Stanford University (Photo/File)
Stanford University (Photo/File)

Koret Foundation awards $50 million in grants to local universities

The Jewish philanthropic Koret Foundation has announced $50 million in grants to 12 Bay Area colleges and universities, including $12 million to UC Berkeley and $11.7 million to Stanford, the two largest dispersals. The foundation made a similar round of grants in 2016.

The new grants will support programs that help schools recover from the coronavirus crisis, as well as build bridges between institutions in the U.S. and Israel, according to the San Francisco-based foundation.

At Stanford, $2 million is allocated to the Koret Young Israeli Scholars program over four years. The kosher food program will receive $1 million. A collaborative project between Rambam Health Care Campus in Haifa and Stanford Medicine will receive $1.5 million, and another partnership program with the Israeli state health service provider Clalit will get $200,000. At UC Berkeley, the Visiting Scholars from Israel program will receive $500,000 over four years.

Grants outside the Jewish community will fund gender equity in women’s sports at UC Berkeley, research at University of San Francisco and veterans’ services at San Jose State University, among other programs. Some of the money is being directed to Koret Scholars, a financial aid program for 2,000 first-generation undergrads across several institutions, according to the foundation.

In addition to Cal and Stanford, the other grantee schools are USF and Santa Clara University; UCs San Francisco, Davis and Santa Cruz; CSUs San Jose, Sonoma, Monterey Bay and the East Bay; and City College of San Francisco.

The Koret Foundation earlier this year granted $10 million to the USC Shoah Foundation for Holocaust education.

The foundation was set up by Joseph Koret, who made his fortune in San Francisco through selling women’s apparel. He died in 1986.