Jewish federations, welfare funds and community councils in the United States raised a total of $128,000,000 in 1960 for local, national and overseas Jewish needs, the Council of Jewish Federations and Welfare Funds reported today in an annual review of Jewish communal services.
In addition, some $55,000,000 was raised by non-local agencies outside of the welfare fund allocations; another $24,000,000 came from non-contributor sources such as earnings, fees, subscriptions and investments, and $41,000,000 was realised from the sale of Israel bonds.
These sums add up to a quarter of a billion dollars per year. Included in the figures are the incomes of the federations and welfare funds and national and overseas service organizations. They do not include non-contributed income of local service programs.
The $128,000,000 raised by the 216 member agencies of the Council compares with $130,700,000 raised in 1959, a drop of 1.5 percent. It represents an increase, however, or 3.8 percent over 1958 when the federation campaigns totaled $123,300,000.
These and other figures are included in the annual CJFWF survey entitled, “Jewish Communal Services; Programs and Finances,” prepared by S.P. Goldberg, director of budget research for the CJFWF. It summarizes major developments in Jewish communal services and analyzes the programs and finances of leading Jewish agencies.
The total raised by federation campaigns since the end of World War II (1946-1960) has exceeded two billion dollars, the survey notes. These funds were contributed by more than 1,000,000 donors and were distributed to hundreds of local service agencies, national organizations and overseas agencies. Tens of thousands of volunteer workers were involved in the campaigns.
U.J.A. WAS LARGEST BENEFICIARY; NATIONAL AGENCIES FOLLOW
The largest single beneficiary of these campaigns was the United Jewish Appeal which received more than 90 percent of its income from them. Its share of the 1959 total amount budgeted–the most recent year for which complete figures are available–came to 61.6 percent. This amounted to $44,600,000 from cities other than New York; it received an additional $18,500,000 from the Greater New York UJA campaign. Complete returns for 1960 are expected to show that the UJA received approximately $60,000,000 from the federated campaigns.
American Jewish philanthropic agencies had about $96,500,000 available for total overseas Jewish needs in 1959. This compares with $82,000,000 in 1958. About four-fifths of the total was used for philanthropic programs in Israel; the balance mainly in North Africa and Europe.
The total income from the sale of Israel bonds was over $470,000,000 in the ten years from 1951 through 1960. Of this sum, over $400,000,000 worth of bonds was sold in the United States.
Thirteen overseas agencies other than the United Jewish Appeal showed an income of $24,500,000 in 1959 compared with $22,800,000 in 1958. The largest sum was raised by Hadassah, $9,700,000. The Israeli institutions of higher learning; Weizmann Institute, Hebrew University and Technion raised about $7,400,000 in America in 1959. In addition, all three institutions received grants from the Jewish Agency for Israel, a beneficiary of the UJA, and from the Israel Government.
Local services received over $32,000,000 from central communal sources in 1959 for operating purposes, compared with $30,500,000 the year before. All local fields of service except refugee aid shared the increase in allocations.
National agencies had receipts of $60,000,000 in 1959, including $5,700,000 from federation and welfare fund campaigns. The five major national Jewish community relations agencies and the National Community Relations Advisory Council received over $7,400,000, compared with $6,900,000 received in 1958, a rise of seven percent.
The national Jewish hospitals received more than $10,400,000 in 1959 but only a fraction of this figure came from the federations and welfare funds. Some 15 cultural agencies raised over $16,000,000 in 1959, about $638,000 of which came from federation allocations. National religious agencies had receipts of $24,400,000 and national service agencies had receipts of $1,700,000 during the same period.
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
