After years of individually funding young Jewish leaders to create innovative projects, three foundations came together in 1998 to explore how the visions of social entrepreneurs could be harnessed as a movement to energize the Jewish community. The result was Joshua Venture: A Fellowship for Jewish Social Entrepreneurship established and seeded in 2000 by the Walter and Elise Haas Fund, the Righteous Persons Foundation, and the Nathan Cummings Foundation. Joshua Venture's accomplishments include the development of an excellent curriculum that builds skills of emerging leaders, and the recruitment and selection of 16 outstanding fellows in two cohorts. Projects created by Joshua Venture fellows include Herb Magazine; JDub Records, producer of contemporary Jewish music; and Sharsheret, an advocacy and support organization for Jewish women with breast cancer. Locally, projects include the Young Filmmakers Project of the San Francisco Jewish Film Festival, the Jewish Partisans Educational Foundation, and the Hub at the Jewish Community Center of San Francisco. In addition to serving as one of its founders, the Haas Fund invested over $1 million in the fellowship program.

Despite its success in producing stellar fellows and innovative projects, Joshua Venture struggled with organizational and fundraising challenges. In the summer of 2003, Joshua Venture closed its doors. Its funders provided support to assess the project, its strengths and weaknesses. The following report highlights the lessons learned. The Haas Fund hopes that this document will be useful to the non-profit and philanthropic communities and will provoke discussion on the appropriate role of funders within the project they support.

Read the full report (in PDF).