March 06, 2008
Joseph Kushner Hebrew Academy in Livingston and Solomon Schechter Day School of Essex and Union in West Orange are among 10 New Jersey day schools to have been awarded grants through a national donor incentive program.
Kushner received a $100,000 gift, qualifying the school for a $50,000 matching grant. Schechter received a gift of $37,500, qualifying the school for an $18,750 matching grant. Both gifts were five times the size of the previous gift from the respective families.
The money cannot go into an endowment fund but rather must be used for operations under the terms of the matching grant program.
The Kushner gift came from Daniel and Ariela Spialter of Livingston, and Daniel’s father, Millard Spialter of Union, in the midst of a special campaign the school was running this year to close a budget deficit.
When Daniel Spialter called Kushner executive director Michael Grad, Grad said, “I was hoping for $25,000. He said he was thinking $100,000. I was shocked. I never expected a gift like that, especially from a family with five children in the school. They really stepped up and were extremely generous.”
Kushner received a matching grant through the program last year as well.
The Schechter gift came from Larry and Gayle Wieseneck of West Orange through the school’s annual Shomrei Torah campaign for unrestricted support.
“We were absolutely thrilled to hear we received the grant, and we are appreciative of the tremendous generosity, leadership, and support of the Wieseneck family,” said development director Stephanie Bash-Soudry. It is the first matching grant Schechter has received through the program.
The program, a partnership between the Jewish Funders Network and the Boston-based Partnership for Excellence in Jewish Education, offers an incentive for donors to contribute new or five-times-increased gifts to day schools. This year, the MATCH program, as it is known, attracted 199 new major donors from 146 schools in 26 states and two Canadian provinces, with gifts ranging from $25,000 to over $100,000.
Established in 2004 by the AVI CHAI Foundation, JFN, and PEJE, MATCH programs have previously generated a total of $41 million for Jewish day school education.
MATCH funding partners include The Gottesman Fund, Ingeborg and Ira Leon Rennert, The Charles and Lynn Schusterman Family Foundation, The AVI CHAI Foundation, and an anonymous donor.
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