Open Society and the New Israel Fund are the documented money behind Nexus, the nonprofit challenging the ADL's antisemitism standard. The funding and personnel, mapped.
George Soros's Open Society Foundations has given the Nexus Project three documented grants totaling $175,000 since 2022, and Nexus's own finances run through the New Israel Fund rather than an independent tax filing. Soros is the only funder publicly named for Nexus by that name.
NIF's much larger donor base could also be underwriting the group, and public records cannot confirm or rule that out. Olam found no publicly disclosed funder for Nexus's 2019-2021 founding period. Nexus promotes an alternative framework to the ADL-backed IHRA antisemitism definition, and mainstream Jewish organizations have criticized the federal government for citing it alongside IHRA.
Who Funds the Nexus Project? Quick Facts
Open Society Foundations is the only funder Olam could confirm by name; NIF's broader donor base remains an open question.
| Question | Answer |
|---|---|
| When was Nexus founded? | November 2019, as the Nexus Task Force, hosted by USC Annenberg's Knight Program on Media and Religion |
| Who funded Nexus at founding? | Olam found no publicly disclosed funder for 2019 to 2021 |
| Who is the earliest documented funder? | Open Society Foundations, $25,000, 2022, per OSF's own grant record |
| Was George Soros the first donor to Nexus? | Not documented. The earliest funder Olam could confirm in public records is Open Society Foundations in 2022, three years after Nexus's founding |
| Is Soros the only funder of Nexus? | No claim of that kind can be made. OSF is the only funder publicly documented as earmarking money for Nexus by name. Because Nexus has no independent tax filing and runs on NIF's general and donor-advised funds, other NIF donors could also be funding Nexus without any public record naming them |
| How much has Soros's Open Society given Nexus? | Three identified grants totaling $175,000 (2022-2025), plus an undisclosed share of the 2026 multi-organization commitment |
| Does Nexus file its own tax return? | No. It has no independent Form 990; its finances run through the New Israel Fund |
| Has any government adopted the Nexus Document as policy? | Not as a national standard. The U.S. cited it as a secondary reference in the National Strategy to Counter Antisemitism, and New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani cited similar reasoning when revoking the city's IHRA adoption in January 2026 |
How Much Money Has OSF Given the Nexus Project Since 2022?
Open Society Foundations' own past-grants database records a $25,000 grant to Nexus in 2022 (ID OR2023-90108) and a $50,000 grant in 2023 (ID OR2023-90578).
Both grants are described in OSF's own award language as support for "the Nexus project, a fiscally sponsored project of the grantee," referring to the New Israel Fund. Olam is citing OSF's past-grants database directly; OSF's site blocks automated retrieval, so the award language above is drawn from OSF's own published text as archived in Wikidata's sourced citation of those same grant IDs. Olam found no funder named in public reporting for 2019 through 2021, the period covering Nexus's founding and its first published white paper.
Alex Soros, who now chairs OSF's board, made an earlier and smaller antisemitism-focused commitment in 2024: roughly $1 million described at the time as funding to "combat antisemitism and work to prevent the weaponization of antisemitism charges," language a Middle East Forum report on Nexus's funding noted mirrors Nexus's own framing almost exactly. By November 2025, the Washington Free Beacon reported a newer $100,000 OSF grant to NIF earmarked specifically for Nexus's policy advocacy, citing OSF's own grants database.
In May 2026, OSF announced a $30 million, three-year commitment to organizations fighting antisemitism and anti-Muslim hate. It named Nexus among the recipients, alongside the Jewish Council for Public Affairs, the Jewish Social Justice Roundtable, New Jewish Narrative, and Bend the Arc Jewish Action, according to Jewish Insider and Fortune's coverage of the announcement. The commitment was not earmarked for Nexus alone, and OSF did not publicly disclose how much of the $30 million Nexus itself would receive. Fortune reported that OSF's announcement did not specify how the foundation defines antisemitism, and noted the grantee shortlist suggests a more permissive standard than the ADL's, which treats vilification of Zionism itself as a form of antisemitism. Alex Soros, who chairs OSF's board, was a founding chair of Bend the Arc Jewish Action, one of the other named 2026 grantees.
