Dear Friends and Colleagues,

We write as the board of the newly established S’firot Foundation, which was funded by the proceeds of the September 2022 sale of Kinneret Apartments in downtown Orlando.

That sale was a true win-win-win proposition for the community. Fairstead Real Estate, which purchased the two apartments’ buildings, recently invested in substantial, needed renovations. The residents continue to participate in available rent subsidies through county and federal programs, paying no more than 30% of their income in rent.

Kinneret Council on Aging (KCOA) will continue as an independent nonprofit 501(c)3 organization, providing programs and services to Kinneret Apartment residents, with the plan to expand needed services to residents in the community. Currently these services include a food pantry and exercise programs, the distribution of Kosher holiday meals, and Shabbat and Jewish holiday celebrations.

S’firot Foundation plans to use the earnings on its approximately $60 million in assets generated by the sale to provide targeted support for the well-being and wellness of older adults, primarily Jewish, and their caregivers in Central Florida. We plan to begin funding within Orange, Seminole and Osceola counties before expanding to the rest of Central Florida.
S’firot Foundation now has been legally organized and is awaiting IRS approval as a nonprofit private foundation. Over the past 8 months, we have been advised on our start-up by Yossi Prager, the Senior Managing Director of consulting services at the Jewish Funders Network. Yossi previously ran the North American AVI CHAI foundation for 26 years. With the help of a national search firm, we are actively recruiting our first Executive Director to ensure strong, visionary professional leadership.

To ensure that the foundation appropriately prioritizes the local needs, S’firot has engaged ImpactNPO, a strategic consultancy firm, to conduct an assessment of the needs of Jewish older adults and their caregivers in the tri-county area. The process will include interviews, surveys, and focus groups. The needs assessment will also compile information about the government and nonprofit supports currently available to older Jewish adults in Orlando and will identify high-quality programs in other communities that could be adopted in the Orlando area. We expect the needs assessment to enable us to craft a strategic plan that will guide the foundation’s activities during its first 5 years.

Recognizing the value of collaboration with local partners, we are assembling an Advisory Committee to include experts from Shalom Orlando, Jewish Family Services, the two Jewish Community Centers, KCOA, Jewish Pavilion and other local organizations serving the senior community. We view the needs assessment as serving the information needs of these organizations as well and seek to ensure that the needs assessment answers their questions as well as our own.

We hope to have an Executive Director in place by Passover 2025 and a completed needs assessment in June. With these in place, we will use the summer to develop our strategic plan, which we will share with the community.

As the needs assessment is ongoing, and even before an Executive Director has been hired, we plan to meet with the key organizations in the community that serve seniors so that we can learn about their accomplishments and needs. That learning could be the basis for a small number of pilot grants that would represent our first step in supporting impactful community initiatives.

In general, S’firot will practice “strategic philanthropy,” which means that we will solicit proposals from organizations within the Jewish community and beyond (and possibly beyond Orlando) that will best enable the foundation to achieve its strategic goals. The foundation will not accept unsolicited proposals. We intend to hold both the foundation and grantees accountable for results. For our part, we plan to consider all the ways in which S’firot can enable our grantees to succeed, which could extend beyond program funding. And, critically, we are committed to being guided by Jewish values in our decision-making.

The S’firot Foundation is excited to engage and collaborate with the community. We look forward to working with community organizations to aid our senior population to thrive and live a life filled with a healthy mind, body, and spirit.

Rhonda Pearlman, President
Scott Zimmerman, Treasurer
Lynn Fenster, Secretary
Jacob Hara
JoAnne Kane
Don Levin
Ali Polejes