Birthright by the Numbers
Image by birthright israel
(JTA) — There may be no such thing as a free lunch. But there is a free 10-day trip to Israel.
For 16 years now, the Birthright Israel Foundation has been giving away guided tours of the country to young people from around the world. The goal is to strengthen participants’ Jewish identity and connection to Israel. Tens of thousands of 18-26 year-olds sign up every year to see the highlights with a group of peers.
Someone is paying for all those trips. But who?
Inside Philanthropy, a website that investigates charities, delves into the program’s funding in an article published Tuesday.
Here are some notable numbers from Inside Philanthropy and the Birthright Israel website. Birthright contested some of the numbers in the original Inside Philanthropy article and those changes are reflected below.
$3,000 – Average price of the trip, per person
$47 million – Birthright’s budget in 2015
45,000 – Total participants in 2015
$40 million – Annual contribution by the Israeli government
$50 million – Annual contribution by the organized international Jewish community, including individual donors and Jewish family foundations
30,000 – Number of non-governmental donors (individuals, foundations and institutions) who give to the program each year
$2.5 million – Top annual individual donation
7 – Number of Jewish family foundations who have contributed a million dollars or more in recent years
$200 million – Amount billionaire casino mogul Sheldon Adelson and his wife, Miriam Adelson, have donated since 2009, making them the biggest funders in the program’s history
$2.7 million – Amount raised last year by “direct marketing” initiatives
Over 500,000 – Total number of trip alumni
80,000 – Number of Israelis who have participated in the program
1999 – Year the program was founded
66 – Number of countries represented by participants
I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning journalism this Passover.
In this age of misinformation, our work is needed like never before. We report on the news that matters most to American Jews, driven by truth, not ideology.
At a time when newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall. That means for the first time in our 126-year history, Forward journalism is free to everyone, everywhere. With an ongoing war, rising antisemitism, and a flood of disinformation that may affect the upcoming election, we believe that free and open access to Jewish journalism is imperative.
Readers like you make it all possible. Right now, we’re in the middle of our Passover Pledge Drive and we still need 300 people to step up and make a gift to sustain our trustworthy, independent journalism.
Make a gift of any size and become a Forward member today. You’ll support our mission to tell the American Jewish story fully and fairly.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO
Join our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.
Only 300 more gifts needed by April 30
