A life in service — from social work to the heart of Jewish philanthropy
Jeffrey R. Solomon has spent his career in service to the Jewish people and to the broader practice of philanthropy. The son of Holocaust survivors, he came up through social work and the nonprofit world before becoming one of the field's most recognized leaders.
Solomon began in direct human-services and healthcare administration. His early executive roles included leadership positions at Jewish Family and Children's Services in Miami, the Miami Jewish Home and Hospital for the Aged, and Altro Health & Rehabilitation Services in New York. He also served in roles connected to City, State, and Federal government.
This grounding in social services — particularly work with the elderly and with families — shaped his later view of philanthropy as something deeply human, not merely transactional. The formative experience of growing up as the child of Holocaust survivors gave him an enduring sense of the stakes of Jewish continuity and communal responsibility.
Solomon went on to become Senior Vice President and Chief Operating Officer of UJA-Federation of New York, one of the largest local philanthropies in the world. He joined the Andrea and Charles Bronfman Philanthropies in 1997 after his years as a top UJA-Federation executive, bringing with him an intimate understanding of how large-scale Jewish communal organizations operate and what they need to succeed.
For roughly two decades, Solomon served as President of ACBP, a family of operating foundations active in Canada, Israel, and the United States. The foundation was established by Andrea and Charles Bronfman in the mid-1980s and operated as a deliberately limited-life, "spend-down" philanthropy — a discipline that would become one of Solomon's defining professional commitments.
Under his professional leadership, ACBP incubated and launched a remarkable run of initiatives:
A hallmark of his ACBP leadership was the discipline of "sunsetting" — designing initiatives to become self-sustaining, and helping the foundation responsibly wind down its grantmaking rather than perpetuate itself. This principled approach to institutional endings became one of his most cited contributions to the theory of philanthropy.
"One of the most consequential Jewish professionals of the past 50 years."— Birthright Israel Foundation, December 2024
After his ACBP presidency, Solomon became Senior Advisor to Chasbro Investments, the family office of Charles Bronfman, continuing to advise on the family's philanthropic and strategic priorities.
Solomon taught philanthropy as an adjunct associate professor in the master's and doctoral programs of the New York University School of Social Work. He served on the Board of the Council on Foundations, where he chaired its Committee on Ethics and Practice and sat on its Executive Committee. He is a founding trustee of the World Faiths Development Dialogue.
He is widely regarded as a mentor figure who has empowered a generation of younger professionals in the Jewish nonprofit sector. His writing spans more than 120 articles and essays in outlets including the Financial Times, Wall Street Journal, The Chronicle of Philanthropy, eJewishPhilanthropy, and the SAPIR Journal.
On December 12, 2024, the Birthright Israel Foundation honored Solomon at a tribute event at the Harmonie Club in New York and established the Jeffrey R. Solomon Award, recognizing outstanding Jewish communal professionals. He has received numerous honors from professional associations and universities throughout his career.