Jewish Community Foundation of St. Louis

Investment oversight resides with an investment committee whose long-time members include John Kalishman, who also serves as Vice Chair of Public Affairs. The committee operates in coordination with external advisors; Sherri Frank Weintrop of Wealth Management Advisors, Inc. has been a key figure in the Foundation's recent strategic and branding evolution. Board-level governance intersects with the Jewish Federation of St. Louis, where Todd Siwak serves as board chair, ensuring alignment between the Foundation and the broader communal infrastructure.

It functions as both a community endowment for the St. Louis Jewish population and a financial steward for private family philanthropies — including the Staenberg Family Foundation and Millstone Foundation — whose principals have board-level influence. This dual role blends grantmaking independence for donor-advised funds and supporting foundations with centralized investment management and reporting. The direct real estate holdings, held through the JCF Real Estate Supporting Foundation, add an operating dimension uncommon among peers.

The portfolio is deliberately diversified across absolute-return strategies, commodity exposures, cash-surrender-value life insurance policies, and direct mixed-use real estate in St. Louis. This mix requires liquidity-management capabilities to handle the actuarial dimensions of life-insurance assets alongside traditional marketable securities. The real estate component is held separately through a supporting foundation vehicle.

Michael Staenberg, founder of the Staenberg Family Foundation, and Robert Millstone, chair of the Millstone Foundation and a former Jewish Federation chair, are central figures in the Foundation's history and asset base. Their family philanthropies function as supporting organizations that feed into the Foundation's permanent capital pool, and their principals have historically held governance roles. This creates a stakeholder alignment where major donors also shape investment and distribution policy.

Yes. The Foundation houses multiple named supporting foundations — including the Kranzberg Family Foundation, Lubin-Green Foundation, and the Women's Auxiliary Foundation for Jewish Aged — each retaining independent grantmaking identity. These vehicles benefit from the Foundation's administrative and investment backbone while operating under their own charitable mandates, a separation maintained through legal and accounting firewalls standard to donor-advised fund platforms.