TBE Foundation History

In March 1960, the Temple Beth-El Foundation‘s Articles of Incorporation were filed at the Jefferson County Court House. The following is a list of the Foundation’s “Founding Fathers”:

  • F.W. Nichols
  • Max Greenwald
  • Arnold Royal
  • James Permutt
  • Marshall Gordon

The corporation was organized for the exclusive purpose of “the religious training and education of the members of the congregation of Congregation Beth-El.” This corporation was charged with conducting the following activities:

To collect, solicit and receive from persons, firms and corporations, by gift, lands, buildings, bonds, shares or corporate stock, life insurance proceeds and invest and manage the same and disburse, at the direction of the Director, all income and corpus of said gift exclusively for the purposes stated.

The year that the Foundation was incorporated, Temple Beth-El was entering its second half century. Those five “founding fathers” had the vision and energy to develop a fiscal safe haven to insure the Temple’s future financial health.

The Temple Beth-El Foundation is classified by the IRS as a Tax Exempt Supporting Organization. A supporting organization operates exclusively to support and be responsive to their supported nonprofit entity (TBE).

The TBE Foundation makes an annual allocation to TBE to support special programs, employee salaries, and operational expenses. The amount of this allocation is determined annually based on the amount of the Temple’s request, the value of the Foundation’s assets and the projected return on those assets (including interest, dividends and capital appreciation). The Foundation allocated $115,000 to the Temple for fiscal year 2010/11. In addition to this allocation, the Temple will also receive special allocations for building maintenance and programming, based on special requests of the TBE’s Board of Directors.