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- Assets: $3,483,194 (2005)
- Grants Received: $27,235,000 (2005)
- Grants Awarded: $24,360,503 (2005)
- Defunct as of January 2009
The Justice, Equality, Human dignity, and Tolerance (JEHT) Foundation was established in April 2000 by Jeanne Levy-Church (formerly Jeanne Levy-Hinte), a movie producer and real estate heiress who was among the top soft-money donors to the Democratic National Committee. Throughout JEHT's history, she would be the foundation's principal donor. In 2004 she gave the foundation $23.4 million, of which $19.6 million was disbursed in grants. The following year, she contributed $27.2 million to the foundation, of which $24.4 million was disbursed in grants.
The JEHT Foundation was structured in a manner similar to the Tides Foundation. That is, JEHT took money from donors who specified the precise groups and causes for which they wanted it earmarked, and in turn funneled the cash to those recipients; this arrangement enabled the donors to avoid being publicly associated with the groups being funded, which in many cases were extremely radical. Such transactions are called donor-advised funds.
JEHT attempted to shape public thinking by funding community organizing, advocacy lobbying, and media campaigns that promote its values and causes. The Foundation had two major programs through which it funneled money and which, in turn, allocated that money to the specified organizations:
1) Community Justice Program (CJP): Operating from the axiom that the American criminal-justice system discriminates heavily against minorities and illegal aliens, this program called for the expansion of civil liberties for "citizens and non-citizens alike," and supported organizations promoting alternatives to incarceration. One of the many groups to which CJP donated was the Northwestern University School of Law's "Children and Family Justice Center," which was run by its founder and Executive Director Bernardine Dohrn, the onetime leader of the Weather Underground terrorist cult in the 1970s.
2) International Justice Program (IJP): To counter what it characterized as American ambivalence to signing and abiding by international treaties, IJP directed its funding to groups intent on "developing approaches that might work to build new political constituencies to promote U.S. participation in and support of international justice efforts." For example, IJP called on America to subject itself and its citizens to the rulings of the International Criminal Court, rather than to prosecute its own war criminals. IJP also opposed America’s withdrawal from the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty.
The JEHT Foundation was a member organization of the International Human Rights Funders Group (IHRFG), a network of more than six-dozen grantmakers dedicated to supporting leftist groups and causes.
In December 2008, the JEHT Foundation announced that it would permanently shut down its operations the following month. This announcement came as a result of the fact that its founder and principal donor, Jeanne Levy-Church, was among the many investors to have lost their fortunes in former Nasdaq chairman Bernard Madoff's fraudulent hedge fund.
Among the many groups funded by the JEHT Foundation were: the American Civil Liberties Union; the Tides Center; the Tides Foundation; the Center for Constitutional Rights; the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People; Human Rights Watch; the Mexican American Legal Defense and Education Fund; Alliance for Justice; the Migration Policy Institute; the American Prospect; the Center for Public Representation/Center for Children's Advocacy; the Citizen's Alliance on Prisons and Public Spending; the Ella Baker Center for Human Rights; the New Jersey Institute for Social Justice; Families Against Mandatory Minimums; the Frameworks Institute; Good Jobs First; The Institute; the Justice Policy Institute, Link Media; the National Council on Crime and Delinquency; The New Press; the Prison Reform Advocacy Center; Statewide Youth Advocacy; the Advancement Project; the National Commission on Correctional Health Care; the Urban Justice Center; the Vera Institute of Justice; the Women's Prison Association & Home; the Drug Policy Alliance; the Hip-Hop Research and Education Fund; Physicians for Human Rights/Fortune Society; the Tides Center/Break the Chains; the Tides Foundation/Fund for Drug Policy Reform; WISDOM; the Local Initiatives Support Corporation; the Center for Death Penalty Litigation; the W. Haywood Burns Institute; the Center for Policy Alternatives; the Community Service Society; the Criminal Justice Reform Education Fund; the Culture Project; Human Rights First; the Innocence Project; International Possibilities Unlimited; the Juvenile Justice Project; the Juvenile Law Center; the Liberty Hill Foundation; Murder Victims' Families for Reconciliation; the National Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty; the National Juvenile Defender Center; People of Faith Against the Death Penalty; Pacific News Service; the Prison Moratorium Project; Funders Collaboration for Racial Justice Innovation; the Sentencing Project; the Urban Institute/Justice Policy Center; the William J. Clinton Foundation; the Youth Law Center/Building Blocks for Youth; the American Institute for Social Justice; the Brennan Center for Justice; the Center for Investigative Reporting; Common Ground; the Corporation for Supportive Housing; Democracy Works; Family Justice; the Fifth Avenue Committee; the Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights Under Law; the Legal Action Center; Legal Services for Prisoners with Children; the Manpower Demonstration Research Corporation; the Osbourne Association; ProBono.Net; Search for Common Ground; the Tides Foundation - Right to Vote Campaign; the Altus Global Alliance; the Coalition for International Justice; and the John Lennon Educational Tour Bus.
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