One day to raise $1 million

Twenty Orthodox Jewish outreach groups to fundraise together.

The Association for Jewish Outreach Professionals (AJOP) has issued a challenge to North American Orthodox Jewish outreach organizations to raise $1 million in one day collaboratively. And it’s all or nothing.

Each of 20 outreach organizations will have 24 hours to raise approximately $50,000 or more, each using the crowdfunding platform charidy.com:

• All donations pledged online on Feb. 17 will be matched by three donors, quadrupling each gift.
• If the organizations do not meet their online goals within 24 hours, none of the pledges will be processed or collected for any of the organizations.

Rabbi Yitzchok Lowenbraun, national director of AJOP, explained, “This ambitious event is designed to increase support for the participating organizations, allowing them to spend more of their time on outreach, and less time on fundraising. At the same time, we hope to give hundreds of people who would give a gift to kiruv [bringing secular Jews closer to Orthodox Judaism] a chance to show their support, as well as encourage new donors who have an affinity for kiruv and would give $10, $18 or $100 if they had an easy way to do it. At the end of the day, donors at all levels will see how significant their support is and that they are partners in a much bigger picture – their donation to a local organization will help leverage $1 million for the klal [whole].”

Participating organizations include UJCEEA (United Jewish Communities of Eastern Europe and Asia), Judaic Heritage (University of Maryland, Baltimore), Meor NYU (New York University), Aish Israeli, Aish Jerusalem, OU (Orthodox Union) NextGen and NCSY (National Conference of Synagogue Youth) alumni program.

The donation page (charidy.com/millionforoutreach) will only be open on Feb. 17, but earlier this week, information about the event was posted on millionforoutreach.com.