For the past 11 years, JGSI’s growth has been miraculous. From one initiative in Los Angeles, we’ve expanded to 130 grad schools around North America. And during this increasingly difficult time for Jewish students on campus, we are providing a safe haven for 8,000 grad students a year to express and explore their Jewish identity with confidence.

One of the biggest miracles yet is that we built all this with a small staff and a shoestring budget. JGSI has always operated in lean startup mode, strategically growing as quickly and inexpensively as possible by empowering an army of volunteer student leaders to assist in executing our programs.

I believe that today’s nonprofits need to punch above their weight class and give donors a bang for their philanthropic buck, and JGSI’s recent independent financial review reflects those beliefs with glowing marks across the board for fiscal efficiency. We have managed to bootstrap our way up while accomplishing all of our stated goals and then some.

But we’ve come to the realization that we’ve hit a ceiling under current conditions. Our students need more from us. We get dozens of event requests each week, more and more each day. Our bare-bones team has been working around the clock to keep up with the demand of 550+ events a year. And, the actual cost of running programs has doubled since pre-COVID.

There are a million more things JGSI could do with increased staff and funding to even better engage our 8,000 constituents, but the change must be more than incremental, and immediate, to be impactful.

I’m writing to you today because I need your help moving JGSI from startup, to scale up.

Now is our time to build the infrastructure our students and organization desperately need. To hire talented team members in different cities to support our student leaders. To provide immersive Jewish experiences previously avoided due to cost. To make big investments in tech and content that will keep our alumni engaged.

To do more, we need to raise more. Our annual crowdfunding campaign is now live, and we are attempting to raise $250,000 in 36 hours from our friends which, thanks to some generous matching donors, will be quadrupled for a grand total of $1 million.

I’m not an aggressive fundraiser, and I am vulnerable sharing this with you. But I’m asking you, just once a year, to please be my partner today and entrust JGSI with your charity. We will work tirelessly to ensure that every dollar goes towards building our national Jewish grad community and ensuring the next generation of Jewish leadership at this most pivotal moment in their lives.

Easy and secure link to donate is here: https://charidy.com/jgsi