Sara Brenner has always felt that she “leads Jewishly” in whatever work she takes on in the social sector.
“You can’t separate your Jewish values from who you are,” Brenner said. “I always felt very connected to my Judaism in every kind of work I did: helping to repair the world — tikkun olam — helping support people become the best people that they can be.”
So it’s a dream come true for the McLean resident and member of Congregation Beth El of Montgomery County to work in the Jewish community. In 2022, she became the first executive director of the newly reinstated Jewish Community Foundation, the Jewish Federation of Greater Washington’s philanthropic arm.
The foundation staff partners with donors to “align generosity with values, strengthening Jewish life today and helping to shape a vibrant future for generations to come,” according to its website.
“It was an absolute dream to be able to take the work I was doing in the broader world to help community foundations move more into a community impact orientation to help support our Jewish community,” Brenner said.
The foundation has built a “whole new set of services for the Jewish community” around philanthropic advisement, communities of learning and collaborative funds, she said.
On any given day on the job, Brenner spends time with the staff of local nonprofit organizations and other changemakers, trying to understand what today’s issues are. She also speaks with donors to learn about their needs and advises them on how they can make more of an impact with their philanthropy: a donor-advised fund, collaborative fund or endowment.
“Some of the excitement for me is actualizing meaning for donors in their giving, and to see change happen for families intergenerationally as they pass down their legacy and giving practices,” she added.
Brenner initially ran a social impact consultancy that collaborated with nonprofits to create strategies and meet their goals.
“We were the facilitators that helped to make change in the community,” she explained. “It’s amazing to [now] do that in this Jewish context.”
Working in a Jewish space — merging religious identity with her professional life — is even more meaningful for Brenner post-Oct. 7, 2023.
“This work in particular really enabled me to be able to help other people much more deeply connect with their Jewish identity and express their spirit of giving and generosity through a Jewish lens, and that’s the real difference,” she said. “The work I was doing before was enabling change at the community level, but here, it’s helping to harness the power of donors to reflect their goals and their philanthropy, and to create meaning and hope for how they want to create a more vibrant Jewish world.”
What does a more vibrant Jewish world look like?
“We see the next generation identifying with their Judaism and engaging in Jewish life in a way that’s meaningful for them … that Jewish people feel safe, secure and proud to be Jewish, that people can access Jewish experience, whether it be day school, camp, learning as an adult, making meaning in their spirituality, connecting socially with the arts … that there are plenty of entry points for people to engage in their Judaism in a vibrant, beautiful way,” Brenner said. “Inclusivity is very important.”
The foundation has launched funds and donor programs that are fundamental to its goal of “changing conditions.” One such project, called In Solidarity, focuses on building interfaith relationships between Jews and non-Jews.
Another is a fund dedicated to improving the lives of women and girls in the DMV and Israel.
“We’re trying to change the conditions for them in terms of the pressures that are on women, whether it has to do with running the household as a single parent, whether it has to do with the trauma they faced [on Oct. 7]. We’re doing a lot of work to help ensure that women are in seats of power, so that they can advocate for what they need to change conditions long term,” Brenner explained.
Closer to home, the fund aims to support the most vulnerable women and girls in the DMV in areas such as maternal health, financial literacy, domestic violence, employment and teen community engagement.
“A lot of those [women] are non-Jewish,” Brenner said. “This fund is fascinating and innovative because it includes giving to Israel and Jewish causes, and it also includes giving to the most vulnerable in our region who may not be Jewish. Many of those women are women of color. Some are Jewish, some are not.”
Brenner said she enjoys the creative aspect of her work.
“I love that we’re building something that didn’t exist before,” she said. “We’ve created a lot of new funds. We didn’t have collaborative funds before. We didn’t have philanthropic advisement. So, from an entrepreneurial lens, what excites me the most is helping our donors dream big, have hope and create new opportunities for them to express their philanthropy.”
Her goal is for the foundation to “significantly grow” its distributions and impacts moving forward. In 2025, the foundation distributed roughly $27 million, with $11 million supporting the local community: “We’d love to double that in the next five years,” Brenner said.
She looks forward to advancing the foundation’s recently launched campaign, Open More Possibilities. For its first 100 new donors to open a donor-advised fund, the foundation will give $1,800 to a Jewish or Israeli charity of the donor’s choice.
“The strength of this community is only because of the incredible generosity of our donors that have cared so much about the vibrancy of the community,” she said.
zbell@midatlanticmedia.com
