Island nonprofit leaders are remembering Sam Feldman, who died on Jan. 8 at 95, as a true mensch: a man of boundless good will and generosity, who never tired of finding ways to help others and bring people together.

“He wanted to build community, so that it was better for everybody,” said Rabbi Caryn Broitman of the Martha’s Vineyard Hebrew Center, where Mr. Feldman and his family were longtime members.

Speaking with the Gazette Monday, Ms. Broitman recalled Mr. Feldman as a warm, thoughtful and generous benefactor.

“He was very intentional. He thought about sustainability, in terms of kids and the next generation,” she said, citing Mr. Feldman’s support for education, his contributions to the Hebrew Center and the Mopeds are Dangerous campaign he founded in the 1990s.

“He cared about having an Island that was working for everybody in the future, and having an Island that was safe for everybody,” Ms. Broitman said.

A founder of the Farm Institute in Edgartown and the Martha’s Vineyard Nonprofit Collaborative, Mr. Feldman also provided major funding to a panorama of Island organizations and lent his business expertise to help them thrive.

— Ivy Ashe

“He would always ask, ‘How can I help you?’” said Richard Paradise of the Martha’s Vineyard Film Society, which was still a shoestring operation in the early 2000s when Mr. Feldman first volunteered his support.

Mr. Paradise finally took him up on the offer in 2011, asking Mr. Feldman for advice on raising money to build the Martha’s Vineyard Film Center in Vineyard Haven. Mr. Feldman quickly became the film center’s founding donor, offering a $50,000 check on the spot and lobbying other people of means to give the new cinema their support.

“I didn’t even ask him,” Mr. Paradise said.

Mr. Feldman also was a founding member of Polly Hill Arboretum in West Tisbury, established in the late 1990s.

“He always brought a sense of both opportunity and optimism,” executive director Tim Boland told the Gazette.

“I never saw him down. Like rare plants, he’s a rare person,” Mr. Boland said.

Mr. Feldman and his late wife Gretchen endowed an internship program that supports two Polly Hill interns every year, Mr. Boland said, adding that more than half of the interns have gone on to leadership positions in the public garden world off-Island.

“We have what I call “Polly seedlings,’ and Sam planted a lot of them,” he said.

Mr. Boland also credited Mr. Feldman with engineering a fundamental shift in how Island nonprofits operate, establishing the Nonprofit Collaborative in 2003 and hosting dinner parties at his home to bring individual group leaders together.

“He wanted to promote the idea that not-for-profits are not in competition, but could support each other and, at times, collaborate,” Mr. Boland said.

“You can see the connectivity of Sam’s influence among the not-for-profits to this day,” he said. “He’s left behind generational work that will still cause positive change in the future.”

Jill Robie-Axtell, chief executive officer of the YMCA of Martha’s Vineyard, said Mr. Feldman was an early and enduring donor to the fitness center.

“Everything that the Y does was part of his vision as well as ours,” Ms. Robie-Axtell told the Gazette, recalling him as a keen business advisor as well as an open-handed donor.

“He was about connections, always wanting to connect me and connect the Y to people and things he thought could be beneficial,” Ms. Robie-Axtell said.

Fitness was important to Mr. Feldman, she said.

“People could not believe his age. He was a very young [senior],” Ms. Robie-Axtell said.

Mr. Feldman took part in the annual Chilmark Road Race all the way through 2024, a point of pride for his daughters Leigh and Dene.

“Dad is buried in formal Jewish attire, but underneath that, he is wearing a Chilmark Road Race T-shirt,” Leigh Feldman told mourners during his funeral at the Hebrew Center last Thursday.

Following her sister, Dene Feldman recalled her father’s ever-positive outlook on life:

“One of his favorite things to say was, ‘Today is the best day of my life,’” she said. “His goal was to do one mitzvah [good work] a day, and he did way more than that, every day.”