American Jewish World Service, Inc.
Working together to build a more just and equitable world
Programs and results
What we aim to solve
American Jewish World Service is the leading Jewish organization working to fight poverty and pursue justice in the developing world. Through philanthropy and advocacy, we respond to the most pressing issues of our time—from disasters, genocide and hunger, to the persecution of women and minorities worldwide. With Jewish values and a global reach, AJWS is making a difference in millions of lives and building a more just and equitable world.
Our programs
What are the organization's current programs, how do they measure success, and who do the programs serve?
SEXUAL HEALTH & RIGHTS
Across the globe, women, girls and LGBTQI people face discrimination and violence and are denied the right to make decisions about their bodies and their lives. This makes them especially vulnerable to poverty, domestic abuse, rape, child marriage and HIV and AIDS. In response, AJWS supports 157 social justice organizations that promote equality, stop violence and combat hate crimes, so that women, girls, and people of all sexual orientations and gender identities can live healthy lives, be treated with respect, and pursue their dreams and opportunities freely.
Population Served: Women, adolescent girls, LGBTQI people, sex workers
Geographic Area: Africa, Asia, Latin America and the Caribbean
CIVIL AND POLITICAL RIGHTS
Around the world, authoritarianism, political repression and violence are on the rise. In developing countries, poor and persecuted minorities are often excluded from civic and political life, and those who speak up for their rights are threatened, jailed and even murdered. To reverse this trend, AJWS supports 159 organizations that are insisting that their governments respect the rights of citizens. They are mobilizing fellow activists into powerful movements for social change. And together, they are pressing for fair elections, protecting freedom of speech and gaining the right to shape the laws that govern their lives.
Population served: People living in poverty, religious and ethnic minorities, LGBTQI people, refugees, displaced people, survivors of conflict and genocide, and indigenous communities.
Geographic Area: Africa, Asia, Latin America and the Caribbean
LAND, WATER AND CLIMATE JUSTICE
Many of the world’s poorest people are struggling to survive in a rapidly changing world. Rural communities bear the brunt of climate change, as powerful storms, floods, droughts and heatwaves demolish their homes or cause widespread hunger. Meanwhile, dams, mines and oil rigs built in the rush to profit from the earth’s remaining undeveloped land and natural resources irrevocably alter and poison landscapes where indigenous people have lived for generations. In response, AJWS supports 132 organizations working to slow climate change, stop damaging development, and protect the land, water and natural resources that they depend on for survival.
Population served: Rural communities, indigenous communities
Geographic Area: Africa, Asia, Latin America and the Caribbean
HUMANITARIAN RESPONSE
When severe disasters strike in the countries where we work—from earthquakes to tsunamis to genocides to epidemics—AJWS provides immediate humanitarian relief and long-term support for recovery. We ensure that our aid reaches the poorest and most vulnerable communities and populations, by supporting local organizations who get help directly to those who need it most. Our 54 humanitarian response grantees seek out remote villages cut off from hospitals and supplies, and focus on women, orphans and persecuted minorities whose special needs are frequently overlooked during disasters. Long after the crisis is out of the news, AJWS is still working to help communities rebuild, recover and protect human rights.
Population served: Women, children, LGBTQI people, persecuted minorities, refugees, internally displaced people, people living in communities struck by disasters and crises
Geographic area: Africa, Asia, Latin America and the Caribbean
INTERNATIONAL EDUCATION AND JEWISH ENGAGEMENT
AJWS mobilizes American Jews and other supporters to advocate for U.S. laws and policies that improve the lives of millions of people in the developing world. We collaborate with diverse allies—ranging from other Jewish and progressive organizations to global diplomats—to build global support for our efforts to combat poverty, oppression and injustice.
One of our primary vehicles for achieving this goal is to train and cultivate rabbis, educators and other clergy to become informed and passionate advocates for human rights, though our Global Justice Fellowship—an intensive six-month training on advocacy, leadership and global human rights issues. We also create original Jewish content for clergy and the broader Jewish community that inspires people to learn and act on the Jewish commitment to repair the world.
Population Served: Members of the broader Jewish community and AJWS Grantees
Geographic Area: USA, Africa, Asia, Latin America and the Caribbean
ADVOCACY AND GOVERNMENT AFFAIRS
On Capitol Hill and in global human rights forums, AJWS advocates for laws and policies that promote human rights in the developing world.
In previous years, AJWS has contributed to key advances in bringing peace to Sudan, relieving the debts of developing nations, and improving legislation for HIV and AIDS. In 2014, our Reverse Hunger campaign helped secure up to $400 million in additional U.S. international food aid funding to reach half a million more people. In 2015, our We Believe campaign helped achieve the appointment of the first U.S. special envoy for international LGBTQI rights.
Today, AJWS’s advocacy focuses on securing justice for persecuted minorities like the Rohingya people of Burma, who suffered a brutal genocide. In 2019, we secured U.S. sanctions against Burmese military officials responsible for the genocide. And we worked to hold back the tide of attacks on human rights presented by the Trump administration, by advocating to repeal the heinous Global Gag Rule—which threatens the lives and reproductive health of women and girls worldwide.
