Council of Jewish Federations The National Council of Jewish Federations and Welfare Funds was formed in 1932 as the
umbrella organization for
Jewish federations in the United States. "National" was dropped from the name in 1935 and "Welfare Funds" was removed in 1979.
United Jewish Communities In 1999, the UJA merged with the Council of Jewish Federations and
United Israel Appeal, Inc. to form a combined entity that would be called the
United Jewish Communities. While the organizations had been raising more than $1 billion annually, they had faced concerns that the individual organizations were not as relevant as during the
Holocaust and the creation of the
State of Israel, with many major donors seeking to direct their philanthropy through their own foundations rather than through the umbrella organizations. The balance of power would shift to the federations, which would select about two-thirds of the 120 members on the board of trustees of the new organization. Businessman and philanthropist
Charles Bronfman was chosen as the volunteer chairman of the combined entity, responsible for planning the group's strategic direction.
Jewish Federations of North America , Israel. In the background is an
Israeli volcanic ash artwork. In October 2009, the UJC was renamed the Jewish Federations of North America. After the 2009 launch of the new logo for The Jewish Federations of North America, increasing numbers of local Federations are switching to some variant of that logo. An example is the Jewish Federation of Greater Washington. After a couple of years of lower staff layoffs in February 2010, new CEO Jerry Silverman laid off three senior vice presidents that made an estimated $750,000 to $1 million combined. JFNA declined to run the decennial National Jewish Population Survey in 2010 due to re-prioritizing. In 2021, it announced the $54 million LiveSecure campaign, which it described as the largest campaign to secure North America's Jewish communities in history. The aftermath of the
Pittsburgh synagogue shooting in 2018 included arguably the most ambitious and comprehensive effort, led by JFNA, ever taken to protect Jewish life in the United States, according to the
New York Times. In addition to bringing in $100 million in federal grants through the
Nonprofit Security Grant Program (NGSP), JFNA raised $62 million to secure every Jewish community in North America, overseen by the JFNA's
Secure Community Network. By 2023, 93
Jewish federations had full-time security directors, a more than four-fold increase over the previous 5 years. In 2022, the JFNA pressured the
Jewish Council for Public Affairs to fold their organization into a larger organization and mute its progressive politics or to break away and lose funding from dozens of Jewish federations across the United States. The organization refused to mute or repudiate their progressive politics, choosing independence and losing their ability to speak for 16 Jewish national organizations and 125 Jewish "community relations councils", almost all of which are part of local federations. After the
October 7 attacks, JFNA launched the largest emergency campaign in its history, raising $908 million for Israel, with JFNA allocating $235 million. The largest share of donations went to the
Jewish Agency, the
Joint Distribution Committee, and non-profits in the
Gaza Envelope. In December 2024, JFNA announced it opposed the reestablishment of Israeli settlements in Gaza. At JFNA's 2025 annual conference, CEO Eric Fingerhut said the organization's top two priorities were facilitating the sale of
Tiktok from Chinese ownership to
Larry Ellison and countering the influence of the
National Education Association. According to
The Forward, a common refrain at the conference was a greater emphasis on "Jewish education,
Zionist identity, and
Torah learning", according to
Anti-Defamation League CEO
Jonathan Greenblatt. Clips from the conference went viral, including a clip where
The Free Press journalist Olivia Reingold argued that portrayals of Palestinian children starving due to the
Gaza Strip famine were misleading due to them having
pre-existing conditions and
remarks by
Sarah Hurwitz where she argued that
Holocaust education was incorrectly teaching people to "fight the big, powerful people hurting the weak people". == Activities==