FRIENDS OF YAD SARAH INC
Bringing help and hope to the people of Israel
Programs and results
What we aim to solve
Yad Sarah provides a range of health and home care support services to people of all ages in Israel. With the commitment of over 7,000 volunteers, Yad Sarah provides free or low cost services that help people remain at home and in their own communities while coping with illness, infirmity, trauma and disabilities. Overcrowding in Israeli hospitals is at a critical level. Enabling people to return home with much needed support services frees up critical resources for hospitals, enables more autonomy for patients and families and saves health care funds.
Our programs
What are the organization's current programs, how do they measure success, and who do the programs serve?
Friends of Yad Sarah
With the help of over 7,000 volunteers in more than 100 branches, Yad Sarah provides a wide array of compassionate health and home care services for people of all ages, with special programs directed at support for older adults and for children and adults with disabilities.
Yad Riva Legal Services for the Elderly
Provides legal information and representation to the impoverished elderly in Israel in areas such as entitlements, landlord-tenant issues, labor and employment and more. Yad Riva is a nationally recognized leader in the areas of elder abuse and guardianship.
Geriatric Dental Clinic
Provides low cost or free dental care to older adults in Israel to the homebound elderly through its mobile units operating in the periphery and in central Israel.
Life Stories Project
Volunteers connect with older people to record and transcribe a personalized narrative as an oral history for families and friends. Life Stories subjects are presented with a bound book to share. These stories reflect unique historical experiences.
Exhibition and Guidance Center
These guidance, resource and exhibition centers - located in 8 regional branches - consist of model apartments which display the range of equipment available to allow the handicapped person to function independently at home. Volunteer, Occupational Therapists, Physical Therapists and others, advise visitors as to which apparatus may help to overcome their particular limitation.
The visitor can try out the items before buying or borrowing them, and receive advice about where to obtain them. A computerized resource library links the centers to global information on assistive devices and residential adaptation.
Lending of Medical and Rehabilitative Equipment
At the hub of each Yad Sarah branch’s activity is the Lending Center, the organization’s core program which is also its largest service initiative. Due to the fact that durable medical and home care equipment is not a benefit provided by Israeli health insurance, Yad Sarah loans equipment to anyone in need, enabling people to cope with illness and injury at home and in the community among family, friends, and everyday surroundings.
The provision of medical equipment facilitates a timely hospital discharge, significantly reducing health care costs as well as exposure to institution-based infections. In addition to equipment loans, the Lending Center offers two other services: a guidance center, where people can test and receive professional guidance on equipment available for loan, and an equipment sales center, for people who anticipate its long-term use.
More than 150 different kinds of medical equipment is available for short-term loan. Equipment may be borrowed from any branch. A refundable deposit is requested. Last year, Yad Sarah made more than 200,000 equipment loans.
Play Center for Children with Special Needs
Supervised play, instruction and lending of toys and games, for children with motor and cognitive problems. The center stresses full family involvement. The professional staff and trained volunteers play with the child (along with parents and siblings), give continuous guidance, and lend appropriate toys and games with instructions for their use at home. The center includes a creativity room, gross motor activity room, fine motor activity room, didactic games, computer games, and games for loan. The staff includes experts in special education, occupational therapy, speech therapy, social work, clinical education students and specially trained high school volunteers. Children aged newborn to twelve and their families are referred to the center by professionals.
The Family Center
The Yad Sarah Family Center performs professional and welcome work in the treatment and prevention of violence in the family. Its uniqueness lies in its specialty of catering to families of the religious sector, but it is open to all sectors of society. Here treatment is provided for the victim, the aggressor and the witness (children from families where violence is prevalent).
Yad Sarah’s staff of therapists consists of 10 social workers, three students studying social work, a female volunteer who is both an attorney as well as a rabbinical court advocate, along with several other volunteers in varying support roles. These volunteers serve as a substitute for the natural support system (family and friends). Because the center specializes in treating the religious sector, a rabbinical committee also participates in its activities.
