I just read one of Seth Godin’s recent blog posts titled, “Can Summer Camp Change Your Life”. Seth, for those of you have not yet discovered him, is the most popular business blogger in the world and the author of some of the most spot-on marketing and business books in print today, including his short, smart book, Tribes. His recent blog on summer camp touched a chord for its insight into how tribes work and why they are so powerful. My now-adult daughters spent many happy years at the B’nai Brith Perlman Camp in Pennsylvania where they made dear friends, created lifelong memories and became members of their camp tribe. Today, their camp tribe connects largely through Facebook - providing its members a virtual base camp to explore memories and renew connections. The notion that … Continue Reading
Sandy Cardin on The Future of Philanthropy
Schusterman Family Foundation president and communal leader Sandy Cardin spoke last week at Jerusalem's PresenTense Institute on his view on where philanthropy is and is going. Here's Sandy live - including his 2009 adaption of The Wizard of Oz for the philanthropic world. … Continue Reading
How Can the Organized Community Best Take Advantage of Social Innovation?
Over a century ago, the Jewish Publication Society was formed to "provide the children of Jewish immigrants to America with books about their heritage in the language of the New World." During it's long life-cycle, the JPS became the standard bearer for Jewish wisdom literature, its most popular item - and cash cow - being the JPS Tanakh, the Bible many if not most young Jews in America received when they were given the Good Book. Recently, however, the JPS realized that the printed book, even the Good one, was under siege - and with it the existence of the JPS itself. Seeing online content grow all around it, the JPS had two general choices: cut back, cut down and hope for the best offline, or develop new directions and revenue generating products that can live in the world beyond print. They … Continue Reading
Limmud FSU Celebrates in Jerusalem
Tomorrow, 700 Russian-speaking Jews from around Israel will gather at Jerusalem's Beit Avi Chai for three days of education, engagement and community building. Using the occasion of Shalom Aleichem's 150th birthday to celebrate and explore their Jewish connections, they will be joined by representatives of government, business, the arts, media, philanthropy and the entertainment world. Dynamic events, seminars, lectures, workshops and discussions will focus on a wide range of topics within Jewish communities and around the world with a program that runs the gambit from discussions on Israel's political scene to Jewish cooking; from traditional texts to Jewish theater. Timed to the conference, a new, independent survey finds that 64 percent of immigrants from the countries of the former Soviet … Continue Reading
The Madoff Mess: Charities Face Difficult Moral Questions
We came across this article yesterday morning; with all the pre-occupation with Madoff's sentence we held it for today so as not to be relegated to the back burner. The author, an attorney and law professor, raises questions worthy of discussion. from The New York Times: Should Charities Repay Their Madoff Money? ...And another troubling aspect of the Madoff fraud has emerged in the past few weeks. It is now being alleged that certain charitable foundations and individuals on the whole reaped profits in the millions, if not billions of dollars, from Mr. Madoff’s misdeeds. And much of this money may have been subsequently donated to innocent charities. This situation raises some of the most troubling questions about Bernie’s legacy. First, did charities on the whole benefit from Mr. … Continue Reading
Giving USA’S Annual Report: How to Gauge the Results from 2008 and Plan for the Rest of 2009
by Robert I. Evans & Avrum D. Lapin With the results from Giving USA regarding charitable giving in 2008 released earlier this month, we pose a critical question: what are some of the important trends we can discern from the report as we turn the corner into the second half of 2009? Note that Giving USA reported estimated charitable giving results of $307 billion for 2008, as compared with announced results from 2007 of $314 billion. Watching trends and considering appropriate responses are critical steps that all non-profits should consider . . . especially in difficult times. Based on three aspects of the Giving USA report’s findings, we can conclude that there are certain trends over which we probably have very little control but which have significant implications for every … Continue Reading
Nonprofits Employ Tougher Measures as Downturn Deepens
The negative effects of the economy on nonprofit organizations has accelerated over the last six months, according to responses from nearly 100 nonprofit leaders participating in a Bridgespan study initiated in November 2008 and updated in May 2009. The percentage of nonprofits that have resorted to layoffs, broad-based programmatic reductions, and reserve draw-downs has increased measurably. Nevertheless nonprofit leaders appear to be optimistic about the future. Almost half of the respondents reported that they believed their organization would be on stronger financial footing in a year’s time. Since that initial survey, the country has a new President, and a new budget and stimulus package. Nonetheless, as the economic crisis has deepened, the situation for nonprofits has continued to … Continue Reading
Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow: Key Questions on Jewish Innovation, Interruption, and Sustainability
In preparing for a recent flight to New York for some meetings that included discussions regarding the state of Jewish social innovation, I compiled a stack of recent ‘want to read, but haven’t yet read’ materials on the topic. But much like the rest of life, my best-laid plans were interrupted when I stopped at a newsstand in the airport to pick up the day’s newspaper. There on the shelf was a BusinessWeek headline too hard to ignore: “Innovation, Interrupted: How America’s failure to capitalize on innovation hurt the economy - and what happens next.” How’s that for serendipity? So rather than methodically review the stack I compiled, I boarded the plane and dove right into the BusinessWeek article with fascination. It raises some key observations and questions regarding the … Continue Reading
JAFI: The Dust is Settling; Now What Needs to Be Done?
The Jewish Agency for Israel’s (JAFI) Assembly and the Board of Governors’ meetings just ended and the dust is beginning to settle. Although it was reported that there were sweeping changes to JAFI’s relationship to the Israeli political system this was somewhat exaggerated and I sense there was more playing with smoke and mirrors than actual renovations to rehabilitate an ailing institution. This holds true also for the final approval of Natan Sharansky’s appointment as Chairman of the Executive of the Jewish Agency. In 1929, when the Jewish Agency for Israel was created it was, for all intents and purposes, the administrative arm of the World Zionist Organization to implement the Balfour Declaration and establish the “Homeland for the Jewish People in Palestine.” With successive … Continue Reading
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