Kathleen Hunt dropped out of college because she could not keep up with her expenses.
As a junior in high school, Jesse Sussell needed a car to get to his job, but didn’t have the money to buy one.
Both turned to the Hebrew Free Loan Association, which provides interest-free loans to Jewish individuals in Northern California.
Today, Hunt is a lawyer and lives in El Cerrito with her son. Sussell just entered a graduate program to study policy analysis. And after all these years, they again have something in common — they are among the 100 members of HFLA’s new Full Circle Club.
“We are approaching people we provided support to and asking them to help the next generation of people in need,” said Jordan Gill, the director of development at HFLA, which is based in San Francisco.
Over the past five years, HFLA has given out 2,407 interest-free loans totaling more than $16 million. The agency reports a 99 percent repayment rate, and about 10 percent of borrowers later choose to become donors.
“No one in my immediate family had ever graduated from college, so what was I thinking, anyway?” said Hunt, now 42, reflecting on her experience with HFLA 23 years ago. “When I asked HFLA to help me, I did not expect a ‘yes,’ but that is what they said.”
Hunt had expected to be turned down because, she said, “I wasn’t a ‘real Jew.’ I didn’t keep kosher or keep the Sabbath or know how to speak Hebrew.”
Years later, after completing law school, Hunt went back to synagogue, a place she had not been since she was 9.
“Because of HFLA, my son will have his bar mitzvah at Temple Beth Hillel [in Richmond] in December,” Hunt said. “My son does not question that he is a real Jew — and that is why I became part of the Full Circle Club.”
Sussell, 35, recalled that his mother co-signed his HFLA loan. “We lived in Oakland, and I was doing odd jobs after school. My mom was working too, and we were trying to make ends meet,” he remembered.
With $1,000 from HFLA, Sussell was able to buy a car — “an old beater,” he called it — to get to work.
Earlier this year, after working for the Planned Parenthood Federation for eight years, Sussell decided to move to Santa Monica to earn his graduate degree at Pardee RAND Graduate School.
“It was a natural period of reflection, and I was remembering that loan,” he said. “Before that, I hadn’t ever been a recipient of charitable assistance, and it was really neat to know that this agency was trying to help people who needed help.”
The agency has been reaching out to former loan recipients for the past year with its Full Circle Club campaign. “It is going well,” Gill said. “The notes that have accompanied the donations have been especially touching. In so many instances, we were the one agency that was able to help when others could not.”
Most of the notes have similar themes, Gill said. “These all were people from working families where every dollar was spoken for. These were people living conscientiously, not extravagantly.”
The agency plans to honor its Full Circle Club members on a special page on its website.
Like Hunt, many club members have reported that their experience with HFLA reawakened or reinforced their Judaism, Gill said.
Gill said the new donations are useful due to an increase in need. “We have had a pronounced upswing of requests in and dollars out,” he notes. “In 2007, we had about $4.5 million out, compared to $6.5 million out now.”
HFLA was founded in 1897, and its first loan was for $10. Today, loans are made for emergencies, personal financial challenges, tuition and education-related costs, first-time home purchases, debt consolidation, starting a new small business, adopting a child and special medical needs. Loans are also available for Jewish organizations and synagogues. .
“Our new effort to get our former borrowers to become donors feels in line with our mission of recycling, taking funds and turning them into new loans,” Gill noted. “In Judaism, when you establish a Jewish community, you must then establish a burial society and a society for chesed, acts of loving kindness — and a free loan is that.”
For more information about Hebrew Free Loan, visit www.hflasf.org