Nexus's Washington director, Kevin Rachlin, told the Forward that the 2026 funding would launch a research center intended to show how the ADL's "messaging doesn't always match with what their data shows."
The pattern of undisclosed or opaque funding behind groups positioned to the left of ADL/IHRA on antisemitism is not unique to Nexus. Olam has previously documented a similar structure at the Jewish Liberation Fund, a donor-advised vehicle with no public 990 that has moved more than $2 million to NIF, Jewish Voice for Peace, and other anti-Zionist-aligned groups through the Proteus Fund, and at UJA-Federation of New York, which gave $280,000 to organizations that endorsed Zohran Mamdani and oppose the IHRA definition.
How Does Nexus's Money Flow Through the New Israel Fund?
Nexus has no independent Form 990 and no formal fiscal sponsor; its money moves through the New Israel Fund instead.
OSF's own grant records describe Nexus as "a fiscally sponsored project" of the New Israel Fund. But NIF's own grantee-resources page states that NIF is "not a fiscal sponsor as defined in the US" in the formal legal sense. The likely mechanism, based on NIF's published grantmaking policy, is a donor-advised arrangement. NIF's page describes "Donor Advised (DA) Grants" that let funders direct money to specific projects operating under NIF's nonprofit umbrella. Those projects never incorporate separately. That structure would let OSF's payments flow to Nexus as a named project while Nexus itself never registers as an independent 501(c)(3) or files its own Form 990. Olam could not independently confirm which specific mechanism governs the Nexus arrangement; NIF and Nexus were asked to clarify.
This matters for the funding question above. Because Nexus draws on NIF's general operating and donor-advised funds rather than filing independently, NIF's broader donor base (which is separate from, and much larger than, its Nexus-specific grants) could also be underwriting Nexus's day-to-day operations. A February 2026 Middle East Forum investigation into Nexus's structure found that additional members of the Nexus Task Force "serve on NIF advisory councils and are legacy NIF donors," according to the Middle East Forum's press release on the report, which separately named former NIF chief executive Norman Rosenberg as a sitting Task Force participant. That means NIF donors with no connection to OSF are already documented as tied to Nexus's leadership network, even without a specific dollar figure attached. Olam cannot confirm from public records whether NIF's general funds in fact support Nexus's budget. The structural possibility exists, and OSF's earmarked grants are the only funding Olam can attribute to Nexus by name, not the only funding Nexus in fact receives.
How Do the ADL and Nexus Define Antisemitism Differently?
The ADL backs the IHRA definition of antisemitism as a guidance tool; Nexus offers a rival framework that rejects treating criticism of Israel as inherently antisemitic.
The ADL states it "does not support the adoption and application of the IHRA Definition in a manner that would create new categories of legally prohibited speech that are subjected to either civil or criminal penalties," but does support "carefully crafted resolutions, executive orders and legislative proposals" embracing IHRA as a training and guidance tool, according to the ADL's own published position.
Nexus states that "paying disproportionate attention to Israel and treating Israel differently than other countries is not prima facie proof of antisemitism," and that opposition to Zionism or Israel "does not necessarily reflect specific anti-Jewish animus," according to the Nexus Document's full text. Nexus also states it is antisemitic to hold individuals or institutions "a priori culpable," because they are Jewish, of wrongdoing committed by Israel.
When the Biden administration's 2023 National Strategy to Counter Antisemitism cited the Nexus Document alongside IHRA, the World Jewish Congress said the secondary citation was "an unnecessary distraction from the real work that needs to be done," and B'nai B'rith International said it was "disappointed in the document's mention of the Nexus definition," arguing the framework "allows the more invidious of Israel's nemeses to hide their animus behind 'strident' criticism of Israel," according to Jerusalem Post reporting, which separately characterized the Nexus Document as positioned to the left of the mainstream Jewish institutional map on Israel and antisemitism.
How Did the Nexus Framework Reach New York City Policy?
