Jewish New Media Innovation Fund
Posted by Allison Fine on October 6, 2010
The Jim Joseph, Charles and Lynn Schusterman and Righteous Persons Foundations announced this week the launch of the Jewish New Media Innovation Fund.
That’s quite a trio of heavy hitting Jewish foundations!
This year’s pilot program will award a total of $500,000 for projects that use new media tools—including video, digital communications, social networks, and more—to empower Jews to interact with, share, build, and explore Jewish life.
As described on the website, projects could be:
- Taking age-old Jewish traditions and using new media to reinvent them.
- Digging into our Jewish past, bringing forth content that has been forgotten or lost, and making it accessible to new audiences.
- Creating novel ways for individuals to interact with one another and form new communities.
- Engaging the next generation (18 – 40 year olds) in general, and the institutionally unaffiliated next generation in particular, in Jewish history, tradition, and rituals.
- Discovering new ways to engage new audiences, both Jews and non-Jews, in Jewish life, learning, culture, and community.
The website has a blog, an online application process (or RFP that can be downloaded), very clear criteria for the project’s success (not sure I’ve ever seen that as part of the announcement of a new grant program), a willingness to fund good ideas whether they are from an individual, a nonprofit, for profit or social enterprise. Start ups or established organizations are both welcome.
The only question I have is whether all of the applications will be posted so that even if an idea isn’t funded it might get an airing and find some kindred spirits.
This is a very exciting new grantmaking program, and one of the few foundation efforts to cast such a wide net in search of innovative approach to community building using social media. The only other one I can think of that’s comparable is the Knight News Challenge. The fact that the smart folks at Blueprint R&D were intimately involved in the project’s design might have something to do with that.
The application process closes on November 22nd.
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This entry was posted on October 6, 2010 at 11:12 am and is filed under Social Media. Tagged: Blueprint R&D, Jewish New Media Innovation Fund, Jim Joseph Foundation, Knight News Challenge, Righteous Persons Foundation, Schusterman Foundation. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.
One Response to “Jewish New Media Innovation Fund”
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Lucy Bernholz said
Hey Allison
Thanks for this lovely post. In answer to your question about sharing the ideas publicly, the Fund has chosen to not do this with this go around. Hopefully, there will be broad interest and great ideas, the Fund will keep going beyond next year, and it can iterate over time.
Thanks!
Lucy