NIF Providing Emergency Assistance as Economic Crisis Impacts Israel

November 5, 2008

The New Israel Fund and its action arm, SHATIL, are drawing up emergency plans in the wake of the global economic crisis and the expected downturn in donations. The organization will attempt to maintain optimum effectiveness in grant-making and capacity-building, while protecting the most disadvantaged sectors of society in an era of government cutbacks and rising unemployment.

Anat Hoffman, Executive Director of veteran NIF grantee Israel Religious Action Center for the Movement for Progressive (Reform) Judaism said that her organization had already been forced to close down its new immigrant assistance centers in Tel Aviv, Haifa and Beer Sheva. “These are centers that lend a helping hand to 6,000 immigrants and their problems,” she says, “and in particular helps them get their full rights from government ministries. You won’t hear these people cry out and read headlines about them in the newspapers because they are the most disadvantaged people in Israel.”

SHATIL is working to provide assistance on a number of emergency measures for NGO directors and fundraisers, including consultations with experts in financial planning and organizing meetings using existing SHATIL-coordinated professional forums.  NIF and SHATIL will also convene client organizations for joint thinking, shared ideas and best practices in a time of economic crisis.

Interviewed by Y-Net last week, Eliezer Yaari, Executive Director of NIF Israel, said: “We are recruiting financial consultants who will advise non-profit organizations on infrastructure savings and even potential mergers, if necessary."

Following the sub-prime crisis at the end of 2007, NIF and other social change organizations began seeing significant budgetary shortfalls owing to the major depreciation of the US dollar against the shekel. The extreme decline in capital markets worldwide in September and October strongly suggests that the damage will be even greater.

Former NIF grantee Yedid: the Association for Community Empowerment reports that it has closed two of the 24 assistance centers it operates around the country for the needy, while there have been staff cuts in all centers. This occurred despite the fact that the number of people requesting assistance from Yedid has increased 23 percent, with a 64 percent increase in people who cannot repay their mortgage.

 “There are projects that cannot get funding that will simply have to be cancelled,” noted Gershon Peleg, Executive Director for the Society for the Protection of Nature in Israel (SPNI), which is supported by NIF through the Green Environment Fund (GEF). “These projects would save environmental spaces, where the damage that will now be caused is irreversible.”

"Smart planning of how to utilize NIF's assets, particularly SHATIL’s work, can assist in achieving preliminary objectives,” observes Yaari.