Different ways to support Israeli charities through the New Israel Fund

The New Israel Fund UK raises funds from the UK to support the work of the New Israel Fund, Shatil and our grantees in Israel. We also provide a service for donors to support many more organisations across Israeli civil society that meet our charitable objectives and have undergone thorough due diligence. This service is known as ‘Donor Advised’ (DA).

Most of our donor advised grants are facilitated via NIF Israel and the due diligence is conducted by the NIF grants team there. NIF UK also accepts donor advised donations to NGOs not registered with NIF Israel, which are transferred directly to the beneficiary termed DA direct grants.

If you can add Gift Aid to your donation, please do so as collecting this allows us to continue providing this service to dozens of organisations each year with minimal costs to those charities working for equality and justice in Israel.

DA Direct

With DA Direct, the due diligence is conducted by the NIF UK staff team. In all cases recipient organisations must provide:

1. Evidence of their registration as charity or not-for-profit in Israel
2. Copy of their tax documents: certification of their keeping proper accounts (‘ishur nihul pinkasei cheshbonot’) + certification of percentage tax to be withheld (‘ishur horadat mas bamakor’)
3. Copy of ‘good governance document’ – i.e., ‘ishur nihul takin’
4. Copy of latest signed audited financial statement
5. Bank Account Details in English, including IBAN [with evidence – e.g. a cheque]
6. Report on current activities of the organisation#
7. Signed grant agreement (valid for 12 months)

* Please note: It is the DA recipient organisation’s responsibility to provide required documents promptly. If we have to repeatedly request information, this may result in us refusing to make the transfer and returning the donation to the donor after deducting £250 (or the full donation if less).

As there is staff time required from our small team and transfer charges involved, we request that DA donations made online are at least £75 and cheques, charity accounts and bank transfer are at least £250. If we receive smaller donations, there will be a delay in the recipient charity receiving the funds as we wait for more donations to reach a higher amount and reduce charges incurred by us and the recipient charity.

For each direct transfer (i.e. not facilitated via NIF Israel) we charge a minimum of £50 or 1% of the total donation (whichever is higher). The maximum we will charge is 5% and only if we have not been able to claim gift aid on these donations and/or there is significant additional due diligence involved for the donor or the grantee.

Significant Gifts (DA and DA Direct)

For donor advised donations of £10,000 or more, if the donor is not also donating to NIF at a level comparable to their donor advised donations, there is a charge of between 1% and 5%, depending whether the donation is facilitated via NIF Israel or transferred directly, and whether or not we are able to claim Gift Aid on the donation.

Alternatively, if we can claim Gift Aid on that donation, we will retain 5% from the 25% Gift Aid claimed.

These fees are to cover the general costs of facilitating DA donations and the additional administration and due diligence required for larger donations.

These modest charges are to assist with rising overall running and administration costs and ensure a small contribution to the costs (including bank fees) and staff time involved is recovered when providing this service for donors and partner organisations. We are keeping this charge very low to remain a highly cost-effective way to donate directly to these organisations.

For reference, our charitable objectives are:

New Israel fund is the leading organisation strengthening democracy and equality in Israel. NIF helps develop Israel’s civil society on issues including shared society, social justice, minority rights and human rights. This is achieved through grant-making, organisational capacity-building, and delivering projects. In the UK we run educational programmes to educate the community on these issues.

The advancement of such purposes as the company thinks fit in the State of Israel and in any of the territories in the Near or Middle East to the extent that the same are charitable according to the laws of England and Wales.

Our funding guidelines for NIF grants also apply to how we review organisation’s eligibility for receiving support via our Donor Advised service:

1. NIF partners and works with organisations that share our values.
2. NIF has strict funding guidelines, that require our grantees to comply with standards of accountability and due diligence. All our grantees are registered not-for-profit organisations in Israel and so vetted by the Israeli government.
3. NIF consistently monitors the use of funds in grantee organisations’ activities to ensure that grant funds are being utilised effectively, efficiently and for the purpose for which the grant was approved.
4. Organisations that engage in the following activities will not be eligible for NIF grants or support:

• Participate in party political activity
• Promote anti-democratic values
• Support the 1967 occupation and subsequent settlement activity
• Violate the human rights of any group or individual, advocate human rights selectively for one group over another and/or reject the principle of the universality of human rights
• Condone or promote violence or use violent tactics
• Employ racist or derogatory language or designations about any group based on their religion, race, ethnicity, gender or sexual orientation
• Works to deny the right of the Jewish people to national self-determination within Israel; or to deny Palestinians also have a right to national self-determination; or to deny the rights of Palestinian or other non-Jewish citizens to full equality within a democratic Israel