Another core funding area for the Nazarian family is supporting public policy research through the RAND Corporation. The RAND Corporation is an institution made up of dedicated experts, who do research to influence government policy. The Nazarian family brought RAND Corporation to Israel because one of the voids in Israel is long term strategic planning. Israel’s historic experience has had a plan and structure for crisis management, and the policy of the government reflects on that economically and politically. RAND has helped with policy making in long term strategic planning, instead of the short term planning which Israel had been doing. The family foundation’s first project was looking at Israel’s energy needs for the next twenty-five years. Israel is one of the few Middle Eastern countries that does not have oil. RAND did a broad statistical quantitative analysis to assess Israel’s energy security by looking at every source of energy that Israel needed and giving prescriptions for what Israel’s Ministry of Infrastructure should be doing to plan for the next twenty-five years. This was a gift from the Y&S Nazarian Family Foundation to the Ministry of Infrastructure.

The second gift was looking at Israel’s police sector. Those who did not make it really high in the Israel Defense Forces are the police. As an institution, Israel’s police have not evolved. RAND was able to look at the evolution of Israeli police, and find the needs for the society. That gift was half from Y&S Nazarian Family Foundation and half from the government. It was a big deal to get the government to invest in the research. RAND also did a project on Israel’s economic standing and to maintain the high standard.

As a family the Y&S Nazarian Family Foundation believes that when you give to one school, one hospital and one university, your area impact is small, but when you impact national policies, it is the whole country that you are influencing. As a result, the Y&S Nazarian Family Foundation felt that this was strategically beneficial and made the Israeli government more efficient through its policies.

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