Initiative aims to foster safe, respectful, and equitable Jewish workplaces and communal spaces
Press Release – SAN FRANCISCO, Feb. 20 – The SafetyRespectEquity Coalition (SRE Coalition) today announced it will provide $1 million in grants to further its mission of promoting women’s leadership and addressing sexual harassment and gender discrimination in Jewish spaces.
The SRE Coalition, which represents more than 100 Jewish organizations, funders, individuals, and experts, is seeking grant proposals from Jewish institutions to develop or enhance programs in their own organizations or in the community, with $250,000 to be awarded for organizational capacity-building and $750,000 for field capacity-building.
Ultimately, the SRE Coalition aims to achieve organizational change and culture shift by galvanizing Jewish leaders to make these issues a priority in their institutions. This entails ensuring Jewish organizations implement comprehensive policies, procedures, and training for all levels of staff and volunteers; demonstrate a recognition of and intolerance for inappropriate actions and behaviors; and provide systems that will enable both victims and bystanders to report incidents and have them swiftly and fairly addressed. It also means attending to the wider structural and cultural problems of sexism and gender bias that allow misconduct and discrimination to persist.
“These grants represent a diverse group of funders coming together to address sexual harassment and gender discrimination, ensuring talented people will want to work and volunteer in the Jewish community now and in the future,” says Lisa Eisen, President of the U.S. Jewish Portfolio at the Charles and Lynn Schusterman Family Foundation, one of the SRE Coalition’s major funders. “Practitioners will use these funds to help networks and organizations carry out this work and address critical gaps we have identified, such as organizational training, accountability mechanisms, and gender equity and other related research.”
This is the SRE Coalition’s second round of grantmaking. In Fall 2018, the Coalition awarded $500,000 to five organizations through its Rapid Response Fund to support immediate training and capacity-building efforts. These grantees are currently working with the Coalition to coordinate and scale training and coaching programs and to develop assessment tools, research, and other resources to promote safety, respect, and equity in Jewish workplaces and communal spaces.
The SRE Coalition anticipates awarding up to $1 million in additional funding by the end of 2019 and seeks to grant another $2 million in these areas in 2020.
The deadline to submit grant proposals is March 26, with awards scheduled to be announced in May. More details about requests for proposals can be found on the Coalition’s website at: https://safetyrespectequity.org/capacity-building-grant/.
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