Skip To Content
JEWISH. INDEPENDENT. NONPROFIT.
Breaking News

Two Boston Area Federations Join Forces

To better serve the Boston Jewish community, two leading organizations have decided to merge, beginning July 1.

Earlier this week, the boards of the Combined Jewish Philanthropies, the Greater Boston Area’s Jewish Federation, and the Jewish Federation of the North Shore, announced the merger. The new federation will take on the Combined Jewish Philanthropies’ name. As a singular institution, CJP had previously served a much larger population and had more resources than JFNS.

“We are very excited about our future as part of CJP,” said Shep Remis, a life member of the JFNS Board of Trustees and chair of the merger task force. “This is a wonderful opportunity for the Jewish community on the North Shore, who will continue to enjoy local programming, while benefiting from the expanded resources and services that a combined organization can provide.”

JFNS’ North Shore office will remain open. Kimberlee Schumacher, interim executive director of JFNS, will lead the transition along with a committee that will make recommendations on allocations, volunteer engagement and community priorities for the next two years. Currently, JFNS serves more than 20,000 Jewish households in 23 towns surrounding Boston. CJP more than 100 social service agencies, synagogues, day schools and programs, both in Israel and abroad.

According to the original CJP’s most recent 990 tax filings from 2011, they took in $132,034,670 in donations and had a total revenue of $162,951,637. In 2011, JFNS had $2,520,505 in contributions and a total revenue of $2,844,457. That year, JFNS had a net loss of $380,515.

“This merger will harness the energy and spirit of two organizations which help people in need locally and around the globe, and will bring them together as one stronger whole,” said CJP President Barry Shrage.

A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you move on, I wanted to ask you to support the Forward’s award-winning journalism during our High Holiday Monthly Donor Drive.

If you’ve turned to the Forward in the past 12 months to better understand the world around you, we hope you will support us with a gift now. Your support has a direct impact, giving us the resources we need to report from Israel and around the U.S., across college campuses, and wherever there is news of importance to American Jews.

Make a monthly or one-time gift and support Jewish journalism throughout 5785. The first six months of your monthly gift will be matched for twice the investment in independent Jewish journalism. 

—  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.