Charles and Lynn Schusterman Family Foundation Celebrating 20 Years of Values in Action Our Mission
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Charles and Lynn Schusterman Family Foundation Celebrating 20 Years of Values in Action Our Mission The Charles and Lynn Schusterman Family Foundation is dedicated to helping the Jewish people flourish by supporting programs throughout the world that spread the joy of Jewish living, giving and learning. The foundation also provides assistance to non-sectarian charitable organizations dedicated to enhancing the quality of life in Oklahoma, especially in the areas of education, child advocacy and community service. Message from Lynn Schusterman 1 Message from Sandy Cardin 4 Values in Action – Caring 11 Israel Engagement 12 Jewish Identity 15 Jewish Peoplehood 16 Leadership 19 Learning 20 Service 23 Grantees 26 Milestones 26 Center for Leadership Initiatives 36 Schusterman Foundation-Israel 37 CLSFF Officers and Staff 38 Charles and Lynn Schusterman Family Foundation To Our Friends At each step of the way, we have delighted in the new things we’ve learned and the new friends we’ve made. It’s been terrific to enhance our own grant- making by creating new philanthropic structures, exploring innovative methods for implementing programs, developing staff and creating the highest Twenty years ago, my husband Charlie and I took standards for operational excellence. on the challenging and exciting task of building a We also developed a new way to think about Jewish foundation to reflect our shared commitments the work we do. We no longer think of ourselves and values. Our desire was to tackle urgent problems as a local foundation with a global vision; today, while deepening our commitment to vitally we see ourselves as a global foundation with local important issues. connections. As we look beyond our 20th We wanted the work of our foundation to be anniversary, we await new challenges, lessons of the highest quality, performed by creative and and discoveries. thoughtful professionals who shared our vision and From the outset, we chose to include the word passion.We wanted to bring new and successful “family” in the name of our foundation because we strategies to the non-profit sector. We also wanted wanted this venture to be a family enterprise. We Lynn Schusterman to inspire achievement and excellence in the planned on seeing our children and their children individuals and organizations we sought to help. move our philanthropic agenda forward. 1 In the beginning, we supported those Ultimately, our hope has always been that they organizations that shared our goals of tikkun olam will inherit the responsibilities and privileges of (a Hebrew phrase meaning “to repair the world”), continuing the work of the foundation.This process Tof spreading the joy of Jewish living and learning, has already begun, and I am enormously proud of and of building community service and leadership. their contributions. During the course of our efforts, we encountered Just as the participation of our next generation inspiring individuals seeking to make the Jewish has grown, so has our understanding of the word community more welcoming, tolerant and aware of “family.”We now realize that for us, family doesn't its heritage. We gained enormous satisfaction from just mean children, siblings and parents. Over the our efforts to inspire a new level of engagement years, the word family has taken on an additional and leadership among Jewish teenagers and meaning to include the diverse and talented group young adults. of individuals and organizations we work with As we built our foundation, we very quickly every day. began supporting individuals who were healing This sense that the foundation itself is part of deep wounds in the heart of our ancestral home an extended family, a place where we share in Israel, fueling the resurgence of Jewish life in experiences and learn from each the former Soviet Union and trying to help fill other, was not something we gaps in the social safety net in our hometown of anticipated; it is yet Tulsa, Oklahoma. another unexpected Charles and Lynn Schusterman Family Foundation benefit we have derived from our philanthropic organizations that we could not give each their due. activities over the past 20 years. I hope that you enjoy this summary, and that That’s why we decided to design this report to you take the same pride we do in what we have look more like a family album than the kind of accomplished with our partners over the last 20 annual report you usually see from a foundation. years. I know that Charlie would have been When we issued our first report, it was just a thrilled at what we have achieved together. I also few months after Charlie passed away. The resulting know that if he were alive today, he would document bore his imprint and his memory. We recognize in the many faces and dreams of our filled its pages with the notes he religiously family the contours of our original vision. He jotted down and kept as reminders to himself and would welcome our fresh focus on to all of us. That report was about Charlie, and inspiring service, our investments in rightly so. campus life and our ever-expanding What you have in your hands is not about programs to support underserved Charlie – it is about his vision brought to life. So Jewish communities around the instead of notes by Charlie, captured and recorded world. In all these efforts, he would here are the thoughts and visions of the many recognize the thoughts and ideas that wonderful people and organizations with whom we he used to scrawl out on notepads have had the privilege to work over the years.To suddenly brought to life in the 2 us, it is a perfect next step in our history. This dreams and hopes of thousands of report reflects the values that shaped Charlie’s life people whom we are proud to call family. and shows how those early days continue to shape the lives of everyone we encounter. B’shalom, While our experience and resources make projects possible, it is our partners’ work that makes things happen. No matter the task – whether it is the hard work of helping a mother and her Lynn Schusterman children escape abuse, giving someone the hope and the training they need for a better future, raising a generation of future leaders, or making the synagogue a center of Jewish life and liveliness – success depends on the doing. We seek to recognize the talent and energy in individuals and organizations, and help make that talent and energy as potent as possible. Of course, as with most family albums, this report is hardly exhaustive. Over the years, we have worked with so many incredible people and Charles and Lynn Schusterman Family Foundation “We want to be known as a thoughtful, serious, effic or recommending it, we want that to be considered a Many foundations also move from a more fluid approval process to a more formal, structured system. We have resisted making those changes.We continue to engage with a broad array of potential grant recipients because we believe that great ideas often start as small projects at the grassroots.We This sentiment, written by Charles Schusterman on also remain committed to learning from ours and one of the hundreds of notes he used to keep, others’ experiences and to avoid duplicating efforts. continues to influence us in profound ways. We try to remain focused, assess where and when Like Charles, we believe that philanthropic we can add value and avoid activities that fall success is achieved in ways similar to those outside our core competencies. employed by the best in the business world: hire the While we prefer to work alongside others, we best people, research seriously, plan thoughtfully, are also willing to go it alone. Similarly, while we implement creatively and evaluate carefully. Our appreciate the importance of planning and due foundation was built on these principles and they diligence, we realize there are situations where a remain the guiding ideals of our work.The pursuit foundation must have the flexibility to act quickly, of excellence remains our highest priority. before all available information can been collected Finding, training and empowering our team and analyzed. 4 has been a deliberate and lengthy process. Charles One such situation occurred in the summer and Lynn waited seven years before hiring their of 2006, when communities throughout northern first foundation professional, and our Washington, Israel faced a barrage of rocket fire from Hezbollah. D.C. office did not open for seven more years.An We responded immediately with emergency aid. Tadditional five years passed before Lynn created the Once combat ceased, we announced our plan to Schusterman Foundation-Israel and the Center for send hundreds of young Jewish volunteers from all Leadership Initiatives.What originally started as a over the world to help rebuild the region. one-office foundation engaged almost exclusively Just four months later, more than 550 young in grantmaking is now an enterprise that spans 11 Jewish leaders from 17 countries converged upon time zones. Israel as part of our Leading Up North program. Philanthropy is as much art as science, and we They refurbished more than 200 bomb shelters, are extremely fortunate to have talented professionals replanted acres of forest and completed scores of on our team who share a passion for and dedication social service projects that provided assistance and to our mission. reassurance to the communities and residents of As foundations grow, they understandably tend northern Israel.Thousands of lives were touched to focus on larger grants; pursuing such a strategy is and many were transformed, including those of the often seen as more efficient than continuing to review volunteers and the people they aided.