The Young Men’s Hebrew Association (YMHA, Norman grantee 1959) was founded in 1874 to serve the social and spiritual needs of New York’s Jewish community and help immigrants assimilate. In 1927 — years before the Assistance Fund was incorporated —…
The Educational Alliance (Norman grantee 1956–1959) was founded in 1889 on the Lower East Side as a settlement house serving Jewish immigrants from Eastern Europe — offering English classes, vocational training, cultural programming, and social services; over the decades, it…
William K. Jacobs Jr. — who attended the fund’s very first board meeting in December 1935 and served as a trusted financial advisor to the Norman family for decades — resigned from the Board in 1957. Additional third generation (G3)…
The Association on American Indian Affairs (Norman grantee 1952–1964) was founded in 1922 to preserve Native culture and defend the rights of Indigenous peoples. By the 1950s, the Association faced one of the gravest threats yet: a federal termination policy…
Edward Norman, son of Aaron Norman, passed away in 1955. His sister Ruth Alice Weil was elected President, and his son Andrew Norman was elected to the Board of Directors — the first family member of the third generation (G3)…
The National Urban League (Norman grantee 1944–1959) was founded in 1910 to help African Americans migrating from the agricultural and rural South find jobs, housing, and economic opportunity in Northern cities. By the 1950s, the second wave of the Great Migration was…
When then-deputy director of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund Jack Greenberg reflected on the organization’s funders in the early 1950s, he recalled that philanthropic support was scarce and modest. As he put it: “A big contribution was $100, and $1,000…
The National Scholarship Service and Fund for Negro Students (NSSFNS, Norman grantee 1950–1975) was founded in 1947 by Felice Nierenberg Schwartz, a Smith College graduate who had briefly worked for the NAACP and was determined to address the near-total exclusion…