Shabbat services at one of the New Jersey Y Camps, which has been selected for a two-year training program in planned giving. Photo courtesy NJ Y Camps
January 31, 2008
New Jersey Y Camps is one of seven Jewish camps nationally to be selected by the Harold Grinspoon Foundation to receive special training in legacy and planned giving.Under the program, NJ Y Camps principals will train with experts in endowments, bequests, trusts, and estate planning. If they meet certain goals, the camps will also be eligible for a $10,000 incentive grant for each of the two years of the program.
“This will give us another tool to reach our 50,000 alumni,” said NJ Y Camps executive director Len Robinson. “Legacy gifts are a way to expand our donor base, especially people who don’t have great resources currently and can do bequests and those who are wealthy and are seeking alternatives, like trusts.”
The Grinspoon Camp Legacy initiative was to begin Jan. 29 at the western Massachusetts home of philanthropist Harold Grinspoon. The NJ Y Camps team will include its president, Larry Pargot of New Brunswick, and its immediate past president, Bruce Nussman of Tenafly.
The Jewish Community Foundation of MetroWest, the endowment arm of United Jewish Communities of MetroWest NJ, has also been included in the NJ Y Camps “team” to take part in the national initiative.
NJ Y Camps, working closely with the JCF of MetroWest over the past year, has raised about $1.7 million in endowment gifts, including current income and future commitments, such as bequests. Donors come from across the state and region, but the leading donor to the NJ Y Camps endowment initiative is the Paula and Jerry Gottesman Family Foundation of the JCF of MetroWest.
NJ Y Camps was selected from among 20 camps that were invited to apply for the program, according to David Sharken, director of the Legacy program. Sharken said the workshops will focus less on the nuts and bolts of tax policy and estate planning and more on donor relations.
“We’re about to enter a period of unprecedented wealth creation and inheritance,” said Sharken. “Any charity or nonprofit that wants to succeed and flourish in the future has to succeed at this.”
NJ Y Camps runs Camps Nah-Jee-Wah, Cedar Lake, and Teen Age Camp in Milford, Pa; and, in Lake Como, Pa., Camp Nesher for Orthodox children and Round Lake Camp for children with special needs.