Jim Joseph Foundation is a San Francisco-based private foundation supporting Jewish learning, leadership, education, research, and innovation for young Jews in the United States.
The foundation supports compelling Jewish learning experiences that help young Jews build meaningful connection, identity, purpose, and engagement with Jewish life.
Jim Joseph established a philanthropic fund in 1987 to support Jewish education for youth and young adults in the United States. That fund became the basis of the Shimon Ben Joseph Foundation, incorporated in 2005 and commonly known as the Jim Joseph Foundation. The foundation states that it began awarding grants in 2006 and was shaped by Jim Joseph’s belief that investing in Jewish education for young people would strengthen Jewish life and continuity.
The foundation primarily makes strategic, often multi-year grants to organizations serving Jewish young children and families, youth, teens, college students, and young adults in the United States, as well as U.S.-based organizations sending these groups to Israel or other settings of Jewish significance for Jewish educational experiences. Deliberate grants are considered by invitation only and generally involve inquiry review, proposal development, Board review, grant agreements, benchmarks, and ongoing funder-grantee interaction. The foundation also supports research, evaluation, R&D, and technology capacity building.
Since 2006, the foundation reports awarding more than $900M in grants. Its work has supported program models in Jewish education, professional development for leaders and educators, and new forms of Jewish learning and expression. In 2024, its Common Era platform launched 18 research and experimentation projects, incubated 17 new initiatives, and debuted its website. The foundation also invests in evaluation and research to support learning across grantee partners and the broader field.
The foundation works with grantee-partners, funder colleagues, practitioners, researchers, entrepreneurs, subject-matter experts, and evaluators. Its grants archive lists recent grantee-partners including Hadar, Repair the World, UpStart, Foundation for Jewish Camp, Keshet, The iCenter, and Birthright Israel Foundation. The grantmaking process emphasizes ongoing dialogue with prospective and current grantee partners, evaluation benchmarks, deliverables, and continued interaction after approval.
The foundation’s current strategic framework combines Deliberate and Emergent strategies. Deliberate Strategy focuses on proven Jewish learning and talent-development models, while Emergent Strategy focuses on R&D, experimentation, and new approaches to Jewish meaning and community. The attached 2025 Road Map identifies first principles including centering young people, building meaningful relationships, looking around corners, being curious, and leveraging time. The official website also states that the foundation’s Board embraces responsibility for extending the philanthropy of its founder and lists Shira Goodman as Chair of the Board.