eJP: Marcus Foundation Invests $27 Million in Hillel International Professional Development
Originally published on July 16, 2026 in eJewish Philanthropy, “Marcus Foundation Invests $27 Million in Hillel International Professional Development,” by eJP reporter Jay Deitcher, is an exclusive look at a transformative investment from the Marcus Foundation into Hillel International’s professional and student leadership development. Read on for excerpts:
“In a bid to bolster Hillel International’s professional and student leaders at a fraught moment on college campuses, the Marcus Foundation announced a three-year, $27 million investment, the organization exclusively told eJewishPhilanthropy on Thursday. It is the third in a series of large gifts made by the foundation over the past decade aimed at improving employee retention at Hillel, which supports nearly 200,000 students on 850 campuses…
‘Bernie recognized a long time ago that we needed to support campus life because it was going to be and is very difficult today,’ Jay Kaiman, the president and director of the Marcus Foundation, told eJewishPhilanthropy, referring to the foundation’s founder, Home Depot co-founder Bernie Marcus. ‘He was talking about it way before it became what the realities are today, so this is a continuation of him looking at the landscape, making a decision that Hillel played a key role in that landscape and we needed to do everything we could to make these [Hillel] buildings come to life and be strong for the students and also to give them a safe haven…’
In 2016, the foundation gifted Hillel International with a five-year, $38 million grant for talent development, followed by a 2021 five-year, $38 million grant to continue the work. This latest investment continues what is a ‘transformational relationship with the foundation,’ Adam Lehman, president and CEO of Hillel International, told eJP…
The original grant led to the creation of a new role focused on supporting talent at individual chapters and of numerous initiatives, including Hillel U, the organization’s yearlong training program, a yearly New Professionals Institute and talent grants that support Hillels financially to attract top talent, especially in places that may ‘not even be in a particularly desirable geographic location,’ Lehman said.
In the first five years after the initiatives launched, Hillel’s annual employee retention rate soared to 90%. In 2016, leadership hiring from the internal pipeline was 30%. Today it’s 75%.
The greater retention level is occurring at a time when Hillel is growing substantially, but also after years of heightened antisemitism. A 2025 American Jewish Committee report showed that more students were experiencing antisemitism on campus than ever before. In the past year, students and Hillel staff have been harassed and had their property vandalized. Meanwhile, over the past decade, the number of students engaging with Hillel programs doubled from 93,000 to 192,000…
The new Marcus Foundation grant will nurture 78,000 new leaders who support students so they can walk their campuses with Jewish pride, even amidst antisemitism, Lehman said. ‘We’re going to use this grant to supercharge our student leadership development programs, so that we can catalyze the largest ever new generation of Jewish builders, creators and leaders, using the funds from this grant to invest in new student fellowships, new student convenings, including our first-ever 1,000-plus student leadership convening taking place in February of [2027].’”