News & Impact

The Dollinger Family Fund provides a perpetual source of support for individuals and families in need of critical assistance. The Dollinger Family Fund was established in the summer of 2004, in celebration of Marci and Marc Dollinger’s 10th wedding anniversary. Marci, who hails from Memphis, Tennessee, and San Francisco-born Marc, initially lived in Los Angeles. In 2002, they relocated to Marin, where they raised their two daughters—Rebecca, who at age 8 had just completed the second grade at Brandeis Hillel when this fund was created in 2004—and Shayna, then 4 and a preschooler at the Jewish Community Center. Marc is… Read More

The Benjamin and Elizabeth Leavitt Fund provides financial support for the comprehensive social services that JFCS offers to Russian emigres, helping them build successful new lives in the Bay Area. The Benjamin and Elizabeth Leavitt Fund was established by Barbara and Barry Kay in loving memory of Barbara’s parents. Born in 1903 in Plissa, Wilna Geberne, Benjamin Leavitt emigrated from Russia with his parents when he was 12. The family settled in the small Connecticut town of Fitchville, but eventually Benjamin moved to Bridgeport and went into business as one of the original owners of a Hertz franchise. Barbara’s mother,… Read More

The LGBT Fund permanently endows Jewish Family and Children’s Services’ LGBT Program, which offers targeted services for the Bay Area’s lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender individuals and their family members. A former JFCS Board member and chair of our LGBT Leadership Task Force, which advises the agency on strategies to grow and strengthen our innovative LGBT program, established this named continuity fund in loving memory of Stephen G. Perger and Donald Yaquinto. By doing so, she has permanently endowed a JFCS program that recognizes and addresses the specific needs of the area’s LGBT community, especially its Jewish component. If you… Read More

The Extend Our Happiness Fund assists people with food, weight, and body-image issues and/or eating disorders. Joan Barnes and Steve Strauss z”l married in 1996. The caring couple established this fund in honor of their union and the happiness it brought them. A longtime JFCS friend and a former member of our Board of Directors, Joan had recovered from a life-limiting and -threatening eating disorder. Their Named Endowment Fund was dedicated to helping others struggling with these same issues. Within a year of their wedding, Steve began to experience strokes, which became increasingly serious over the course of a few… Read More

Annual distributions from the Mae Mandl Scholarship Fund help to ensure that young people traveling or studying in Israel have the opportunity to explore the country, its people, and their Jewish identity in greater depth, as Mae was able to on her own visits. The Mae Mandl Scholarship Fund was established by Mae Mandl z”l, a former JFCS employee, in loving memory of her husband, Max, and of her parents and two younger sisters, who didn’t survive Hitler’s regime. Soon after immigrating to the United States in 1941, Mae was hired by the Jewish Family Service Agency (now JFCS). She… Read More

Max and Jacob’s Toy and Food Fund helps to bring joy and a sense of being welcomed into a caring community to Russian emigre families new to the Bay Area. Max and Jacob’s Toy and Food Fund is a joint effort of Marin-based Marion Weinreb, the child of Holocaust survivors and a consultant for the pharmaceutical and medical device industries, and her two sons. Marion, a firm believer in “giving back,” does this in a variety of ways, including through her named continuity funds at JFCS. As one might guess from its name, Max and Jacob’s Toy and Food Fund… Read More