Jennifer Meeropol is the granddaughter of Ethel and Julius Rosenberg and the daughter of RFC Founder, Robert Meeropol. Jenn became the Executive Director of the RFC on September 1, 2013. Prior posts on this page were written by Robert (unless otherwise noted), and represent his opinions, which are not necessarily shared by the RFC.
This spring, the RFC welcomed six new children from four new beneficiary families as we awarded almost $220,000 in spring grants. All in all, we will be supporting 163 children this spring- children from all over the United States who come to us with a wide variety of backgrounds, life experiences, needs and interests...
By RFC Founder Robert Meeropol
The August 2024 release of the memo written by the National Security Agency’s (NSA) chief analyst, which concluded that my mother, Ethel Rosenberg, was not a spy, was a smoking gun. Both the KGB and the NSA agreed Ethel was not a spy, and this evidence was kept secret for 74 years!
On April 11, 2026, hundreds of community members gathered at First Churches in Northampton, Mass. to celebrate resistance across generations of activists and 35 years of the Rosenberg Fund for Children. In the midst of our nation’s current reality, in which authoritarianism is on the rise, gender affirming care and reproductive rights are under attack, friends and neighbors are kidnapped by ICE and Border Patrol agents and the current administration wages war abroad, it was especially powerful and moving to come together to try to make sense of the current moment and honor those who have resisted and are resisting, winning hard fought victories across the country and around the world.
At times the last few months of 2025 and beginning of this year have felt like a brutal slog from one hard thing to another. A beloved extended family member died too young, work was especially demanding as we closed out our year-end fundraising and horrific local, national and international headlines trumpeted one catastrophe after another. I attended graduate school at Brown University and images of students cowering in buildings I recognized and spent time in while a gunman roamed the campus was gutting.
As we ring in the new year at the RFC, we are taking time to reflect on our most recent granting period. Our fall 2025 granting season was busy, urgent and emotional. For me, each new application period feels like a window into the current state of activism in the United States. As new applicants come to us and existing beneficiaries send in updates, a picture of the activist landscape is revealed. This fall, that picture was a grim one.