Fall 2024 Capacity Building Grants Cycle

*The 2024 Fall Capacity Building Grant Cycle is no longer accepting applications. Subscribe to our email list to be the first to know about future grant cycles.*

Fall 2024 Capacity Building Grants Process

SRE Network’s fall capacity building grants are designed to provide financial support and technical assistance to help build the internal capacity of Jewish organizations on their safety, respect, and equity journeys.

SRE considers internal capacity to be directly related to the organizational culture, policies, and activities of a workplace.

For examples, please see SRE’s 2023 Fall Grantees.

Eligibility

Eligibility Requirements

To be eligible to submit a Letter of Intent (LOI) for this funding, an organization needed to meet these requirements: 

  • Be a 501c3 nonprofit (or have a current fiscal sponsor who maintains a 501c3) based in North America.
  • Be a current SRE Network member, and have maintained membership for at least six months. For this cycle, SRE affiliates are not eligible. 
  • Demonstrate a proven commitment to safety, respect and equity, evidenced through a current policy around sexual harassment and discrimination. If these are not in place, an LOI to support the creation of these policies would be accepted.
  • Have demonstrated availability and readiness of dedicated leadership, staff, and resources to successfully deliver this effort.

Previous SRE grant applicants were eligible for this funding, provided they met the other criteria.

Grantseekers' Workshop

 On Tuesday,  August 20, prospective grant applications attended a webinar where they learned more about the grant process and connected with SRE staff. This webinar was recorded.

Letters of Intent

Letters of Intent (LOI) were due to the online grants portal on September 19, 2024. In order to submit a LOI, organizations were should have already assessed an internal capacity-building need in relation to safety, respect, and equity in the workplace, and determined a course of action. Applications were required to include:

  1. Applicant Organization Name 
  2. Contact Name, Title, and Email 
  3. Annual Operating Budget (including fiscal year) 
  4. Total Amount Requested (over 1 or 2 years) 
  5. Need: What are your organization’s specific internal capacity-building needs around s, r, e, and how did you identify those needs (eg. a needs assessment, staff surveys, previous consultation)? 
    1. How have you assessed or measured your organization's readiness for this internal capacity building?
  6. Solution/Project Outline: How have you determined you will address this need? Will you be engaging a trainer/consultation? 
    1. If you have determined you will be working with a third party trainer or consultant, who will your trainer be, and what will their scope of work be (please include a general timeline of the work)?  If you are looking for a suggestion of a trainer/consultant, please reference this list
      1. If you are using in-house expertise, please indicate this in your application.
      2. How did you select your trainer as the right partner for you and/or what vetting or recommendation did you use? 
  7. Evaluation: Describe the goals of your internal organizational capacity building work? How will you measure success and/or impact and continue to evaluate over time? 
    1. Please include benchmarks or timeline indications of success.
  8. Budget: Applicants must submit a full project budget, including how SRE funds will be allocated. SRE does not set an ‘overhead’ limit, and intends for organizations to pay their staff for efforts related to this work. 
  9. Proof of Tax Exempt Status: Applicants will need to upload a IRS Determination Letter/proof of 501c3 or Fiscal Sponsorship documentation to submit a LOI. 

Evaluation Criteria

The Grants Review Committee will use the following criteria when evaluating applications: 

Safety, Respect, and Equity

Organizations who value and center safety, respect, and equity in all parts of their organization, and can articulate how these values are held in the work.

Capacity Building

We are seeking projects that meet the criteria for ‘internal capacity building’ as defined by this RFP, and can articulate how this is relevant to the desired outcome of the grantmaking endeavor.

Impact

Proposals who demonstrate potential for impact through scale, scope, or scalability.

Leadership Investment

We are seeking member organizations that have dedicated staff and board leadership who are committed to and invested in the proposal’s capacity building priorities, demonstrating an openness to evaluation and change.

Measurement

Member/affiliate organizations who have identified how they will measure change; with clear and achievable short and long term goals.

Need

Organizations that have experience within diverse Jewish communities, have listened to the community, and thus have identified a specific need within one or both of our focus areas (gender and/or safety, respect, equity for all) and believe that their initiative will play a part in filling that need. 

Viability

Member/Affiliate organizations that dream big but show strength in day-to-day implementation and have the capacity to effectively implement change efforts. Organizations with demonstrated viability for implementation and launch, as well as clear benchmarks for tangible over the two year time frame will be more competitive.