Transportation for people with special needs
With a fleet of wheelchair accessible vans, Yad Sarah volunteers make it possible for people with special needs to travel from their homes to medical appointments, school, work and social visits. The drivers are carefully selected and trained and help make it possible for the organization to respond to more than 500 requests per day for special needs transportation.
Yad Sarah’s air-conditioned vans are fitted with hydraulic tail lifts, safety anchors, and two-way radios. Some vans are equipped with bulletproof glass.
Where we work
Awards
Rockower Award for Excellence in Publications 2010
American Jewish Press Association
Israel Prize 1994
Government of Israel
Kaplan Prize for Efficiency 1990
Kaplan Prize for Efficiency
External reviews
Photos
Goals & Strategy
Learn about the organization's key goals, strategies, capabilities, and progress.
Charting impact
Four powerful questions that require reflection about what really matters - results.
What is the organization aiming to accomplish?
Yad Sarah is Israel's largest volunteer-staffed organization, providing a wide array of compassionate health and home care services for people of all ages, with special programs directed at support for older adults and for children and adults with disabilities. Yad Sarah's free services are delivered by over 7,000 volunteers in more than 100 branches across Israel, and bring help – and hope - to nearly half a million people in need each year, among them the frail elderly, the homebound, victims of terror and domestic abuse, and children and adults with special needs. Each year, the organization's staff and volunteers lend out hundreds of thousands of items such as wheelchairs, crutches, and oxygen machines; drive the sick and injured to medical appointments; help injured people regain their independence through therapeutic programming at the Day Rehabilitation Centers; staff an emergency home alarm center with 20,000 subscribers; provide free legal aid to thousands of elderly through the Yad Riva Legal Services program; offer after-school programming and parental guidance for families with children with disabilities; extending therapeutic support for couples and families coping with domestic violence; and offer free dental care to older adults living in poverty.
What are the organization's key strategies for making this happen?
With a commitment to mutual social responsibility, volunteers from every part of Israeli society work together with staff to create and provide an array of home care and community services. The organization's extensive Lending Service for medical equipment operates out of 100+ branches all over the country, making home care equipment easily accessible. A range of programs and services make it possible for people in Israel to care for loved ones in their own homes, including the Guidance and Exhibition Center, transportation for people with special needs, an Emergency Alarm Response Service, in-home geriatric dental care, legal information and representation for older adults at risk for abuse and exploitation, and outreach to the frail and isolated.
What are the organization's capabilities for doing this?
From modest beginnings as a lending charity in a private apartment 40 years ago, Yad Sarah has expanded greatly to meet a huge and growing need, and now operates out of 100+ branches in Israeli cities, development towns, and Arab villages across the country. Yad Sarah estimates that its services and activities save the Israeli economy some $320 million each year in healthcare costs and hospital fees. The organization's annual budget of $25 million is covered almost exclusively by private donations and foundation grants. Its exceptional work on behalf of vulnerable populations has been recognized through numerous national awards, including the prestigious Israel Prize, the Kaplan Efficiency Prize, and the President's Voluntary Service Award.
Thanks to the broad scope of Yad Sarah's activities and services, and the compassion and caring of its large volunteer corps, the organization has become an indelible part of the fabric of every-day Israeli society.
What have they accomplished so far and what's next?
Yad Sarah made progress on a number of new projects in response to increased demand and need:
o The Home Hospital Program launched as a small pilot in 2014, continues to grow due to huge demand for home hospital electric beds and other equipment. The program lends out hospital-grade beds, hoists, and other equipment at nominal cost and makes it possible for people who do not need in-patient care at hospitals to return home and recuperate in the comfort of familiar surroundings, with the care of loved ones. It also makes it possible for people at the end of life to experience hospice care at home. As hospital crowding becomes a national crisis, this program is playing an increasingly important role in improving quality of life for people who can recover at home.
o The Yad Sarah Dental Clinics operate three mobile dental clinics in the greater Jerusalem area as well as in the periphery – a project now in its third year. Yad Sarah mobile dental clinics are expected to provide 1,400 treatments to disabled, home-bound people in the coming year.