Where we work
Accreditations
Better Business Bureau Wise Giving Alliance 2021
Charity Navigator 2021
Charity Watch 2021
InterAction 2021
External reviews

Our results
How does this organization measure their results? It's a hard question but an important one.
Number of Grantee Partners
This metric is no longer tracked.Totals By Year
Type of Metric
Output - describing our activities and reach
Direction of Success
Holding steady
Context Notes
Our “grantee partners” are advocacy organizations and community groups that we support in the developing world to advance human right in their communities and countries.
% of capacity building outcomes reported as showing progress
This metric is no longer tracked.Totals By Year
Type of Metric
Outcome - describing the effects on people or issues
Direction of Success
Holding steady
Context Notes
AJWS provides “capacity building” support to improve our grantees’ stability and program quality. Of the 20 capacity-building outcomes in our strategies, staff reported progress on 13 of them—65%.
% of advocacy outcomes reported as showing progress
This metric is no longer tracked.Totals By Year
Type of Metric
Outcome - describing the effects on people or issues
Direction of Success
Holding steady
Context Notes
AJWS supports its grantees to conduct advocacy to change laws, policies and power structures to advance human rights. Staff reported progress on 41 of our 55 advocacy outcomes—75%.
% of social movement outcomes reported as showing progress
This metric is no longer tracked.Totals By Year
Type of Metric
Outcome - describing the effects on people or issues
Direction of Success
Increasing
Context Notes
AJWS supports the growth of strong social movements working to advance a shared purpose for lasting change and social transformation. We saw progress this year on 46 of our 51 outcomes—90%.
% of policy goals reported as showing progress
This metric is no longer tracked.Totals By Year
Type of Metric
Outcome - describing the effects on people or issues
Direction of Success
Holding steady
Context Notes
AJWS supports changing laws, policies, regulations, and international agreements to promote human rights. Of our 137 policy goals in 2021, we saw progress on 46—34%.
Number of policy goals achieved
This metric is no longer tracked.Totals By Year
Type of Metric
Outcome - describing the effects on people or issues
Direction of Success
Holding steady
Context Notes
In 2021, AJWS’s grantees achieved 3 key policy goals—major transformations such as the adoption, amendment, implementation, or blocking of a law.
Our Sustainable Development Goals
Learn more about Sustainable Development Goals.
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?
Our mission is to advance human rights and end poverty around the globe, ensuring a more just and equitable society for the world’s most vulnerable people. To do this, we strive toward the following goals:
1. To empower women, girls and LGBTQI people to promote equality, stop violence and discrimination and live with dignity, safety and health.
2. To advance civil and political rights around the globe—promoting justice under the law for all and the right to be heard, vote and participate in political life.
3. To slow climate change and protect the land, water and natural resources that rural and indigenous people depend on for survival.
4. To save lives after natural disasters and humanitarian crises and build more equitable societies in the wake of these events.
What are the organization's key strategies for making this happen?
AJWS supports 502 grantees in 19 countries that are achieving remarkable progress on some of the most pressing global problems—from authoritarianism, to attacks on women’s and LGBTQI rights, to climate change and disasters. On each of these issues, we advance strategies that are deeply aligned with the vision and expertise of our grantees, because we believe that the people experiencing complex human rights challenges should be at the center of all efforts to solve them. Currently, we have a total of 38 strategies across our programs in each country and issue area. These strategies guide our work on priority issues and include 10-year goals, three-year outcomes and annual milestones toward each outcome.
In each country and issue area, we identify dynamic constellations of grantees that are working towards shared goals. We provide each group with tailored mentorship delivered by our “in-country-consultants” (ICCs)—local human rights experts fluent in the languages, challenges, and unique loci of power in each community. The ICCs increase our grantees’ capacity and facilitate intensive collaboration, so that they can launch collective campaigns and participate in broader social movements. Working together, these organizations and movements have overturned unjust laws, changed the outcome of elections, shifted social norms and saved countless lives after humanitarian crises.
We also stoke the engines of change here in the U.S., where our staff influence Congress and advance legislation and policy on these same human rights issues. Through our Global Justice Fellowship, we mobilize influential rabbis from across the country to join these campaigns and inspire their congregants to call for justice by our side. And we create opportunities for our grantees to raise their voices in Washington and on the global stage.
We call this our “grassrooted” and “tiered” approach to social change. We connect grassroots organizations horizontally to one another and vertically to national and international organizations, allies and decision-making bodies such as international courts and the United Nations. The organizations we support build movements in the developing world while we take action from the U.S., and together we are able to move levers of change at different tiers of society.
What are the organization's capabilities for doing this?
AJWS started as a small organization, but now invests $36 million a year in grantmaking and social change strategies to promote global human rights. And since our founding, we have provided more than $400 million to support thousands of social justice organizations in the developing world. The following approaches enable us to meet our goals:
Investment Strategy and grantmaking: AJWS focuses on four key areas of human rights: We defend civil and political rights; advance sexual health and rights; promote natural resource rights and climate justice; and aid communities in the aftermath of disasters. We develop comprehensive strategies for each issue and in each country, based on our deep and ongoing analysis of the problems we address and of the social and political landscape. These strategies enable us to identify the best investments (in grantees, advocacy and research) and then track our progress toward our long-term goals in each country.