Grants Review Committee

SRE Network's Grants Review Committee will review grant applications and, in partnership with the SRE staff team, will recommend grant awards for consideration by the SRE Network Advisory Board. We intentionally brought together a diverse group that brings new and underrepresented voices to grantmaking. Together they have deep experience in Jewish communal and professional life, including organizational leadership, LGBTQ+ activism, community organizing, survivor support, women's advocacy, and anti-racist consulting. Grounded in this deep community knowledge, they will use an intersectional and justice-centered lens to make their recommendations.

Dr. Guila Benchimol (she/her) is a researcher, educator, consultant, and victim advocate whose work focuses on gender, abuse, and power. She holds a PhD in Sociological Criminology from the University of Guelph and is also a trained restorative and transformative justice facilitator. Guila was one of the key advisors who guided the launch of the SRE Network ,and she continues to serve as their Senior Advisor on Research and Learning while consulting on other projects. She has been invited to address Jewish professionals and clergy across Canada and the US, as well as other faith communities where she educates, trains, and develops and implements policies on abuse prevention and intervention. Guila also sits on the board of the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests (SNAP) and is a research associate at the Center for the Study of Social and Legal Responses to Violence where she has worked on projects related to homicides and domestic violence deaths. Her first 10+ year career as a Jewish educator, in and outside of the Orthodox Jewish community, informed her understanding of the need to address victimization of all kinds. Previously, Guila was the Director of Judaic Studies at Tiferes Bais Yaakov where she also taught Tanach to grades 9 through 12. She was also the Managing Director for the National Conference of Synagogue Youth (NCSY) in Canada, where she founded and directed an international camp for high school girls. Guila lives in Toronto, Ontario and she was raised in the Spanish-Moroccan community there which was built by the families who fled Tangier.

rabba sara

Rabba Sara Hurwitz is the first woman to be publicly ordained as an Orthodox rabbi. She is the Co-founder and President of Yeshivat Maharat and, since 2003, has served on the Rabbinic staff at the Hebrew Institute of Riverdale - The Bayit.   

Rabba Sara was born in Johannesburg, South Africa and moved with her family to Boca Raton, Florida at the age of twelve. Since she was a child, she enjoyed being part of the Jewish community.  Her ultimate goal became amusingly clear when, as a high school student, she was advised by a vocational counselor, based on a test, that she was best suited to be a member of the clergy.

After attending Midreshet Lindenbaum in Israel, she entered Barnard College, majoring in Psychology in New York and quickly became involved in a student run organization called Lights in Action, connecting other Jewish students to Judaism by teaching topics relevant to their lives.  Subsequently, she assumed leadership positions in various Jewish organizations, including Lights in Action, which she directed for several years. She also began to lecture and teach in different venues such as CLAL, JCC, and various synagogues around the country.

After graduating from Drisha Institute’s Scholar Circle Program, she began to work as an intern with Rabbi Avi Weiss at the Hebrew Institute of Riverdale - The Bayit. Over the seven years that she worked with Rabbi Weiss, she studied under his auspices, eventually gaining the necessary training to serve as a spiritual and halachic leader and was officially conferred in a public ceremony at The Bayit in March 2009.  She and Rabbi Weiss co-founded Yeshivat Maharat in October 2009, when it opened with three students.

Rabba Sara finds joy in helping other people realize their dreams.  She sees herself as an enabler -- providing a credentialed pathway for women to pursue a career that for so many years was not open to them.  

Rabba Sara lives in Riverdale, New York with her husband‭, ‬Josh Abraham‭, ‬and her sons Yonah‭, ‬Zacharya‭, ‬Davidi and Natan.‭

 

deitraDr. Deitra Reiser, (she/her) is the founder of Transform for Equity, LLC, an antiracist repair group that supports organizations and leaders in building the capacity for diversity, racial equity, and belonging. Dr. Reiser partners with organizations across the country using the framework of intersectionality to dismantle systems of oppression. She is passionate about fostering racial equity and justice within organizations with a particular interest in addressing anti-Black racism and anti-Jewish hate. Deitra partners with nonprofits, synagogues, government agencies, and corporations to further racial equity and justice within the organization. She believes that organizations will transform into equitable spaces by first focusing on individual internal change which then drives intentional systemic change. Deitra fosters greater antiracist understanding among individuals and within institutions and supports their continued growth through thoughts and actions. Her focus is on driving the internal work necessary in order to achieve transformational and lasting change. She has partnered with the Union for Reform Judaism, National Park Services, and NCJW along with other organizations across the country. Deitra has over 20 years of experience as a school psychologist and educator.

Deitra is an alumna of Bend the Arc’s Selah Leadership Program and holds a doctorate in Educational Psychology from The University of Wisconsin-Madison.

She currently serves as SRE Network's Senior Advisor, Culture & Belonging.