New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani revoked the city's IHRA definition adoption and an associated anti-BDS executive order on his first day in office, in January 2026, according to a Middle East Forum analysis of the Nexus Project's advocacy record. Mamdani defended the reversal by stating that "several Jewish organizations have immense concerns around this definition," language the same analysis identified as tracking the specific framing Nexus has promoted in its own advocacy materials.
The reaction from mainstream Jewish and Israeli institutions was immediate and critical. The ADL characterized the reversal as having "weakened protections to fight antisemitism," and Israel's Foreign Ministry called it "antisemitic gasoline on an open fire," according to the same Middle East Forum report. Nexus itself did not claim direct credit for the New York City decision in the materials Olam reviewed, and the Mamdani administration's stated reasoning, concern that IHRA's examples chill legitimate criticism of Israeli government policy, is consistent with arguments made by multiple critics of IHRA, not attributable to Nexus's advocacy alone. The episode is nonetheless the clearest instance to date of Nexus-aligned reasoning appearing directly in a binding municipal policy reversal, rather than in a federal strategy document's secondary citation.
Who Runs Nexus, and What Are Its Ties to NIF and J Street?
Jonathan Jacoby, Nexus's president and national director, previously served as the founding executive director of both the New Israel Fund and the Israel Policy Forum.
He holds those founding roles according to his published biography. Board chair Alan Solow is Dean Emeritus of Tufts University's Tisch College of Civic Life and a past chair of J Street, per the Nexus Project's staff page.
David N. Myers, a UCLA history professor, has served simultaneously as president of the New Israel Fund's board and as a member of the Nexus Task Force, according to both Nexus's own staff listing and NIF's own staff page. These are documented individual relationships between Nexus leadership and NIF and J Street; they establish overlapping personnel, not, on their own, evidence of coordinated financial or operational control between the organizations.
The Middle East Forum's February 2026 report named additional Task Force participants beyond Myers, including former NIF chief executive Norman Rosenberg and Carleton University professor Mira Sucharov, whose own past comments in Moment Magazine describe her as personally rejecting the equation of anti-Zionism with antisemitism, though she has said the position "has to be heard and dealt with." Nexus Fellow Emily Tamkin, a journalist who has written extensively on antisemitism, Jewish identity, and George Soros, is also named in the same report as part of the project's fellow network rather than its governing task force.
In January 2026, Nexus hired Aryeh Tuchman as the inaugural director of its new Nexus Center for Antisemitism Research. Tuchman was previously the director of the ADL's Center on Extremism. JTA reported that Tuchman also served as a key methodological authority behind the ADL's annual audit of antisemitic incidents, an influential report widely cited in the media, according to JTA's own reporting. The research center's scholarship arm is led by Eric Alterman, a Brooklyn College professor of journalism. Nexus board chair Solow told JTA the Tuchman hire was not intended as a repudiation of the ADL.
How Does the Nexus Document Differ From the IHRA Definition?
The IHRA Working Definition lists 11 examples of antisemitism, seven involving Israel; the Nexus Document lists nine, eight involving Israel or Zionism, plus four examples it says are not antisemitic.
Nexus is one of at least two prominent alternative frameworks in circulation alongside the ADL-backed IHRA definition; the Jerusalem Declaration on Antisemitism is the other frequently cited alongside it. The IHRA Working Definition, adopted in 2016, had been adopted by 47 national governments as of January 2026, including the United States and most European Union member states, according to a tracker maintained by the Combat Antisemitism Movement, an advocacy organization, not an independent registry; Olam has not independently verified that count against primary government records. Neither the Nexus Document nor the Jerusalem Declaration has been adopted as an operative national government standard in the reporting Olam reviewed, though both have been cited by officials as reference materials, and New York City's 2026 reversal marks the first documented instance of a US municipal government affirmatively withdrawing IHRA in favor of Nexus-consistent reasoning.
The Nexus Document, first published in 2021 and updated in June 2024, includes 9 examples of antisemitic conduct, 8 of which concern Zionism or Israel, and 4 examples of conduct it says is not antisemitic, according to a comparison published by the Union for Reform Judaism. Nexus was purpose-built to examine the intersection of antisemitism, Israel, and Zionism, so its concentration on Israel-related examples reflects its narrower scope rather than necessarily indicating a different overall standard of severity than IHRA's.
