Becky Goldberg Pe’er MS ‘99
It’s not always easy to see the positive impacts we make, daily, on our communities or the world around us. Becky Goldberg Pe’er MS ‘99 is trying to rewrite that. Her startup, Angelbe, was started to harness the desire for real, identifiable examples of changemaking. Becky has lived in Israel for 18 years, working in tech, and post October 7th, found herself more engaged in working professionally towards impact.
Becky uses the word impact broadly. “Impact is making a positive difference on your community. It can be fixing up a local garden with other people in your community, or raising money for people who are coming to town for Shabbaton.” But sometimes, it can be difficult to know where exactly to direct one’s energies in order to make the best result. Her company, Angelbe, bridges the gap for Jewish community leaders and professionals to see the positive outcomes of their actions through philanthropy and grassroots organizing.
Angelbe is a community-giving platform that works with organizations to empower their existing community through impact. Becky and her team started working with corporates in Israel, who’d then give their employees the ability to vote where their corporate donations were going, to give money, and to volunteer. “We wanted to create a space that gave people a sense of belonging and community, and to be able to contribute meaningfully,” she explained.
Then, jumping off from their work in Israel, Angelbe decided to expand their focus to Jewish organizations in the U.S. “We can, at any given point in time, point people in a good direction for where to give. What we realized during our work with Israeli corporates and validation meetings with Jewish organizations in the US is that there is a legitimate need for impact leaders to have a space to get real-time information about what is needed in Israel at any given point in time, and also collaborate and communicate with each other to drive bigger initiatives. We can provide that. We’re looking to bring big corporate Israeli leaders together in one platform together with Jewish foundation heads and any other people that are working with Israeli giving on an ongoing basis to provide them with a community space that makes it simple and straightforward to make real kinds of impact, like helping to revive cities in the North and South Israel, for example.” Becky feels that, post October 7th, American Jews are in need of transparent, local Israeli organizations to give to. And she knows exactly where to lead them.
“My main goal is to talk to two different types of people: first, what we describe as impact leaders, people whose job it is to determine funding and volunteering/impact events for their larger community/business. Second, people who are active in a Jewish organization which puts an emphasis on community, events, and giving. We’re a startup. We work really fast, and our platform has been architected in a way that makes it super flexible and extremely customizable and curatable.” While there are other platforms that direct philanthropy to Jewish organizations, Becky feels AngelBe stands out because it “brings the concept of community into the concept of giving… We’re not looking to sell a new concept—we’re looking to understand the challenges that are being faced today within Jewish communities. We’re looking to strengthen communities and organizations that are choosing how and what to recommend in terms of donations and where to put our energies.”
Becky sees much of her foundational understanding of hesed and tzedek as coming from her Heschel education. “The values I learned at Heschel had a huge impact on myself, how I’m, raising my kids [Joseph (11) and Ruby (8)], and my desire to give back at the end of the day.” She credits her classes for where she learned rabbinic interpretations of giving and impact, and for Heschel’s conceptual Zionism, which led her to living in Israel. “Shoutout to the Hebrew teaching at Heschel, which was unbelievable,” she said.
As Becky and her team stretch Angelbe to the Jewish American community, she’s excited about speaking with as many interested people as possible and is happy to chat to anyone who’d like to learn more. Becky can be reached at becky@angelbe.co.
