Across North America, Jewish day schools face a common challenge: How do we ensure the financial future of our institutions and the continued Jewish engagement of the students we worked so hard to inspire? While many schools have turned to major capital campaigns and donor cultivation strategies, a key demographic remains under-engaged in these conversations: young alumni.
If we are serious about our endowments’ long-term health and our Jewish future, we must find ways to inspire, empower, and involve our recent graduates. We must show them that endowment giving is not only about dollars and cents but also about legacy, pride, and belonging. As head of the Jewish Youth Promise, I see this as a challenge and an extraordinary opportunity.
Where we lose young alumni
It’s no secret that alum engagement often peaks around reunions or milestone anniversaries. However, when cultivating endowment support or long-term philanthropy, most schools inadvertently skip over recent graduates. We wait until they are older, established, and “ready.” In doing so, we miss a powerful window: the moment when their Jewish identity is still profoundly shaped by their school experience.
This gap reveals a more profound cultural disconnect between how we approach young people and how we educate them about giving. We treat endowment as an elite, abstract concept rather than a natural extension of values we’ve spent years instilling.
Jewish day schools are more than academic institutions; they are identity incubators. For many alums, these schools represent their first exposure to communal responsibility. What if we reframed endowment giving not as a financial ask but as an invitation to continue a legacy of meaning?
At Jewish Youth Promise, we ask young people to promise to stay involved in the Jewish community and causes. The promise isn’t about the “How much?” or the “When?” It’s about affirming a lifelong connection to Jewish values and continuity. Schools can adopt a similar mindset when engaging young alumni.
Lessons from the field
Through the Jewish Youth Promise, over 30,000 teens and college students have promised to be a part of Jewish causes. This demonstrates a willingness and hunger among young Jews to contribute when asked correctly.
This isn’t just theory. It’s a growing movement. At Alpha Epsilon Pi, or AEPi, the Jewish fraternity, we saw how peer-led discussions about Jewish identity quickly translated into legacy-minded conversations. The key was connecting the dots between values and action, and pride and purpose.
The Weber School in Atlanta manages and operates a student governing board. The Leven Office of Student Service and Philanthropy is a clearinghouse for Weber students to choose meaningful, high-impact community service through a philanthropic lens. This office will provide Weber students, and, eventually, teens throughout the Atlanta Jewish community, with easily accessible opportunities to choose service projects that align with their interests and skills, thereby incentivizing them to increase the time they invest in acts of tzedakah (“charity”).
Day schools can replicate this model by aligning endowment giving with existing pride-building moments: graduation, gap years in Israel, and college campus visits. The question isn’t “Are you ready to give?” but “Are you ready to continue what we started together?”
Of course, this work is not without obstacles. Some schools may fear that focusing on young alumni detracts from more considerable gifts or more “reliable” donors. Others may worry about being too aggressive or sounding out of touch.
But the most significant risk is doing nothing.
As today’s alums become tomorrow’s communal leaders, we must ask: Will they feel connected enough to give back?
In a world of rising antisemitism and polarization, strengthening identity and engagement isn’t a luxury; it’s a necessity. Jewish day schools are on the frontlines of that battle. To win it, we must partner with alumni as donors and co-owners of our mission.
A vision for the future
Imagine this: A Jewish day school class of 2025 gathers at graduation. Each student writes a note to a future student, sharing what their Jewish education meant to them. These notes are tucked into a time capsule to be opened when the class returns, 10 years later, to endow a program together.
This may sound idealistic, but it reflects a future where young alums are not just remembered at reunions but are also engaged in shaping what comes next, where the legacy isn’t just reserved for the wealthy or the old but introduced as an extension of pride and purpose.
At the heart of this vision is a mindset shift, one that many schools are just beginning to embrace: that Jewish identity, philanthropy, and continuity are not separate goals but interwoven threads of the same fabric. When we empower young alumni to stay connected, take ownership, and invest financially and emotionally in the communities that raised them, we don’t just build stronger endowments. We build stronger Jews.
The Jewish Youth Promise has shown that when young people are asked to make a meaningful commitment, they step up not because they have to, but because they want to be part of something enduring.
Jewish day schools can harness that same energy not by making the ask bigger but by making it more personal, purposeful, and rooted in the legacy they helped create.
Now is the time to shift our approach from pride to promise, from alums to partners, from graduates to guardians of the Jewish future.
The writer is executive director of Jewish Youth Promise.