The Jewish Federation of Greater Dallas seeks to ensure the continuity of a strong and vibrant Jewish community in Dallas, Israel, and throughout the world. We enact our mission through the direct implementation of strategic initiatives, as well as through leveraging and investing in the work of communal partners.
The success of Federation is impossible without the participation of community minded individuals and originations who understand that we are all in this together and that the vitality of our community is predicated on thinking beyond our own narrow interests and unique institutional mandates. In vetting our strategic partners, our Federation explores their body of work, track record of collaboration as well as the degree of participation (donor and volunteer) by their board and professional leadership in the success of our annual community campaign.
Grants extended through our planning and allocations process are one critical tool driving positive outcomes for the people who make up our community. Our planning and allocations committee seeks to maximize the impact of limited communal philanthropic dollars to address the broad array of our community needs today, while also investing in the foundations of our vibrant Jewish tomorrow.
When submitting local impact grant applications, we ask you to consider the impact of your proposed projects not just upon your own organization, but upon the vitality of our community as a whole. Grants that appear to fund projects or programs that exist only in service of your organization and its members will benefit from a clear articulation of how they are in fact projects that impact the community at large such that the responsibility to bring them to fruition should be understood as a communal (rather than organization specific) responsibility.
While not limiting consideration only to grants that address the Jewish Federation of Greater Dallas pre-vetted funding priorities, our Planning and Allocations committee has identified key priorities for communal investment which are shared below. For grant applications seeking funding for other priorities, please document evidence of communal need, in addition to describing how the need will be addressed.
The Planning and Allocations committee of the Jewish Federation of Greater Dallas will prioritize funding toward grant projects that demonstrate how they will:
Before you start applying for grants:
The Jewish Federation of Greater Dallas is providing the following documents for your organization to review prior to your Local Impact Grant application submission. You may download these documents at jewishdallas.org/impactgrant/download.
All local allocations extended by the JFGD are contingent upon the terms found in the above documents. If your organization is approved for support, you will receive a notification letter (which may contain additional terms unique to a specific grant project) as well as digital copies of each of the above documents via DocuSign which will need to be digitally signed by your organization's authorized representatives in order to finalize any funding commitment by JFGD.
Required Uploads:
In order to apply for a Local Impact Grant, each organization is first required to update your board and key professional information with Jewish Federation of Greater Dallas. Templates are available at: jewishdallas.org/impactgrant/download
We use the "Board Roster List" to run reports indicating the degree (% participation) to which your organization's (local) leadership participates as donors and/or volunteers to the Federation's annual community campaign. This is a proxy measure (admittedly imperfect) of an organization's understanding that they share communal responsibility beyond their singular agency. This is one factor (among others) that our planning and allocation committee takes into consideration when needing to prioritize limited funding between projects otherwise deemed equally worthy of funding.
We utilize the "Agency Contacts List" to enable the rapid push and pull of critical information, guide our work as community concierge, empower peer-to-peer professional cohorts that can increase job satisfaction while promoting best practices, as well as to facilitate strategic collaboration across agencies on areas of shared challenge or opportunity. (This list is not used as a factor in scoring grant applications.)
Required Acknowledgement:
Should our organization be offered funding by the Jewish Federation of Greater Dallas, it is our organization's intention to sign the the Memorandum of Understanding (MOU), Branding Guidelines, Reimbursement Guidelines, as well as the Community Security Initiative (CSI) Partnership Agreement and Liability Waiver.