A separate February 2026 Middle East Forum report, described in the organization's press release announcing the findings, characterized the Nexus Document's qualifying language, phrases such as "not necessarily" and "not prima facie," as "interpretive escape hatches" that shift the burden of proof onto accusers. That is a critical, adversarial reading, not a neutral description. Mainstream Jewish organizations quoted in the same release, including B'nai B'rith International and the American Jewish Committee, made similar substantive criticisms without using that framing.
What Are Nexus's Funding and Leadership Facts at a Glance?
The table below summarizes Nexus's documented funding, leadership, and structural details in one place.
| Category | Documented Detail |
|---|---|
| Founded | November 2019 (Nexus Task Force, hosted at USC Annenberg, now at Bard College); January 2024 (Nexus Leadership Project, per Wikipedia's documented history of the organization); January 2026 (Nexus Center for Antisemitism Research) |
| Founding-period funding (2019-2021) | No funder publicly disclosed in reporting Olam reviewed |
| Fiscal structure | Project of the New Israel Fund; OSF's grant records call it "a fiscally sponsored project" of NIF, though NIF's own grantee page disclaims formal fiscal-sponsor status; likely mechanism is NIF's donor-advised grant structure, per NIF's published grantmaking page |
| Documented Soros/OSF grants | $25,000 (2022); $50,000 (2023); roughly $1 million broader antisemitism commitment (2024); $100,000 (reported November 2025); undisclosed share of $30 million multi-org commitment (May 2026) |
| Other 2026 OSF grantees in the same commitment | Jewish Council for Public Affairs, Jewish Social Justice Roundtable, New Jewish Narrative, Bend the Arc Jewish Action |
| Other funders | None publicly documented by name. Because Nexus has no independent 990 and draws on NIF's general and donor-advised funds, other NIF donors cannot be ruled out as indirect funders. Their absence from this table reflects a lack of public disclosure, not a confirmed absence of other money |
| President/National Director | Jonathan Jacoby (founding executive director, New Israel Fund; founding executive director, Israel Policy Forum) |
| Board Chair | Alan Solow (past chair, J Street; Dean Emeritus, Tufts Tisch College) |
| Personnel overlap | David N. Myers: simultaneously NIF board president and Nexus Task Force member; former NIF chief executive Norman Rosenberg also sits on the Task Force, per Middle East Forum's February 2026 report |
| Research Center Director | Aryeh Tuchman (former director, ADL Center on Extremism) |
| Definition | The Nexus Document (2021, updated 2024); cited in the U.S. National Strategy to Counter Antisemitism; criticized by the World Jewish Congress and B'nai B'rith for that inclusion; cited framing echoed in New York City's January 2026 IHRA reversal |
| Relationship to ADL | Publicly criticized ADL's November 2025 Mamdani-administration monitoring initiative; hired a former senior ADL researcher two months later |
What Remains Undisclosed About Nexus's Funding and Budget?
Nexus's complete annual budget, its first three years of funders, and the extent of NIF's broader donor support all remain undisclosed.
Nexus has become a significant participant in the American debate over how antisemitism should be defined and measured, and Open Society Foundations, the philanthropy George Soros founded and his son Alex Soros now chairs, is the only institutional funder publicly documented as giving to Nexus by name. That is a narrower claim than saying OSF is Nexus's only funder in any sense: because Nexus has no independent tax filing and operates on funds routed through the New Israel Fund, money from NIF's much larger and more varied donor base may also reach Nexus without any public record identifying it as such. What remains considerably less transparent is the rest of the financial picture. The public cannot easily determine Nexus's complete annual budget, who funded its first three years of operation, whether other named funders beyond OSF exist, or how much of OSF's 2026 commitment it will actually receive. Read Olam's related audits of similarly structured funding networks: the Jewish Liberation Fund's anti-Zionist pipeline and UJA-Federation's grants to IHRA-opposing groups.
Olam contacted Nexus and the ADL for comment on their respective funding disclosures and their characterizations of each other's work. This article will be updated with any response.