o The Yad Sarah Family Center provides therapeutic support for both victims and perpetrators of domestic abuse. A new program opened in Sderot, which has no other domestic abuse program for the Negev. The program's goal is to serve the local population and expand therapeutic programming to nearby towns. The Center also works with high school educators and administrators, in order to provide culturally-sensitive, age-appropriate educational programming about domestic violence, specifically targeting ultra-Orthodox teens, who have no other source of information about this important and sensitive topic.
o The Children's Therapeutic Play Center provides programming after school hours for children with disabilities and their families. A new program for pre-school classes from across Jerusalem, many of them from low-income neighborhoods schedules class visits to the Center so teachers and professional therapists can observe children at play and can help provide guidance on therapeutic support for children with special needs. Thanks to a recent upgrade and expansion of the facility, the Center offers a unique opportunity for Jerusalem-area preschoolers to engage in therapeutic play and educators and families can promote the children's positive development.
o Branch renewals: The Netanya branch of Yad Sarah has seen a sizable increase in the number of people it helps, inaugurated a renovated building which has an additional floor and expanded space for Day Rehab programs, lending space, and an equipment exhibit hall. Netanya had 14,000 visits in 2018, has been growing steadily and expects a 10-20% increase in visits in the coming year alone.
How we listen
Seeking feedback from people served makes programs more responsive and effective. Here’s how this organization is listening.
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How is your organization using feedback from the people you serve?
To identify bright spots and enhance positive service experiences, To inform the development of new programs/projects, To strengthen relationships with the people we serve
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Which of the following feedback practices does your organization routinely carry out?
We aim to collect feedback from as many people we serve as possible, We take steps to ensure people feel comfortable being honest with us, We look for patterns in feedback based on people’s interactions with us (e.g., site, frequency of service, etc.), We act on the feedback we receive, We tell the people who gave us feedback how we acted on their feedback, We ask the people who gave us feedback how well they think we responded
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What challenges does the organization face when collecting feedback?
It is difficult to get the people we serve to respond to requests for feedback, We don’t have the right technology to collect and aggregate feedback efficiently, It is difficult to find the ongoing funding to support feedback collection, Staff find it hard to prioritize feedback collection and review due to lack of time
Financials
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Operations
The people, governance practices, and partners that make the organization tick.
Connect with nonprofit leaders
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- Analyze a variety of pre-calculated financial metrics
- Access beautifully interactive analysis and comparison tools
- Compare nonprofit financials to similar organizations
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Connect with nonprofit leaders
SubscribeBuild relationships with key people who manage and lead nonprofit organizations with GuideStar Pro. Try a low commitment monthly plan today.
- Analyze a variety of pre-calculated financial metrics
- Access beautifully interactive analysis and comparison tools
- Compare nonprofit financials to similar organizations
Want to see how you can enhance your nonprofit research and unlock more insights? Learn More about GuideStar Pro.
FRIENDS OF YAD SARAH INC
Board of directorsas of 11/01/2023
Jack Bendheim
NA
Pamela Wolf
Philip Bendheim
Eveline Gerck
Sara Halpern
Michael Miller
Paul Goldensohn
Organizational demographics
Who works and leads organizations that serve our diverse communities? Candid partnered with CHANGE Philanthropy on this demographic section.
Leadership
The organization's leader identifies as:
Race & ethnicity
No data
Gender identity
No data
Transgender Identity
No data
Sexual orientation
No data
Disability
No data
Equity strategies
Last updated: 11/01/2023GuideStar partnered with Equity in the Center - an organization that works to shift mindsets, practices, and systems to increase racial equity - to create this section. Learn more
- We review compensation data across the organization (and by staff levels) to identify disparities by race.
- We employ non-traditional ways of gathering feedback on programs and trainings, which may include interviews, roundtables, and external reviews with/by community stakeholders.
- We seek individuals from various race backgrounds for board and executive director/CEO positions within our organization.
- We have community representation at the board level, either on the board itself or through a community advisory board.
- We help senior leadership understand how to be inclusive leaders with learning approaches that emphasize reflection, iteration, and adaptability.