Kudos to the Samis Foundation for the amazing work it is doing (“Samis allocations sustain the community, locally and in Israel,” Sept. 19). Although I thought I was familiar with the Samis Foundation, I never understood the full breadth of its work until I saw the list of grants published in the Sept. 19 JTNews. Total grants for fiscal year ending June 30, 2015, totaled more than $4 million to organizations here and abroad — from day schools to Israel experiences to victims of the Oso mudslide. In addition, Samis established the Samuel Israel Foundation, a supporting foundation of the Jewish Federation of Greater Seattle and through that donated an additional $351,518 to local organizations. I recently read in the Puget Sound Business Journal that the Samis Foundation is the 16th largest foundation in Washington State, with assets in 2012 of more than $114 million. We are so lucky to have this philanthropic organization as part of our community, contributing to such a broad array of important causes.
Cynthia Flash Hemphill
Bellevue