Jewish Agency Establishes New Body to Control and Authorize Fund-raising Drives in U.S.

The Jewish Agency announced today the establishment of a now Committee on Control and Authorization of Campaigns for the purpose of assuring maximum American support for the United Jewish Appeal and other organizations which now carry the major burden of philanthropic work in behalf of Israel.

The committee’s headquarters will be in Jerusalem. The American Section of the Jewish Agency in New York will issue and receive applications from all organizations which plan in 1950 to solicit public funds in behalf of Israel causes. Applications received at the New York office, it was explained, will be forwarded with recommendations to the Jerusalem office where final check will be made on the validity of the application and where the requested authorization will be either made or withheld.

This authorization system has been set up in response to many requests by the representatives of many communities and welfare funds in the United States, and the Jewish Agency is confident that the organized Jewish community will give maximum support only to those campaigns which are authorized by the Agency’s committee. Conversoly, the Jewish Agency will urge the contributing public to withhold contributions from non-authorized campaigns for Israel.

A spokesman for the American Section of the Agency declared: “Formation of this new committee is another step in the long struggle to safeguard the American contributing public from the many demands made upon it by non-authorized organizations which frequently duplicate the work of existing and long-established agencies.”

The spokesman called upon all organizations which request authorization for campaigns in behalf of Israel in 1950 to submit detailed financial data and to provide evidence as to the validity of the proposed campaigns. Standard application forms designed to elicit this data may be obtained by writing to the Jewish Agency in New York.