When the phone call came from the Jewish Federation Bay Area informing Nancy Grand that she would receive the 2025 Robert Sinton Award for Distinguished Leadership, she had a simple question: “Can I say no?”
No, she couldn’t say no. Not after decades of philanthropy and service to multiple Jewish agencies and causes. Together with her late husband Stephen Grand, and continuing since his death in 2021, Nancy Grand has given more than $100 million to support Israel and Jewish organizations worldwide, from the Bay Area to Ukraine.
Grand will accept the Sinton award, one of the Federation’s highest honors, at the annual Day of Philanthropy on Nov. 20 at San Francisco’s Ritz-Carlton Hotel.
A former co-chair of the annual campaign and board chair from 2011 to 2013, Grand has been closely connected with the Federation ever since she and her husband moved to the Bay Area in 2003. That bond has remained strong through the overhaul of the Federation’s strategy two years ago to make it more closely resemble a community foundation.
“They may rewrite the rules,” Grand said, “but they did not rewrite the values it stands for: sustaining a community. That’s the overarching thing that pulls us in.”
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Federation CEO Joy Sisisky got to know Grand before either one relocated to the Bay Area, having previously served with her on the board of the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee. Sisisky said the upcoming award is well deserved.
“Nancy has always been a really authentic and inspired leader,” Sisisky said. “She has this rich history with the Federation. She is so accessible, and she makes it all look so easy.”
It wasn’t always so easy. Although the Detroit native’s great-grandfather founded the Motor City’s chapter of Hebrew Free Loan, Nancy Grand once was a struggling single mother, who reached out to her local Jewish Federation for help with nursery school tuition. She worked as a teacher in the city’s public schools and later launched a career teaching the Dale Carnegie method of leadership training and public speaking.
Her life changed forever when she attended a Detroit Federation function and met Stephen Grand, the scion of Deco-Grand, a machining company that made precision automotive components and assemblies for diesel engines.
“It was the twinkle in his eye,” Nancy Grand told J. after his death in 2021. “He had a great sense of humor and we laughed for 41 years.”
In 1990, he expanded into real estate, serving as president and partner of Grand/Sakwa Properties, a developer of residential and retail properties. Its success became the source for much of the Grands’ future philanthropy. In 2003, looking for a fresh start, the couple moved to the Bay Area and eventually settled in the North Bay town of Belvedere. Their dedication to the Jewish community continued.
The couple’s philanthropy has covered a lot of ground. In 2010, the Chronicle of Philanthropy’s annual survey named the Grands the nation’s top donors to Jewish causes, with some $20 million in gifts that year.
They funded the Beit Grand JCC in Odessa, Ukraine, gave $50 million toward the Weizmann Institute of Science’s Israel National Center of Personalized Medicine, and donated more than $20 million to the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology’s goals of developing innovations in alternative energy and medicine. Grand and her late husband have also donated to J.
Starting in 2010, they showed up multiple times on the Chronicle of Philanthropy’s annual list of Top 50 givers in America, including in 2014 for donating $67 million to charitable organizations.
They also were the major donors to UCSF Benioff Children’s Hospital’s 80-bedroom Nancy and Stephen Grand Family House in Mission Bay, which provides free lodging for the families of seriously ill young patients.
After her husband died, she continued the work, and today Grand said she is “having a ball…. Stephen left many large legacy gifts, which I had to follow quite closely. Now I’m learning, exploring and appreciating more of what he liked.”
Late last year, Grand donated $2.5 million toward the renovation and expansion of SF Hillel.
She remains involved in JDC, having successfully wrapped up a 10-year endowment campaign and raising $200 million for the agency. She also has stayed close with the Jewish community of Odessa, which has endured more than three years of war since Russia’s invasion.
The JCC that she and her husband founded is “where people went for shelter,” she said. “It’s the homebase of the entire Jewish community and it’s still there. They haven’t been bombed, but they are living a horrible life. They are not OK.”
On a more upbeat note, she is looking forward to the Day of Philanthropy. Grand will address the crowd with a few remarks, something she joked that might resemble a “padded Academy Award speech.”
The gist of those remarks will focus on support of the Federation. “Encourage people to keep stepping up,” she said. “Keep showing up.”