Israel, we operate a complimentary program in Arabic, called Maktabat al-Fanoos (lantern library). It’s a secular program for Arabic-speaking children in Israel. We partner with the Ministry of Education to support all kids in Israel receiving books through the public school system.”

As in Parton’s program, the HGF partners with local organizations — typically Jewish federations who run their communities’ PJ Library programs. Local programming is enhanced by PJ Library engagement programs where families can meet and form friendships. Sandler Grinspoon said the PJ Library budget for 2023 is about $61 million.

Funding a Jewish future

Like its matching gift programs for Jewish summer camps, another one of HGF’s signature programs galvanizes others to give alongside the foundation. Launched in 2012, the HGF’s Life & Legacy program is intended to sustain Jewish communities through endowment-building.

It works like this: Jewish community federations and foundations that qualify can partner with HGF to receive training, support and financial incentives when they and the Jewish organizations in their communities commit to having conversations about after-life giving with prospective donors. 

For example, Sandler Grinspoon said, “If a synagogue team has committed to having conversations [with synagogue supporters] with the goal of securing 18 letters of intent by a certain date, and they meet their goal, they receive an incentive grant, which could be up to $10,000.”

A unique aspect of the Life & Legacy program is that donors who sign letters of intent can designate their after-life giving to the organization that solicited them, as well as to other Jewish organizations they wish to support. In this way, the entire Jewish community stands to benefit from the donation.

“Currently, we have anticipated future dollars designated to go to Jewish communal organizations north of $1.3 billion,” Sandler Grinspoon said. “Harold’s guiding principle is focus. He tests out certain ideas, and when he finds one that has a strong return on investment and is achieving his goals, he doubles down on it. That’s how these unique projects have grown and continue to grow.”