During the mid-1980s Sanford C. Bernstein the founder and director of the investment house Sanford C. Bernstein and Company[5][6][7] had become a devoted follower of Rabbi Shlomo Riskin and decided to establish the AVI CHAI Foundation[8] to research and help all manner of Jewish education and particularly Jewish outreach ("kiruv") if it met the criteria of his foundation (no opposition to Zionism and to accept the value of secular knowledge.)
Rabbi Leiner's tenure was brief as he went on to a leadership role in the Haredi yeshiva Sh'or Yoshuv[12] that traditionally had a Baal teshuva student base.
As the AVI CHAI Foundation announced that it would wind down funding for AJOP the decision was made to align with the National Council of Young Israel (NCYI) [13] and a third director, Rabbi Shmuel Stauber [14] was appointed.
With the termination of funding from the AVI CHAI Foundation that had lasted close to a decade, the rabbinic leadership of AJOP decided to move its main headquarters to Baltimore, Maryland under its third president Rabbi Shlomo Porter.
[15][2] Having moved to Baltimore, active and wealthy lay members were added to the Board of Directors such as Richard Horowitz as Vice President [16] among others.
AJOP also distributes a weekly e-newsletter, containing reputable sources and publishers who share information such as Torah discourses, Halacha, inspirational stories, and recipes, and runs an online store which sells merchandise tailored for those in the field of Orthodox Jewish outreach.
At all its early annual conventions, beginning in 1989, Gerald Weisberg AJOP's founding executive director, promoted workshops that introduced participants to the concept of a Bulletin Board System via "AJOPNET".
A Task Force on New Technology was headed by an AJOP founding trustee Rabbi Yaacov Haber who had discovered the efficacy of BitNet newsgroups in spreading the teaching of a weekly Torah portion.