Stefanie Rhodes (she/her) is currently the CEO OF Slingshot.  She has spent the last 18 years working in Jewish philanthropy including 9 years at the Jewish Funders Network, where she ran the Younger Funders programming and was the founding Director of the Foundation Professionals program. Prior to joining the Jewish professional world, she worked in ad agencies and tech start-ups in the Bay Area.

Stefanie holds a BA in Journalism and a Certificate in Jewish Studies from Indiana University and a Certificate in Jewish Philanthropy from Yeshiva University. She is a Senior Schusterman Fellow and was a member of the inaugural CEO Onboarding cohort. Stefanie is also a member of the board of JOIN for Justice. Stefanie is married to Hue, and together they have two children.

Judith Rosenbaum (she/her) is CEO of the Jewish Women’s Archive, a pioneering digital archive that documents Jewish women’s stories, elevates their voices, and inspires them to be agents of change. She also served for a decade as the Director of Public History at JWA, and has devoted her career to creating a more inclusive, feminist history and harnessing history as a tool for social change.

An educator, historian, and writer, Judith earned a PhD in American Studies from Brown University, with a focus on women, gender, and social movements. As a Fulbright Fellow, she studied women’s collective communities in Israel. Judith teaches and lectures widely on Jewish studies and women’s studies and publishes in both academic and popular journals and anthologies. She serves on the faculty of the Bronfman Fellowship and is a Schusterman Senior Fellow. Judith lives with her family in the Boston area.

Mordy Walfish (he/him) is the Chief Advancement Officer at Leading Edge, where he works to expand Leading Edge's resources and capacity to transform the Jewish communal world.

Prior to joining Leading Edge, Mordy was Vice President for Programs at Repair the World. He is a Wexner Graduate Fellow, Schusterman Fellow, and the winner of the 2015 JPRO Network Young Professional Award.

He has served on the boards of Jewish Queer Youth and Dimensions Educational Consulting and teaches courses in strategic management and leadership coaching. He is based in Oakland, CA.

Commitment & Reporting

SRE Network is committed to developing an equitable grants process, and all applications are subject to evaluation through our Grants Review Committee, and a due diligence process through our fiscal sponsor, New Venture Fund. As such, if you are moved forward in the process, there are a total of three rounds of inquiry and evaluation which will require your input including an interview after the high holidays in early November 2024, and a final round document review in December 2024. SRE Network anticipates all grant periods to begin January 1, 2025, with a grant disbursement at that time.

All grantees are expected to provide staff time to a relevant Community of Practice on a quarterly basis throughout the grant period to support the field of safety, respect and equity.

All grantees will be required to provide two reports on their progress and evaluation of their activities throughout their grant period. A midterm report (6 months out of a 12 month grant period requires a verbal report to staff, 12 months out of a 24 month grant period requires a 1-2 page update) and upon the completion of their grant period to reflect on the entirety of the project. Additional information will be provided.

Fall Grants Cycle Timeline

August 6, 2024

RFP Released

The RFP was released on Tuesday, August 6. SRE members were invited to apply.

August 6, 2024

August 20, 2024

Grantseekers Workshop

The Grantseekers’ Workshop was held on Tuesday, August 20.

August 20, 2024

September 19, 2024

Letters of Intent Due

The application deadline was Thursday, September 19. 

September 19, 2024

November 2024

Grant Committee Interviews

The Grants Review Committee held interviews with select applicants. Those not moving to round #2 were notified.

November 2024

December 2024

Final Round Interviews & Notifications

The Grants Review Committee held final round interviews. Organizations in the final round were notified if their grant proposals were accepted.

December 2024

December 2024

Document Collection

Final documents were collected from the grantees.

December 2024

January 1, 2025

Grant Agreements Signed

Grant agreements were signed and funds disbursed.

January 1, 2025

Background

SRE is a network of over 185 Jewish organizations that is rooted in our shared commitment to safety, respect, and equity for all.

Our work is focused in these two areas: 1) Gender-focused efforts to address harassment and inequity, that include women as a primary target beneficiary population; and 2) Broader safety, respect, and equity (s,r,e) culture change efforts that support safety, respect and equity for all (i.e. impact multiple segments and identities).

SRE Network serves as a multiplier through our community investments portfolio, which encompasses both grantmaking and investments in partnerships with experts, trainers, and practitioners in both the Jewish community and beyond to provide support to SRE Network membership, Jewish workplaces, and the field at large. To date, SRE Network has invested over $7M in grants and supports to advance safety, respect, and equity.

For more information, see our 2024 Fall Grants FAQs.

Please reach out to info@srenetwork.org with any questions.

Scroll to Top