Trust is transformative: A commentary by Kate O’Bannon and Cindy Greenberg

Last June, Repair the World received a phone call that set in motion an exciting series of events for both the organization and a national service movement. We received a $7 million gift from MacKenzie Scott and Dan Jewett to expand our efforts to mobilize Jews and their communities to take action to pursue a just world. 

We had just seen a near doubling of Repair’s budget and staff as we built initiatives amid the pandemic to serve alongside our neighbors, boldly living out our Jewish values. As we announced at the time, this gift will strengthen our team and dramatically accelerate how we grow meaningful service and Jewish learning opportunities for young adults—from efforts to advance education justice and racial justice, meet the needs of community members alongside service partners at soup kitchens and urban farms, and much more. We’re proudly working toward one million acts of service and learning by 2026.

In the spirit of our organizational value of action and learning, na’aseh v’nishma, we’ve already learned many lessons from receiving this large, unrestricted gift. Seven key lessons learned about how best to leverage and maximize the impact of such a gift include....

Read the full commentary by Kate O’Bannon and Cindy Greenberg, chief strategy officer and president and CEO of Repair the World.

(Photo credit: George Milton via pexels)