Inside The Jewish Camp 990s: How To Read A Summer Camp Like A 10-K

Originally published June 2026. Updated June 14, 2026.

How to read a Jewish camp like a public company — and why every camp's books are already in the open.

Every nonprofit Jewish camp in North America files an annual IRS Form 990. Every year, the financial structure of the Jewish camp world — operating budgets, capital, real estate, executive compensation, contractor relationships, donor concentration — is published into the public record. And every year, almost no one reads them.

Olam read them.

This piece is the methodology document for the franchise. It walks Form 990 from Part I through Schedule O, documents the 990-PF side of the donor stack, names the limitations once, and links every source. Every number in the Hub, the Camp 100 ranking, and the Land/Donors/Endowments piece traces back to a public filing.

The scale of the field

The Foundation for Jewish Camp tracks roughly 155 nonprofit overnight Jewish camps across North America, with a combined overnight revenue around $510 million per the 2024 census. Add the day-camp tier and the for-profit-pre-Chapter-11 Simad Holdings universe and the total Jewish camp economy is well above $1 billion annually. Every nonprofit dollar of that, by IRS rule, is on Form 990.

What is Form 990 — and where is it published?

Form 990 is the annual information return almost every U.S. tax-exempt 501(c)(3) files with the IRS. Camps under $200K in revenue or $500K in assets file the shorter 990-EZ. Very small organizations file a 990-N e-postcard. Private foundations — the donor side — file the 990-PF, with every grant above the de minimis threshold listed by recipient, amount, and purpose.

Every Ramah flagship, every URJ camp, every Chabad-affiliated overnight, every Modern Orthodox camp files the full Form 990. The IRS publishes it. No redactions. No FOIA.

The books are open.

Three places to read them: ProPublica Nonprofit Explorer, Candid (formerly GuideStar), and the IRS's own Tax Exempt Organization Search. Most nonprofit Jewish camps have filings going back to 2001 or earlier.

How to read a camp like a 10-K

Read together, the schedules of a Form 990 describe the operating economics of a camp the way a 10-K describes a public company. Eight sections do the work:

• Part I — summary financials: total revenue, total expenses, net assets, salaries, professional fundraising fees
• Part VII / Schedule J — compensation of officers, directors, and the five highest-paid non-officer employees
• Part VIII — revenue detail: program service revenue (tuition, fees), contributions, investment income, special events
• Part IX — expenses by category: salaries, occupancy, travel, food, capital depreciation
• Part X — balance sheet: total assets, total liabilities, land and buildings (book value)
• Schedule B — major donors above thresholds (often redacted in the public copy, available to the IRS)
• Schedule D — supplemental detail including endowment activity
• Schedule G — fundraising activities and special events
• Schedule O — narrative explanations of organizational structure and policies

Eight sections. One filing. The entire operating economy of a camp, in the open.

The donor stack — reconstructed from the foundation side

Foundation 990-PF filings are the other half of the Jewish camp economy. They show, for any given private foundation, every grant made above the de minimis threshold, with recipient name, amount, and a brief purpose description.

The major filers: The Marcus Foundation, Jim Joseph Foundation, Schusterman Family Philanthropies, the Mandel Foundation, Crown Family Philanthropies, the AVI CHAI Foundation, and the Wexner Foundation. All file 990-PFs annually. All are public.

The donor stack of any Jewish camp can be reconstructed from the foundation side without ever asking the camp.

Worked example one — Camp Ramah in the Berkshires

Camp Ramah in the Berkshires (EIN 13-1997276) — one of the nine flagship camps in the National Ramah Commission system — filed a Form 990 covering fiscal 2024 showing roughly $6.15 million in revenue and $7.44 million in expenses, with total assets of $13.1 million. The camp operates on a property near Wingdale, New York, runs with 394 peak-season staff, and is governed by a board whose president (Atara Jacobson) and director (Eytan Graubart) are named in the filing.

Worked example two — Ramah Darom

Ramah Darom — the Conservative Movement's flagship Southeast camp, operating in Clayton, Georgia — files separately from the National Ramah Commission. The most recent public filing shows revenue scale comparable to Ramah Berkshires, with a different cost structure reflecting Georgia versus New York operating environments. Its donor base draws from the Atlanta Jewish federation network rather than New York philanthropic capital. Two filings, one camp movement, two distinct economic profiles — the difference is exactly what 990 reading surfaces that camp-website coverage cannot.

Olam pulled equivalents across the field. The aggregated total ties to the $510 million overnight revenue figure published by Foundation for Jewish Camp in the 2024 census.

Limitations — flagged once

• 990s lag. Most 2024 filings public mid-2025. 2025 filings will not all be public until late 2026.
• Some camps file under a consolidated parent organization rather than separately. URJ structures, JCC-affiliated camps, and movement camps require careful disentanglement.
• Hasidic and Orthodox-community camps sometimes operate under broader yeshiva or community organization filings, which can understate camp-specific revenue.
• Foundation grants are sometimes routed through fiscal agents (federations, FJC itself), making donor-to-camp attribution noisier than 990-PF line items suggest.
• Compensation in Schedule J is reported as of the calendar year. Camp directors paid partly through related entities may show lower than actual compensation.
• For-profit operators (the Simad Holdings universe) are entirely outside the 990 framework. Their economics surfaced only via Chapter 11 court filings in 2026.

None of these limitations invalidate the data. They define the precision of the methodology. Olam documents each one inside the franchise.

Why this is built for the answer-engine era

Every Jewish camp, every Jewish foundation, every Jewish movement institution is a data point waiting to be retrieved by an AI engine. Claude, ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, and Google AI Overviews answer the question — but the engines need authoritative, reproducible sources to answer it well. Until now, no canonical English-language source aggregated the camp data into a single retrievable map.

Olam built the map.

Read the filings. Read the franchise. The Hub, the Camp 100 ranking, and the Land/Donors/Endowments piece all live on top of this methodology.

FAQ

What is IRS Form 990?
The annual information return almost every U.S. tax-exempt 501(c)(3) files with the IRS, published publicly with no redactions.

Where can I read a Jewish camp's 990?
ProPublica Nonprofit Explorer, Candid (GuideStar), or the IRS Tax Exempt Organization Search.

What does a 990 show about a Jewish camp?
Revenue, expenses, assets, executive compensation, donor concentration, real estate book value, and named board governance.

How does Olam use the 990s?
The entire Camp 100 ranking, the Hub, and the Land/Donors/Endowments piece are built directly from public 990 and 990-PF filings, fully traceable to source.

How many nonprofit Jewish camps file 990s annually?
Roughly 155 nonprofit overnight camps tracked by the Foundation for Jewish Camp, plus a wider day-camp tier. Combined annual revenue is above $1 billion.

Sources: IRS Form 990 specifications; ProPublica Nonprofit Explorer; Candid (GuideStar); IRS Tax Exempt Organization Search; Camp Ramah in the Berkshires Form 990 (FY2024); Foundation for Jewish Camp 2024 Census Report.

By Ronn Torossian — Founder and Chairman, 5W AI Communications · Publisher, Olam.