The FJC Story

"How can we talk about Jewish identity and ignore Jewish summer camps?" asked Elisa Spungen Bildner a number of years ago. As Wexner Heritage Foundation fellows, Elisa and her husband Robert Bildner nurtured their passion for philanthropy to better serve the Jewish community.

Through Wexner's leadership program for Jewish volunteers, the two studied the bigger picture of Jewish life in North America. What they found was a great need for more and better informal education opportunities for Jewish children, specifically overnight camp. Camps were not high on the agenda of the Jewish community, and as a result, suffered from lack of attention and funding. Elisa and Robert determined that a generation of children was missing out on experiences that could profoundly shape their identity.

Inspired by this opportunity, in 1998 the couple created the Foundation for Jewish Camping. They provided seed money to launch a public foundation dedicated solely to the Jewish overnight camp movement: now, the Foundation for Jewish Camp.

Today, FJC serves approximately 150 Jewish summer camps, 70,000 campers and 10,000 counselors in North America. It is the single source for information about, and advocacy for, nonprofit Jewish overnight camps, and provides leadership, expertise and financial resources to camps, campers and their families across North America.

Past Programs

As part of an ongoing commitment to enrich Jewish communities through excellence in the field of Jewish camp, we are continually working with experts to create, sponsor and promote programs that foster new opportunities for improvement. Please visit our How We Help page to read about the programs we're involved in currently. Here are some of the programs we've been involved with in the past.