Skip To Content
JEWISH. INDEPENDENT. NONPROFIT.
Life

Billion-Dollar Foundation To Shutter Amid Madoff Woes

A billion-dollar foundation that gave to a wide array of Jewish causes is the latest charitable organization to announce that it is closing in the wake of Bernard Madoff’s financial collapse.

The 19-year-old, Palm Beach, Fla.-based Picower Foundation, which distributed more than $23 million in 2007 — including gifts to about two dozen Jewish organizations — announced Friday that it will shutter, the New York Times and other news organizations are reporting.

According to its 2007 tax return, the foundation gave $225,000 to the Limmud NY conference of Jewish learning; $185,000 to the Jewish Outreach Institute, which provides support services to interfaith families; $109,278 to the Foundation for Jewish Camping, and $100,000 to a program that aids children and families living in Sderot, Israel. Picower also made five-figure gifts to such organizations as the Jewish Coalition for Service, AVODAH, Hillel, Jewish Family & Life, the Jewish Television Network, and the JCC in Manhattan.

Medical research institutions, after-school programs, and human rights organizations also benefited from foundation grants. Picower assets are valued at nearly $1 billion.

Notably, one gift detailed on the 2007 tax return went to the Queens College Foundation — and Madoff’s wife Ruth is listed as a contact person for that donation.

Bernard Madoff, who stands accused of running a multibillion-dollar Ponzi scheme, is currently under house arrest; his wife is under court order to hire round-the-clock security for him to prevent his “harm or flight”.

In Other Madoff News

• After the organization announced it lost $90 million in Madoff’s alleged Ponzi scheme, Hadassah’s National President Nancy Falchuk makes an online appeal for support.

JTA is reporting that the American Society for Technion – Israel Institute of Technology lost $72 million to Madoff.

•The Madoff scandal has unleashed a flood of antisemitic comments on the Internet, according to the Anti-Defamation League.

A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning, nonprofit journalism during this critical time.

At a time when other newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall and invested additional resources to report on the ground from Israel and around the U.S. on the impact of the war, rising antisemitism and polarized discourse..

Readers like you make it all possible. Support our work by becoming a Forward Member and connect with our journalism and your community.

—  Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO

Join our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.

Republish This Story

Please read before republishing

We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines. You must credit the Forward, retain our pixel and preserve our canonical link in Google search.  See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.

To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at [email protected], subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.

We don't support Internet Explorer

Please use Chrome, Safari, Firefox, or Edge to view this site.