UJA Collects $301 Million in 1981, JTA, Jan. 19, 1982.

The United Jewish Appeal collected more than $301 million in 1981 — a peacetime record — to help provide humanitarian programs and services to Jews in need in Israel and world-wide, Edgar Cadden, UJA national cash chairman, announced today. He described the record campaign total as “a watermark for Jewish humanitarian efforts in this century.”

The $301,179,967 collected, a 14 percent increase over the $287.5 million collected in 1980, represents an overwhelming response by Jewish communities around the country to calls for cash to meet what UJA leaders called “the greatest cash collection crisis since the Yom Kippur War.”

Cadden noted that these funds are allocated to UJA from campaigns conducted in 211 federated and 455 non-federated communities in the United States. He also noted that out of the $301 million total, $83,391,801 of the total collected was forwarded to UJA in the month of December, underscoring the continuing problem of an erratic cash flow to the Jewish Agency in Israel and to the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee, UJA’s principal beneficiary agencies.

Cadden pointed out that some major communities have committed themselves to a monthly transmittal of funds in even amounts to UJA in the hope of reversing the uneven cash flow that results from an inadequate flow of money during the year.