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A $1.5 Million Carrot

LONNY GOLDSMITH
Staff Writer

A

Kresge Foundation grant
aids JCC campaign.

local foundation has put
the Jewish Community
Center $1.5 million closer to
completing its ambitious
capital and endowment campaign.
The Kresge Foundation grant will
kick in if the JCC reaches $23.5 mil-
lion of its $25 million plan to reno-
vate its West Bloomfield and Oak Park
buildings and to endow many of its
permanent programs.
Ernest Gutierrez, Kresge senior pro-
gram officer who is handling the gift,
said foundation officials are impressed
by the $13.6 million the JCC has
already raised, much of it through large
gifts. He cited the $3.6 million gift from
D. Dan and Betty Kahn that kicked off
the campaign in February 1998, and a
$2 million matching grant from the
Harry and Jeannette Weinberg
Foundation in Baltimore.
Gutierrez also noted that the
Center is "a known quantity" to
Kresge officials. The Troy foundation,
created by the personal gifts of
Sebastian S. Kresge, gave the JCC
$400,000 in its 1991 campaign to
renovate the agency's Jimmy Prentis
Morris Building in Oak Park.

Lonny Goldsmith can be reached at

(248) 354-6060, ext. 263, or by e-mail
at: lgoldsmith@thejewishnews.com

The Kresge Foundation "supports
social work, children's programs and
adult programs," said Hugh Greenberg,
chairman of the Center's campaign.
"These are all things the JCC does."
Jewish Federation of Metropolitan
Detroit President Penny Blumenstein
expressed gratitude for the founda-
tion's "continuing appreciation of how
important the Center is to the life of
our Jewish community."
Of the total dollars raised in the
JCC's campaign, $18 million is desig-
nated for physical improvements to
both the D. Dan & Betty Kahn
Building in West Bloomfield and the
JPM. The remaining $7 million will
go toward endowments to fund educa-
tional and entertainment program-
ming that the agency offers.
Greenberg also chaired the JPM
capital campaign when the JCC first
began its association with the Kresge
Foundation, whose last grant fit similar
conditions to the newest one. "They
are very staunch supporters of the
Jewish community," Greenberg said.
The Kresge offer is not uncondition-
al: the JCC's fund-raising must be done
by Jan. 1, 2001, and the project must
be under contract by then. Greenberg
said he wants to have fund-raising
completed by the end of this year, but

JCC Director of Development
Mort Plotnick said he is grateful
for the extra time.
By the end of the year, "we
will be ahead of where we are
now," Plotnick said. "When someone
is giving you that kind of money, you
have to give yourself some leeway in
completing [fund-raising]."
The Kresge Foundation was started
with a $1.2 million gift in 1924, from
Sebastian S. Kresge to mark the 25th
anniversary of his S.S. Kresge Co.,
now known as Kmart Corp.
The foundation adopted the "chal-
lenge grant" as a standard practice in
the early 1960s, according to its Web
site, to give applying organizations "an
incentive to help them expand their
fund-raising capabilities."
"This is our bread-and-butter,"
Gutierrez said of the challenge grant.
"The agency can go to donors and say
they need their donation or they won't (/
get our grant."
The Kresge Foundation ranked
14th among national foundations in
total asset size as of Dec. 31, 1997,
with more than $2.1 billion. Last year,
90 percent of its $100 million in
grants went to bricks and mortar.
Gutierrez said the Kresge
Foundation has made grants to Jewish
organizations in other cities, including
Seattle and Denver, but noted that
foundation gifts of more than $1 mil-
lion have been rare. Fl

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1999

12 Detroit Jewish News

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ANINNIM ■ ∎

DEFINING THE ROLE from page 10

other's efforts. This is a big Jewish
community with diverse opinions. It's
not a question of saturating the field.
With our Jewish community and the
diverse community around us, there's
still plenty more work to do."
The AJC discusses with other orga-
nizations whether to work together on
a current problem, Shapiro said.
With the current plight of the 13
imprisoned Iranian Jews, she said, the
agencies have met to discuss ways to get
them freed and divide up responsibility
"I contacted the local consuls and
religious leaders," she said. "The ADL
contacted rabbis to mention the issue
during their sermons, and the Jewish
Community Council continued to
work with government and inter-reli-
gious contacts.

"

Shapiro added: Positive inter-group
relations are achieved by working in
coalitions instead of simple dialogue."
For instance, over the last two years
of trying to achieve a Religious Freedom
Restoration Act, the AJC has worked in
a coalition with Michigan Family
Foundation, a conservative group, and
the American Civil Liberties Union.
Regarding inter-religious affairs, the
AJC convened with a group of 20 evan-
gelical. Christians to broach concerns
regarding the millennium, because
"some of their focus is on converting
Jews to Christianity," Shapiro said.
The AJC also tries to strengthen
Jewish identity, she said, the "cost of liv-
ing Jewishly," by being supportive of
infant childcare, aging concerns and
"assimilating and engaging the New
American population. Recently the

focus of the local AJC has been working
with different agencies and organizations
in reaching out to New Americans who
settled in Detroit, but don't identify
with the Jewish community:
Nationally, the AJC publishes fact
sheets like the "Capital Alert," which
informs members on Washington
developments that affect AJC's public
policy agenda. AJC also publishes
magazines, such as Common Quest,
which addresses relations between Jews c/
and African Americans.
The AJC has compiled and edited
the American Jewish. Yearbook since
1908, and became its sole publisher in
1994. The organization also has provid-
ed 2,500 travel seminars to Israel for a
range of non-Jewish American religious,
university and government leaders. 7

— Harry Kirsbaum

