Grants - Minneapolis Jewish Federation

Looking for funding? The Jewish Community Foundation of the Minneapolis Jewish Federation manages several funds that provide funding through a competitive grant process. Check below to see if any of our participating funds meet your needs.

Louis Herman Memorial Fund

Currently: Closed

The Louis Herman Memorial Fund, a designated fund of the Jewish Community Foundation of the Minneapolis Jewish Federation, is open to applications for the 2019 grant cycle. The Louis Herman Memorial Fund has been used to support a variety of organizations in the Jewish community. Areas of particular interest to the Fund include:

Promoting Judaism among children and youth
Day school education
Israel experience
Technology in schools

While the fund does not place a limit on the dollar amount requested, historically most grant recipients have received grants of $5,000 – $20,000.

Special consideration will be given to new and innovative projects. Grants will not generally be awarded for regular operating budgets.

Grant finalists will be invited to give a brief presentation to the Louis Herman Memorial Fund Advisory Committee in June.

Mount Sinai Community Foundation

Currently: Closed

The MSCF funds one-time projects up to $10,000 that fulfill the MSCF’s mission to improve health, enhance well-being, or otherwise advance medical care for Minnesota residents. MSCF gives equal consideration to proposals that impact the Jewish and non-Jewish communities in Minnesota. MSCF is especially interested in proposals that provide innovative approaches for addressing health, well-being or medical care that might not be funded by other grant sources. MSCF also gives priority to identifiable, discrete projects that the Foundation may fund alone or with other funding partners.

Through the generosity of the Frances & Samuel Finkelstein/Janice Finkelstein Mattison Memorial Fund, one of the grants funded will be in the area of cancer research and education. Organizations interested in securing the designated Memorial funds, should address the connection to cancer research and education in their application.

Click here for more information.

The Howard B. & Ruth F. Brin Jewish Arts Endowment Fund

Currently: Open

The Howard B. & Ruth F. Brin Jewish Arts Endowment Fund is named for the prominent Minneapolis couple Howard B. Brin and Ruth F. Brin who were both community and national leaders. The Fund serves to support artistic creativity with Jewish content. Applications are welcome emphasizing music, dance, literature, theater, visual arts, or film from artists or institutions, Jewish or non-Jewish. Grant awards range from $1,000 to $7,000.

Learn more about Howard B. & Ruth F. Brin

Mr. Brin (1919-1988) was a vital community leader, helping to form the Sabes Jewish Community Center, involved with the national Reconstructionist Jewish movement, and as an amateur archeologist, he participated in the historic first season of the Masada dig overlooking the Dead Sea. Ruth F. Brin (1921-2009) wrote thirteen published books including poetry, children’s books, a memoir, and a novel and was also an editor, teacher, and nationally-recognized Jewish liturgist. Her prayers appear in Reform, Conservative and Reconstructionist prayer books. Together, Howard and Ruth Brin believed the arts are an essential way to enhance Jewish identity for both the artist and the Jewish community. The fund is now a memorial to this vital couple.

Click here to apply.

The Toodie and Frank Trestman Special Needs and Collaborative Education Endowment

Currently: Open

The Toodie and Frank Trestman Special Needs and Collaborative Education Endowment supports local efforts in two areas:

Collaborative education: formal and informal Jewish education programs that involve collaboration between two or more organizations
Special needs: increasing the ability of children and adults with special needs to participate in Jewish life and receive a Jewish education.

For an in-depth description of the Trestman Fund’s goals, click here

The Toodie and Frank Trestman

Special Needs and Collaborative Education Endowment

The Fund was created through generous donations from our community to the Federation Community Capital Campaign, chaired by Toodie and Frank Trestman. Income derived from investments in designated endowment funds such as this one, help support Federation’s mission to build community, care for the welfare of Jews everywhere and maximize participation in Jewish life.

Grantmaking Focus

The Fund makes grants in the following focus areas:

Collaborative Education – support for formal and informal Jewish education programs that involve collaboration between two or more organizations, primarily (but not exclusively) in three programmatic areas:

Family education;
Teen programs; and
Professional development.
Special Needs – subsidies and other support for the education of children and adults with special needs and their participation in all aspects of Jewish community life. This includes the removal of barriers of attitude, communication, physical accessibility and affordability, the provision of other support to enable people with disabilities to participate in Jewish education (both formal and informal), recreation, and social activities.

Grantmaking Guidelines

The target audience of any project or programming must be local.
Grants may be awarded from the Fund to support both new and existing programs and/or subsidize tuition or a voucher system.
The Fund’s advisory committee will consider multi-year funding requests to support innovative programming that will impact a large segment of our community with special needs and/or programming in the arena of collaborative education.
Preference is given to requests that:
Are programmatic in nature
Assist those in the lowest income brackets
Have a track record of proven quality
Have a wide reach of impact on the community
Requests will NOT be considered to fund education programming for individuals with special needs otherwise funded by the Minneapolis Jewish Federation through unrestricted funds or from the special education funding pool or for requests where funding is available through government, either federal, state or local, sources.

Click here to apply.