To advance these strategies, AJWS supports 502 social change organizations in 19 countries. Exercising rigorous due diligence, our in-country representatives identify the most promising and effective activists and organizations to fund—focusing particularly on those who work with women, minorities and others who experience the most severe discrimination, oppression or exclusion from society. We invest in trusted relationships with our grantees; listen to and learn from them; and build their capacity with tailored trainings and support in order foster the growth of strong, capable organizations and activists that are equipped to meet the complex needs of the communities they serve.
We also connect our grantees to peer organizations and national and global networks and advocacy spaces, so that they can build and participate in powerful social movements that can change laws and transform society. By strengthening grassroots organizations and activist leaders, we ensure that those most affected by injustice are at the center of conversations about solutions—in their communities, nationally and globally.
Advocacy, Education & Communications: AJWS conducts advocacy and digital engagement in the U.S. and globally to call attention to human rights abuses and amplify the voices of our grantees. Together, we strive to influence U.S. and global laws, policies and social norms to improve the lives of millions of people in the developing world.
Research, Evaluation & Learning: AJWS conducts research and evaluation to strengthen our own work and advance the broader field of human rights. We collect meaningful data on our grantmaking and the human rights issues we address. We consistently hone our thinking and strategies based on new evidence. We share our findings with our grantees as possible while also promoting their research. We do this to ensure that we learn from one another, amplify the voices of our grantees in human rights movements, and influence the public discourse on effective approaches to social change.
What have they accomplished so far and what's next?
In 2021, AJWS supported 502 social justice organizations fighting poverty and promoting human rights in 19 countries. Together, they’re tackling pressing issues in four thematic areas that include Civil and Political Rights (159 grantees), Land Water and Climate Justice (132 grantees), Sexual Health and Rights (157 grantees), and Humanitarian Response (54 grantees).
AJWS’s programmatic approach to social change focuses on three core pillars: supporting our grantees to increase their capacity, supporting their advocacy, and supporting the growth of strong social movements in the countries where they work. Across these categories, in 2021 we found that AJWS and our grantees were making progress on 81% of the strategic outcomes we aimed to achieve.
AJWS is committed to supporting grantees that are working to strengthen their own capacities. For instance, 36% of our grantees received capacity-building support through our grants in 2021, and we saw progress on 65% of our capacity-building outcomes. AJWS also provides grants to young organizations: 42% of our 2021 grantees were founded within 5 years of their first AJWS grant.
AJWS supports its grantees to advance legislative and policy change: We are currently working on 137 laws, policies, regulations, and international agreements to protect human rights. Achieving this kind of legal transformation takes time, and in 2021, we were gratified that our grantees made major or minor progress on 34% of these, and successfully achieved 3 of these goals. The successes include major transformations include such as the adoption, amendment, implementation, or blocking of a policy goal.
AJWS supports thousands of activists and their organizations to create strong social movements that are rising up to tip the scales toward justice. Our grantees are deeply engaged in social movements and working together to achieve change. Seventy-eight percent are members of networks or coalitions that work together to effect sustainable change. For instance, our grantees in Guatemala are building a powerful movement to challenge their authoritarian government and create a more equitable society. Indigenous communities in Thailand are working together to protect their ancestral forests.
AJWS believes in continuous improvement of its programs through investments in learning, reflection, and evaluation. By placing learning at the center of the work, AJWS strives to maximize its impact in the field of human rights.
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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Connect with nonprofit leaders
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American Jewish World Service, Inc.
Board of directorsas of 02/22/2022
Mr. Bradley Abelow
Bradley Abelow
Community Volunteer
Sharon Leslie
Community Volunteer
Eric Sahn
Community Volunteer
Jim Koshland
Community Volunteer
Carol Yanowitz Miller
Community Volunteer
Robert Bank
President and CEO
Marion Bergman
Community Volunteer
Jay Cohan
Community Volunteer
Monte Dube
Community Volunteer
Tom Dubin
Community Volunteer
Eileen Epstein
Community Volunteer
Marty Friedman
Community Volunteer
Elyse Frishman
Community Volunteer
Marc Greenwald
Community Volunteer
Michael Hirschhorn
Community Volunteer
Carol Joseph
Community Volunteer
Paul Lehman
Community Volunteer
Howard Mandel
Community Volunteer
Jill Minneman
Community Volunteer
Suzanne Offit
Community Volunteer
William Resnick
Community Volunteer
Bruce Rosenblum
Community Volunteer
Nathalie Rubens
Community Volunteer
Suzanne Schecter
Community Volunteer
Elizabeth Galatin Seth
Community Volunteer
Judith Stern
Community Volunteer
Scott Waxman
Community Volunteer
Organizational demographics
Who works and leads organizations that serve our diverse communities? GuideStar partnered on this section with CHANGE Philanthropy and Equity in the Center.
Leadership
The organization's leader identifies as:
Race & ethnicity
No data
Gender identity
No data
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Sexual orientation
No data
Disability
No data